FOR the past nine months, America has been gripped by fears that terrorists will turn to biological, chemical or radioactive weapons. But the real lesson of 11 September is the ease with which terrorists could mount a low-tech attack by sabotaging everyday technology: the electricity grid, water supplies, high-rise buildings or transport systems. A massive, wide-ranging report has now made it clear that the US is ill-equipped to defend itself against such an strike.
The report by the US National Research Council says that all are prime terrorist targets, and that any attack could cause mayhem in modern cities that are heavily dependent on an intricate, frighteningly vulnerable infrastructure. Technologies that might protect people do not yet exist or are simply not being used. Even the emergency services are poorly equipped to respond to terrorism, and vulnerable to attack themselves.
Some of the eight panels of NRC experts did assess nuclear, biological and chemical threats. They recommend better control and detection of radioactive materials, stockpiling and improvement of disease treatments, surveillance of public and agricultural health and more research into pathogens, and sensors and filters for toxic chemicals.
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Other panels assessed more everyday threats. The energy panel admits there are few ways to protect some critical electrical equipment from air attack short of surface-to-air missiles. It portrays a deregulated power industry that has farmed out security jobs, has few spare parts and would find it extremely difficult to generate or distribute more power if part of the grid is knocked out. Power grids are designed to cope if one part of the network is disrupted. But they could collapse if terrorists attacked several points on the grid at once.
Society increasingly relies on an electronic infrastructure: a power cut now costs the economy 4 times what it did in 1995. 鈥淪imultaneous attacks on a few critical components of the grid could result in a widespread and extended blackout,鈥� warns the panel.
An attacker could fire a rifle or a heat-seeking missile at some remote outstation, use strands of conducting material to short-circuit power lines, or hack into computerised operating systems. Especially vulnerable are extra-high-voltage transformers, which take months to replace. Current operating systems cannot distinguish between an attack and a routine failure fast enough to isolate the damage.
The panel calls for the industry to adopt tactics and techniques from the military to boost security at generating and transmission stations. It suggests drone aircraft and satellite surveillance for remote power lines, more decentralised power generation and ultimately an 鈥渋ntelligent鈥� power grid that can detect and isolate an attack.
For now, though, a fire in a large building could rage out of control if an electric outage also shuts down the local water pumping station. 鈥淐ities become dangerous and unliveable places without electricity,鈥� warns the report.
The water system is also vulnerable. It would be easy enough to feed contaminants into the network from any household connected to the water supply, to target a nearby building. Yet there鈥檚 only limited monitoring of the US water supply. The report recommends water companies adapt sensors from the chemicals industry for their own use so they can detect toxic substances, or close valves if there鈥檚 a change in cloudiness or UV light absorbed.
But many safety measures require new research: there are no sensors that can detect poisons in a building鈥檚 air conditioning system and shut it down. The report calls for a scientific Institute of Homeland Security to oversee the R & D, an idea officials in Washington welcome.
But the NRC is less clear on how to solve the overriding problem 鈥� who will pay for the technology to counter terrorism, especially in consumer industries with low profit margins, such as water, electricity and construction? If Washington takes the report seriously, consumers will have a safer society, but they will have to pay for it.