Power to the People: How Open Technological Innovation is Arming Tomorrow’s Terrorists

By Audrey Kurth Cronin, Oxford University Press, New York, NY, 440 pp., 2019, $30.

Power to the People focuses on the way in which terrorism arises when people disgruntled with those in power are able to purchase cheap new technical inventions and think of novel ways to use them in lethal attacks. Since we are living through an era of rapid inventions linked to developments in condensed matter physics, Cronin's worries are very relevant to us as physicists interested in public policy. Last night, the news announced that the Center for Disease Control was sending a representative to California to meet with industrial leaders to persuade them to be careful in vetting news of the spread of the new coronavirus. We are all aware of the dangers of interference in our elections by various nation states. The author asks how long it will be before these techniques are applied by ideological factions rather than nations.

The author divides her work into three major sections. The first section, "Theory," focuses on the difference between the formidably expensive technologies developed by nation-supported militaries and relatively cheap civilian technologies not developed as weapons but enabling private citizens who are driven by ideology to develop strategies to use them as weapons. Here, she presents her initial arguments for our clear and present danger.

The second section, "History," focuses on the historical data that give rise to the theories presented in the first section. Fortunately for your reviewer, the author begins her expression of concern with two cases where terrorist groups in the past have conducted attacks on authority with cheap technologies developed for peaceful purposes: dynamite and the Kalishnikov rifle in all its permutations including the AK-47. Both dynamite and the Kalishnikov were developed for other uses having little to do with the attacks devised by the terrorist organizations: dynamite for use in mining and construction, particularly railroad construction by Alfred Nobel who did not foresee its lethal use by non-governmental forces and the ways in which it would give power to Anarchists although he made a fortune from its global dissemination.

Similarly, Mikhail Timofeyevich Kalashnikov, who was at the time a tank driver in the Soviet Army, designed a rifle to solve the problems of World War I Soviet soldiers who were weighed down by the heavy ammunition and machine guns needed to reliably kill enemy soldiers, as well as the by extensive training they needed to use them accurately. The rifle was designed to be light-weight and very durable as well as to use smaller, lighter cartridges. It could also be used accurately by relatively untrained troops, so it was adopted and modified by any number of global militaries. It and its various modifications were also inexpensive and widely used by terrorists who had little time and money for training or to produce new weapons.

The third section, "Convergence: Widespread Lethal Empowerment," focuses on the international digital revolution through which we are currently living. Certainly the World Wide Web was not developed as a recruiting tool for ISIS although it has been used most effectively in this manner by them. Most of us are familiar with the dangers of guns made with 3-D printers and dangers posed by intelligent drones, but I had not considered the perils presented by artificial intelligence as the technology for devices such as self-driving cars matures. The author emphasizes that terrorists motivated by ideology typically innovate by developing new strategies for using existing civilian technologies rather than developing new technologies equipped for their specific targets.

The book's conclusion, "Strategy for Democracies in an Age of Lethal Empowerment," is unfortunately its weakest part. Although Cronin presents several strategies by which citizens in open societies can defend themselves against terrorist attacks that use new technologies, she does not make a strong case that terrorists can actually launch such attacks. The most valuable part of this conclusion is a list, which I quote here, of the qualities that an innovative technology must have if it is to be used by terrorists to attack their enemies lethally.

The new technology must be: “accessible; simple to use; transportable; concealable; effective; multiuse.” Such a technology is almost by definition “not cutting edge; bought off the shelf; part of a cluster of emerging technologies which are combined to magnify overall effects; symbolically resonant which makes them more potent than just their tactical effectiveness; and given to unexpected uses.” Of course, this list applies very well to late developments in digital technology.

I’d like to dismiss this volume as just another alarmist tirade against technology but it is hard to dismiss voluminous data documented by experts and presented in this volume's extensive notes and appendices. Audrey Kurth Cronin is the founding director of The Center for Security, Innovation, and New Technology at American University. In the aftermath of 9/11/2001, she worked as a terrorism specialist for The Congressional Research Service and has held various positions in the executive branch including working in the Office of the Secretary of Defense for Policy and the Secretary of the Navy. She has found time to write a number of books about military technology. She is very well qualified to write a book on terrorism and has done thorough research on this topic. Her book is well worth our consideration.

Ruth Howes
Ball State University
rhowes@bsu.edu

These contributions have not been peer-refereed. They represent solely the view(s) of the author(s) and not necessarily the view of APS.