Return-Path: <sentto-279987-4430-1012970243-fc=all.net@returns.groups.yahoo.com> Delivered-To: fc@all.net Received: from 204.181.12.215 [204.181.12.215] by localhost with POP3 (fetchmail-5.7.4) for fc@localhost (single-drop); Tue, 05 Feb 2002 20:41:07 -0800 (PST) Received: (qmail 6574 invoked by uid 510); 6 Feb 2002 04:37:49 -0000 Received: from n28.groups.yahoo.com (216.115.96.78) by all.net with SMTP; 6 Feb 2002 04:37:49 -0000 X-eGroups-Return: sentto-279987-4430-1012970243-fc=all.net@returns.groups.yahoo.com Received: from [216.115.97.165] by n28.groups.yahoo.com with NNFMP; 06 Feb 2002 04:37:23 -0000 X-Sender: fc@red.all.net X-Apparently-To: iwar@onelist.com Received: (EGP: mail-8_0_1_3); 6 Feb 2002 04:37:23 -0000 Received: (qmail 60910 invoked from network); 6 Feb 2002 04:37:21 -0000 Received: from unknown (216.115.97.171) by m11.grp.snv.yahoo.com with QMQP; 6 Feb 2002 04:37:21 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO red.all.net) (12.232.72.98) by mta3.grp.snv.yahoo.com with SMTP; 6 Feb 2002 04:37:21 -0000 Received: (from fc@localhost) by red.all.net (8.11.2/8.11.2) id g164cvr25082 for iwar@onelist.com; Tue, 5 Feb 2002 20:38:57 -0800 Message-Id: <200202060438.g164cvr25082@red.all.net> To: iwar@onelist.com (Information Warfare Mailing List) Organization: I'm not allowed to say X-Mailer: don't even ask X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.5 PL3] From: Fred Cohen <fc@all.net> X-Yahoo-Profile: fcallnet Mailing-List: list iwar@yahoogroups.com; contact iwar-owner@yahoogroups.com Delivered-To: mailing list iwar@yahoogroups.com Precedence: bulk List-Unsubscribe: <mailto:iwar-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com> Date: Tue, 5 Feb 2002 20:38:57 -0800 (PST) Subject: [iwar] [fc:Feeding.Frenzies] Reply-To: iwar@yahoogroups.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Feeding Frenzies By Thomas Homer-Dixon Shorting out electrical grids or causing train derailments would be small-scale sabotage compared with terrorist attacks that intentionally exploit psychological vulnerabilities. One key vulnerability is our fear for our health‹an attack that exploits this fear would foster widespread panic. Probably the easiest way to strike at the health of an industrialized nation is through its food-supply system. Modern food-supply systems display many key features that a prospective terrorist would seek in a complex network and are thus highly vulnerable to attack. Such systems are tightly coupled, and they have many nodes‹including huge factory farms and food-processing plants‹with multiple connections to other nodes. The recent foot-and-mouth disease crisis in the United Kingdom provided dramatic evidence of these characteristics. By the time veterinarians found the disease, it had already spread throughout Great Britain. As in the United States, the drive for economic efficiencies in the British farming sector has produced a highly integrated system in which foods move briskly from farm to table. It has also led to economic concentration, with a few immense abattoirs scattered across the land replacing the country's many small slaughterhouses. Foot-and-mouth disease spread rapidly in large part because infected animals were shipped from farms to these distant abattoirs. Given these characteristics, foot-and-mouth disease seems a useful vector for a terrorist attack. The virus is endemic in much of the world and thus easy to obtain. Terrorists could contaminate 20 or 30 large livestock farms or ranches across the United States, allowing the disease to spread through the network, as it did in Great Britain. Such an attack would probably bring the U.S. cattle, sheep, and pig industries to a halt in a matter of weeks, costing the economy tens of billions of dollars. Despite the potential economic impact of such an attack, however, it wouldn't have the huge psychological effect that terrorists value, because foot-and-mouth disease rarely affects humans. Far more dramatic would be the poisoning of our food supply. Here the possibilities are legion. For instance, grain storage and transportation networks in the United States are easily accessible; unprotected grain silos dot the countryside and railway cars filled with grain often sit for long periods on railway sidings. Attackers could break into these silos and grain cars to deposit small amounts of contaminants, which would then diffuse through the food system. Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCB)‹easily found in the oil in old electrical transformers‹are a particularly potent group of contaminants, in part because they contain trace amounts of dioxins. These chemicals are both carcinogenic and neurotoxic; they also disrupt the human endocrine system. Children in particular are vulnerable. Imagine the public hysteria if, several weeks after grain silos and railway cars had been laced with PCBs and the poison had spread throughout the food network, terrorists publicly suggested that health authorities test food products for PCB contamination. (U.S. federal food inspectors might detect the PCBs on their own, but the inspection system is stretched very thin and contamination could easily be missed.) At that point, millions of people could have already eaten the products. Such a contamination scenario is not in the realm of science fiction or conspiracy theories. In January 1999, 500 tons of animal feed in Belgium were accidentally contaminated with approximately 50 kilograms of PCBs from transformer oil. Some 10 million people in Belgium, the Netherlands, France, and Germany subsequently ate the contaminated food products. This single incident may in time cause up to 8,000 cases of cancer. ------------------------ Yahoo! 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