Comments on: Why terrorists are often engineers: implications for nanotechnology

By: Christopher

Christopher — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 15:55:31 +0000

I think people are overlooking that most engineering terrorists are making IED’s and other such smaller scale devices. On occasion, they do something flashy like crash a 747 into a building. Maybe they fix your aging artillery pieces.

Guerrilla fighters don’t have a big budget. So while nukes are an looming threat, you tend to get more dirty bombs than an actual nuclear catastrophes.

Not to belittle the issue, but there are definite strategic considerations that limit how much force can be mustered against somebody you’d like to hurt.

By: Nanoman

Nanoman — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 20:46:49 +0000

My main concern is this: I do not want terrorists building nano assemblers, nanotech hardware (REAL Mechanical Chemistry, not mere nano particle stuff), or advanced programmable bio nano machines. Is there a REAL danger of this, or, are they too backward, too foolish, and too far behind the USA and the Western world and our allies to do this? Thoughts?

Ie where do you all think the Assembler Breakthrough will happen? USA? China? Europe? Israel? Japan?

By: SwedeR

SwedeR — Sun, 03 Oct 2010 15:37:37 +0000

This statistics shows results for small terrorists. Large state terrorists like USA, Britain, the NATO, Israel and other western powers use advanced technology to destroy and harm civilian population in large quantities in Iraq, Afghanistan, etc., etc.

By: Titus

Titus — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 21:15:30 +0000

Why are terrorists engineers? Because the study of electronics and explosives happens to fall more under that category of “engineering” and less under “poetry” or “music.”

By: Kristin

Kristin — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 11:46:05 +0000

Perhaps this is because of one of these two reasons:

1. The workplace is so feminized, real men can’t stand working there anymore and must find other pursuits, or
2. The Engineering minded can no longer get their geekiness out by building real model rockets and bombs like they could 50 years ago.

And so they resort to terrorism.

By: Joe

Joe — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 04:04:00 +0000

One possible answer:
In the countries like Pakistan and Saudi Arabia (and across all of Asia and the Middle East, for that matter). Most college students study technical and hard-science subjects from physics to medicine. This is well-known: the humanities and the arts are not popular majors. If they are real free-spirits, they’ll rebel against their family and community pressure and study something mushy like business or economics.
The trends continue for Asian immigrants in the West and their children. This dynamic diminishes with each generation though the pressures remain (see “Harold and Kumar”…LOL).
This is probably where the correlation comes from. I doubt there is much in the way of causation.
Does this trend hold for non-muslim terrorists? The Unabomber, math guy = sorta. McVeigh, I don’t know? Rudolph? Bill Ayers, ELF et all, I don’t think so.

By: Chris Peterson

Chris Peterson — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 03:50:45 +0000

@Brett — quite right, and thank goodness for it!

By: LAG

LAG — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 03:30:12 +0000

So, you think a terrorist gets up one day and says, “You know, I could be a lot better at this if I only took a few class.”

Nah, that ain’t it. It’s probably that engineers and terrorists share a number of qualities: focus, drive, single-minded pursuit of obscure goals, etc.

By: Brett Bellmore

Brett Bellmore — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 23:25:17 +0000

On the other hand, given the limited damage terrorists usually cause, compared to the relative fragility of most things, it appears to me that it’s not the competent engineers who are attracted to terrorism. Thankfully.

By: dennymack

dennymack — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 21:42:36 +0000

Three (speculative) points:

Could it be that their educations are sponsored by the extremist organizations on whose behalf they act?
I am not sure how the timeline of education vs. radicalization looks.

I could also see such organizations fast-tracking the advancement of engineers over house painters, and making a concerted effort to recruit them.

Perhaps we make a particular point of going after anyone known to be an engineer, hence their over-representation. If I were in counter-terrorism I might be especially anxious about anyone they nick name “the engineer.”