Horseman Number Three: Israeli futurologist predicts terror horror

[R.A. Hettinga]

<http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/06/21/future_terror/print.html>

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Original URL: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/06/21/future_terror/

Israeli futurologist predicts terror horror

By Mark Ballard

Published Thursday 21st June 2007 14:34 GMT

Western nations have less than 20 years to prepare for the next generation
of terror threats, according to Dr Yair Sharan, director of Tel Aviv
University's Interdisciplinary Centre for Technology Analysis and
Forecasting.

These could consist of suicide bombers remote-controlled by brain-chip
implants and carrying nano-technology cluster bombs, or biological
compounds for which there is no antidote.


It is hard to imagine how we are supposed to prepare for such a future, but
Sharan, who presented his dire predictions to an audience of spook industry
bigwigs last week, has some idea about what the US and its allies should do
about it.

"Europe is naive with its love of privacy," he told The Register. "It's the
weak point in the chain."

The spook industry is already doing its best to prepare for the worst, and
gaining a sense of history about what it is doing
(http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/06/13/security_government_relationship/).

Sharan's take on geopolitics can only put wind in their sails: "Why should
we be more worried about death today?" he said at the Royal United Services
Institute conference on Homeland Security last week.

We get a better-educated class of terrorists these days, he told the
conference, while sci/tech advances can quickly find their way into
irresponsible hands, or "proliferate" through the forces of globalisation.
Not only that, technology is always smaller and cheaper, making it
inevitable that bad people are going to get their hands on some bad-ass
weaponry.

Most bizarre of all his predictions is "the recruitment of huge numbers of
suicidal candidates - human bombs - by mind control techniques".

Brain chip implants could create a more obedient servant than conventional
techniques like hypnosis: "Imagine that this suicide bomber is remote
controlled and cannot give up, even if he wants," warned Sharan.

This might be some way off, though - Sharan estimated it would be more than
10 years. Within five years, however, we might be faced with terrorists
armed with powerful new explosives delivered by robot. Even remote
controlled toys might be used to deliver dangerous payloads into crowded
places like supermarkets, he said.

Some of these payloads, also conceivably within five years, would be
constructed using radical nanotechnology that could produce something
called the MOAB, or Mother of All Bombs. Nanotechnology, which is made
using components one billionth of a metre across, might also give
terrorists the means to release malicious nanobots into people's
bloodstreams.

Terrorists might also get their hands on new biotechnology that could give
them powerful new weapons. "Imagine anthrax that would stand against
antibiotics," he said. "It's possible to do that - to build a new kind of
anthrax that would be resistant. It was done by Russia - the knowledge is
there and might fall into the hands of terrorists."

Sharan said we should also worry about terrorists getting their hands on
cluster bombs. Now where might they have got that idea?
-- 
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R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah at ibuc.com>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'