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Comment by Animats | Hacker News Reader

The output of the intelligence community is surprisingly low. One director of the NSA said, pre-9/11, that the whole organization generated about one important result every two days, one that was acted upon.

The output of the US's domestic anti-terrorism effort is low for the resources invested. Most of the FBI's terrorism arrests are wannabes. They get a report of somebody mouthing off in a bar or mosque, crank up a sting operation, get some dummy to go through the motions of trying something, and claim they've stopped a terrorist.

The DoD/CIA operation to find foreign terrorist leaders and kill them seems to have paid off. Anybody identified as a major leader in Al-Queda has a short life expectancy.

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So, after several wars, a couple of occupations, and tons of drone killings, and several trillions spent, all the stronger country in the world has managed was to "reduce the life expectancy" of major leaders in an third world backwater organisation? And help foster another similar enemy (ISIS) in the process?

Hurray for effectiveness...

Not to mention approximately 2 million civilians dead in the last 20 years.

I find it amusing to consider the NSA/FBI thinks various terrorist groups have masterminded a plan and are closing in, while terrorist groups think similarly about the NSA/FBI's SIGINT infrastructure and capability; when in fact they're both hilariously unorganised and just trying really, really hard, like a real-life parallel to Spy Vs Spy

And so it seems that the currently effective terrorists attacks are the simplest ones, where you don't have to communicate or coordinate too much, or acquire some very unusual hardware (like explosives).

I wonder why a more common tactic isn't to simply ride a lot of busses until one of them is packed full while driving on the highway at full speed, then launching at the steering wheel to turn it basically any direction...Sounds like a pretty good chance of a pile up and lots of casualties, with no evidence the perpetrator is anything other than a normal passenger until it's too late.

because the goal of terrorism is awareness that there are evil assholes out there.

they want to get caught. the casualties are a means to an end. if you just kill a bunch of people without anyone noticing it, nothings been gained in terms of effective terrorizing.

terrorists want to be freddy krueger, not the rollercoaster from final destination.

How is it any different from suicide bombing tho? The terrorist organizations can still take credit for the bus-on-highway-terror just like they take credit posthumously for the suicide bombings.

Yeah. Actually, your idea is even scarier than the usual attacks, because with suicide bombers you can at least expect them to be discovered given enough police and intelligence resources (if by need of controlling the flow of ingredients to explosive substances). But otherwise random people causing unexpected public transport crashes? That would be literally terror.

They could already do that for random accidents not actually caused by them. Why don't they?

Why not try to claim they made the malaysian air flight disappear?

I'm not sure, but it doesnt seem to be on their agenda.

Terrorist code of conduct. "Thou shall not claim casualties you didn't cause."

> Terrorist code of conduct. "Thou shall not claim casualties you didn't cause."

That's because if you are ever disproved, you lose credibility for future claims.

That's orthogonal to the merit of using such "mundane-looking" tactics and then rightfully claiming involvement.

youd think that its incredibly easy for a terrorist to regain lost credibility.

duh?

remember what happened last time nobody took them seriously? a generation of conspiracy nutters was born.

Nobody taking them seriously is the only way to stop them. Compare with people starting to take them seriously, which brought us at least three country-destroying wars, trillions of dollars of waste, and the erosion of citizen rights in the whole western world - all within last two decades.

> remember what happened last time nobody took them seriously? a generation of conspiracy nutters was born.

I think that it's my fault, but I honestly don't know what you're referring to. 9/11? The Kennedy assassinations? In any case, how does not taking terrorists seriously create conspiracy theorists?

This is almost like the great Coen bros movie Burn After Reading

The high effort to acquire relatively little information also leads to a higher certainty about there being not much more you'd have to know.

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