John Robb discusses the potential for Catastrophic Black Swans — very bad, unpredictable events — at the hands of terrorists:
If we follow this trend line, the path in development is clear. First, over the next decade, the size of the group necessary for global warfare will continue to decrease and decentralize (through a near term shift to systems disruption and open source organizational forms). Second, we will eventually reach a point when the weaponry available to these groups will enable them to initiate a catastrophic black swan (an event that [is] impossible to predict).RAND’s Charles Meade and Roger Molander provide a great example of a catastrophic black swan in their contemplation of the effects of the explosion of a nuclear bomb, smuggled in a shipping container, at the port of Long Beach CA (PDF). Of particular interest are the cascading effects of such an attack — such as port closures across the US, which would result in immediate global economic isolation of an indeterminate duration. Of course, viewed within the context of a catastrophe like this, it is important to consider the first expression of this trend line (global terrorism using conventional weaponry) as a grace period. History has given us an opportunity to get security right before the next wave hits. So far, it doesn’t look like we have learned anything at all.