Overview

Brian A. Jackson

Since the beginnings of modern terrorism in the 1970s, technological change has caused major shifts in the means applied by terrorist organizations and the context in which they must act to carry out their violence. With shifts in technology, the destructive potential of the weapons available to the terrorists has increased. With changes in the infrastructure and technologies integral to the functioning of modern societies, the targets they have available to choose from have shifted as well.

Over time, the characteristics of terrorism itself have changed. With the shift away from more-limited ideological, nationalist, or other self-constraining aims and toward apocalyptic or religious motivations, groups' desire to carry out attacks causing mass casualties has increased. This change has increased fears that such groups will pursue acquisition and use of unconventional attack forms such as chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear weapons in an attempt to harm or kill increasing numbers of people. However, as the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States revealed, such groups can also find ways to kill and injure large numbers of people without the need to resort to unusual weapons.

In the current environment of increasingly dramatic technological change, concern about how the terrorists of today and tomorrow may apply new technologies for malevolent ends are therefore understandable. At the same time that new technologies may provide capability and power to improve health and quality of life, they could also be applied in ways that damage or destroy, injure or kill.