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Comment by codex | Hacker News Reader

It depends, I think. Human willpower and resources are a finite resource.

If a terrorist could bring down a plane by clicking a button on a website, we would see hundreds of planes downed every day.

If it takes a day of preparation, we'd see perhaps a dozen per day.

If it takes a week, we would see another order of magnitude fewer.

If it takes a year of training and preparation by one or more high IQ individuals with several hundred thousand dollars, we'd see almost none. This is why we haven't seen any more 9/11 style attacks even though they were so amazingly effective as a terrorist tool: it's become sufficiently difficult to pull them off after counterterrorism efforts were amped up.

In other words: criminals can still break into my car if they really tried, but I still lock my car doors.

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> If it takes a year of training and preparation by one or more high IQ individuals with several hundred thousand dollars, we'd see almost none. This is why we haven't seen any more 9/11 style attacks even though they were so amazingly effective as a terrorist tool: it's become sufficiently difficult to pull them off after counterterrorism efforts were amped up.

It was sufficiently difficult even before security theater and airline liability reduction measures were ramped up, which is why we didn't see 9/11 style attacks before 9/11.

The point is that planes are only a high value target when they can be used as a missile. If the cockpit is locked from the inside then this possibility goes away. Even with a bomb on board no one will give control to someone who may use the plane as a missile.

There is no more incentive for someone looking to cause mayhem to blow up a plane than there is to blow up a shopping mall or any other building with more than ~180 people inside (the approximate number of seats in a 747).

I believe it's a lot easier to down a plane than to kill 180 people in a shopping mall. The latter would require much more explosive given the wide open spaces. You can bring down a plane much more easily.

Mainly, though, people feel more vulnerable in a plane, so an aircraft bombing is higher impact.

Maybe not malls, what about music events, sold out 300 cap venues like every week in every decently sized city. Hotels with 1000 rooms or office buildings like with the Oklahoma City bombing.

Look at it from the other side. Even with the lax security before, about 999,999,999,999 per billion people were deterred. That is a stupendously high success rate. We cannot make spacecraft with that high a quality level.

> If it takes a day of preparation, we'd see perhaps a dozen per day.

Nope. People are deterred by socialization and innate biology. I could take a gasoline bomb to a nearby school or church and kill hundreds of people within the week, for little expense and a good chance of getting off scot free. So could most people. It is not difficulty or risk that prevent mass killings.

I think there are two variables here:

A: the number of people radicalized into anti-American terrorists

B: the opportunity that As have to cause damage

I suspect A went up in the late nineties and continues to be high-ish today. B went up with OBL and the Saudis funding the game, but has gone down post-9/11 for a variety of reasons, including decreased Saudi bankrolls, increased airport and aircraft security, tighter restrictions on student visas, and a weakened Al Qaeda.

I think the change was that people gradually forgot Pearl Harbor or were never educated about it in the first place. Bin Laden had many virtues as a tactician but was poor at strategy and historical perspective. Now that the lesson has been relearned, we are mostly safe from large-scale sneak attacks for another 50 years.

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