Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress

All this is abstract—one theory of the natural arc of technology versus another. How does it apply to the actual dangers we face so that we can ponder whether humanity is screwed? The key is not to fall for the Availability bias and assume that if we can imagine something terrible, it is bound to happen. The real danger depends on the numbers: the proportion of people who want to cause mayhem or mass murder, the proportion of that genocidal sliver with the competence to concoct an effective cyber or biological weapon, the sliver of that sliver whose schemes will actually succeed, and the sliver of the sliver of the sliver that accomplishes a civilization-ending cataclysm rather than a nuisance, a blow, or even a disaster, after which life goes on.

Start with the number of maniacs. Does the modern world harbor a significant number of people who want to visit murder and mayhem on strangers? If it did, life would be unrecognizable. They could go on stabbing rampages, spray gunfire into crowds, mow down pedestrians with cars, set off pressure-cooker bombs, and shove people off sidewalks and subway platforms into the path of hurtling vehicles. The researcher Gwern Branwen has calculated that a disciplined sniper or serial killer could murder hundreds of people without getting caught.⁴² A saboteur with a thirst for havoc could tamper with supermarket products, lace some pesticide into a feedlot or water supply, or even just make an anonymous call claiming to have done so, and it could cost a company hundreds of millions of dollars in recalls, and a country billions in lost exports.⁴³ Such attacks could take place in every city in the world many times a day, but in fact take place somewhere or other every few years (leading the security expert Bruce Schneier to ask, “Where are all the terrorist attacks?”).⁴⁴ Despite all the terror generated by terrorism, there must be very few individuals out there waiting for an opportunity to wreak wanton destruction.

Among these depraved individuals, how large is the subset with the intelligence and discipline to develop an effective cyber- or bioweapon? Far from being criminal masterminds, most terrorists are bumbling schlemiels.⁴⁵ Typical specimens include the Shoe Bomber, who unsuccessfully tried to down an airliner by igniting explosives in his shoe; the Underwear Bomber, who unsuccessfully tried to down an airliner by detonating explosives in his underwear; the ISIS trainer who demonstrated an explosive vest to his class of aspiring suicide terrorists and blew himself and all twenty-one of them to bits; the Tsarnaev brothers, who followed up on their bombing of the Boston Marathon by murdering a police officer in an unsuccessful attempt to steal his gun, and then embarked on a carjacking, a robbery, and a Hollywood-style car chase during which one brother ran over the other; and Abdullah al-Asiri, who tried to assassinate a Saudi deputy minister with an improvised explosive device hidden in his anus and succeeded only in obliterating himself.⁴⁶ (An intelligence analysis firm reported that the event “signals a paradigm shift in suicide bombing tactics.”)⁴⁷ Occasionally, as on September 11, 2001, a team of clever and disciplined terrorists gets lucky, but most successful plots are low-tech attacks on target-rich gatherings, and (as we saw in chapter 13) kill very few people. Indeed, I venture that the proportion of brilliant terrorists in a population is even smaller than the proportion of terrorists multiplied by the proportion of brilliant people. Terrorism is a demonstrably ineffective tactic, and a mind that delights in senseless mayhem for its own sake is probably not the brightest bulb in the box.⁴⁸

Now take the small number of brilliant weaponeers and cut it down still further by the proportion with the cunning and luck to outsmart the world’s police, security experts, and counterterrorism forces. The number may not be zero, but it surely isn’t high. As with all complex undertakings, many heads are better than one, and an organization of bio- or cyberterrorists could be more effective than a lone mastermind. But that’s where Kelly’s observation kicks in: the leader would have to recruit and manage a team of co-conspirators who exercised perfect secrecy, competence, and loyalty to the depraved cause. As the size of the team increases, so do the odds of detection, betrayal, infiltrators, blunders, and stings.⁴⁹