{"id":27980,"date":"2013-09-23T14:02:50","date_gmt":"2013-09-23T14:02:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=27980"},"modified":"2013-09-23T14:04:56","modified_gmt":"2013-09-23T14:04:56","slug":"guest-post-cheryl-rofer-i-hope-the-government-doesnt-listen-to-nathan-myhrvold","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=27980","title":{"rendered":"Guest Post: Cheryl Rofer – I Hope the Government Doesn’t Listen to Nathan Myhrvold"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

Cheryl Rofer, <\/strong>scientist, <\/strong>WMD expert<\/a> and\u00a0founder of Nuclear Diner.com<\/a><\/strong> and long-time friend of ZP<\/strong> blog, will be cross-posting here today regarding the report “Strategic Terrorism: A Call to Action<\/a><\/strong>” by Microsoft billionaire, venture capitalist, theoretical mathematician and cookbook author, Dr. Nathan Myhrvold<\/a>.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

I Hope The Government Doesn’t Listen to Nathan Myhrvold<\/strong><\/p>\n

by Cheryl Rofer<\/strong><\/p>\n

Shane Harris at Foreign Policy\u00a0tells us<\/a>\u00a0that Nathan Myhrvold, fresh off introducing the world to liquid nitrogen and other expensive innovations for cookery, is now going to straighten out the US government on terrorism. He has produced\u00a0a thirty-three page paper<\/a>\u00a0that he is shopping around Washington to help the government get things right.<\/p>\n

Except that Myhrvold does not understand the definition of a threat: intent + capability. And he gets a lot of things wrong.<\/p>\n

He has a lot to say about what he calls, and barely defines, \u201cstrategic terrorism.\u201d This is apparently intended to be parallel to the strategic nuclear threats of the Cold War. But during the Cold War, both the United States and Russia had nuclear weapons aimed at each other. They still do. The terrorists that Myhrvold discusses do not have weapons that can kill millions of Americans, which seems to be central to \u201cstrategic terrorism.\u201d It\u2019s not even clear that they have intent, but, for the sake of argument, let\u2019s assume they do. That is only half a threat.<\/p>\n

Could they get that capability? Myhrvold is convinced they can, but he offers little in the way of evidence, and some of that is incorrect. Further, he confuses possibility with actuality throughout the paper, slipping easily from\u00a0might<\/em>\u00a0to\u00a0could<\/em>\u00a0to\u00a0can<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s get the biggest factual error out of the way first. On page 5, Myhrvold says:<\/p>\n

The collapse of the Soviet Union has also greatly aided the dispersal of nuclear knowledge and potentially even complete weapons.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Note that\u00a0potentially<\/em>. again on page 10:<\/p>\n

Today, tremendously lethal technology is available on the cheap. Anyone\u2014even a stateless group\u2014can have the deadliest weapons on earth. Several trends led to this inflection point. One is nuclear proliferation, which in recent years reached a tipping point at which access to nuclear weapons became impossible to control or limit in any absolute way. The collapse of the Soviet Union scattered ex-Soviet weapons across many poorly governed and policed states, and from there, the weapons may spread further into the hands of terrorists. At the same time, the set of ragtag countries that have developed homegrown nuclear devices is large and growing. The entrance to the nuclear-weapons club, once limited to a small number of sophisticated and stable countries, is now far more open.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Myhrvold is simply wrong that \u201cThe collapse of the Soviet Union scattered ex-Soviet weapons across many poorly governed and policed states.\u201d He may have heard that when the Soviet Union split into fifteen separate states in December 1991, four of them had nuclear weapons: Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Belarus. This was a consequence of Soviet basing policy and the rapidity with which the Soviet Union fell apart. Kazakhstan decided it didn\u2019t want to be a nuclear power and sent its missiles back to Russia. It took a bit more persuasion to convince Belarus and Ukraine, but they sent theirs back too. Twenty-two years after the breakup, there is no evidence that any Soviet nuclear weapons are outside Russia.<\/p>\n

And the \u201clarge and growing\u201d number of \u201cragtag countries\u201d that \u201chave developed homegrown nuclear devices\u201d? Well, let\u2019s count them. Outside the five nuclear weapons countries enumerated in the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, India, Israel, and Pakistan that are known to have significant numbers of nuclear weapons. North Korea has tested three nuclear devices; whether they have weaponized any is not known. And, despite Iran\u2019s insistence that it is not developing nuclear weapons, some people believe that is the case. That\u2019s all I can think of. Nine is not a large number, nor is it growing particularly rapidly. I\u2019ll leave it to Myhrvold to tell us which of those countries are \u201cragtag.\u201d<\/p>\n

So his assumption that nuclear weapons are easily available to terrorist organizations fails. I\u2019m not as closely acquainted with the issues of biological weapons, but if Myhrvold\u2019s arguments there are equivalent to the ones on nuclear weapons, I\u2019m not worried. Likewise, he cites only one example, Aum Shinrikyo, for the terrorist use of chemical weapons, but there have been no incidents since. And he uses his expansionary sense of capability: If they had been able to disperse the sarin more effectively, more people would have died. But they didn\u2019t; these weapons are difficult to make effective, and small groups, even with expertise, have shown themselves not up to the capability of states.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s worth going back to that paragraph from page ten to examine Myhrvold\u2019s rhetorical methods, which persist throughout the paper. The first two sentences are sensational assertions with no specific content. And it is an inflection point \u2013 everything has changed! This is a common trope for computer guys, and the rest of us are on to it. Again, no specifics. Then the \u201cfacts,\u201d which turn out to be wrong and unsupported. And then the sensational conclusion that the first two sentences told us we would come to.<\/p>\n

He provides a number of old chestnuts, again with no support. Many of them have been shown to be doubtful.<\/p>\n