The vital role technology should play in the fight against terrorism was underlined in a keynote speech by John Reid, the former Home Secretary, in October last year. Reid compared the technological innovation needed to anticipate, prevent, protect and defeat the al-Qaeda inspired global campaign of disruption and destruction to the challenge faced by the Allies in dealing with the military industrial might of Nazi Germany.
Speaking at a security industry conference in London, he invoked the spirit of great wartime scientists like Barnes Wallis, the inventor of the bouncing bomb, as he spoke of the “enduring struggle” facing Britain. “It is a race between those who would find the weakness of our defences and use [it to] wreak havoc on our society; and those of us involved in a constant search to defend our country, our freedoms, and our democracy,” the then Home Secretary told his audience.
Reid used the occasion to launch a new partnership involving government, business and academia to harness and develop technology and research in a way that surpasses international terrorism’s capacity to innovate.
His battle cry echoed that made by President George W Bush in July 2002 when he detailed his plans for a new Department for Homeland Security during a visit to the Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois.“ We’re in a new kind of war today. We face a ruthless and resourceful enemy,” Bush said.“ In this new war, we will rely on the genius and creativity of the American people. Our scientific community is serving on the front line.”
Just over four years after Bush’s speech, in September 2006, on the fifth anniversary of the attacks on New York and Washington – which so chillingly exposed the vulnerability of homeland security to unconventional warfare – a US official with responsibility for science and technology, Maureen McCarthy, was asked whether she thought her country was safer.“ Absolutely,” she answered. A clarification followed: “They can still game us, but figuring out how to get past our defences now is harder to do.”
Homeland research
A report in Popular Science last September said that in the race to prevent future 9/11 attacks – or worse – Washington has marshalled the US science establishment on a scale not seen since the Soviet Union put the first Sputnik satellite into space. It is estimated that more than $4bn of federal funds have been ploughed into homeland research since 2003.
According to McCarthy, as important as the accelerated spending is the coalescing around a common project of formerly disparate disciplines: “Software engineers, epidemiologists and biologists have teamed up to produce technologies that protect air and food against bio terrorism… nuclear physics and bio forensics specialists now co-operate with the best brains in behavioural science to devise ways to reduce the threat of nuclear smuggling and suicide bombers.”
The ever-expanding security measures in the US have taken on board the propensity of terrorists to switch targets, so that research and development of technology focused on protection extends from government buildings to critical infrastructure and essential supplies.
Thus, as part of a $300m programme called BIOwatch, the US Environmental Protection Agency, in conjunction with the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) have deployed a network of miniature toxin detectors in 30 US cities. A more sophisticated technology known as the Autonomous Pathogen Detection System (APDS) is meanwhile undergoing tests in New York City. The APDS, once attached to a ventilation system, can identify chemicals and biotoxins without requiring researchers to gather daily samples and wait for read-outs.
There has never been room for complacency in the history of counterterrorism, not least in the UK where the image of Q supplying James Bond’s 007 with an endless supply of state-developed wizardry to combat the country’s enemies falls painfully short of reality.
