In the example above, the terrorist activity required little foresight, planning, and preparation (indeed, the randomness of the act itself, it might be reasonably argued, makes it exponentially more difficult to deter or combat). The terrorist need not even be trained in any particular discipline or martial skill. Finally, perhaps the most attractive element of such an attack (from the attackers’ perspective): minimal risk. If caught, what is the worst punishment such a person might face? A charge of malicious mischief? Felony vandalism? How difficult would it be to have the charge reduced, mitigated, or even dropped?

Better yet (for the enemy), tie up prosecution indefinitely with a barely adequate defense; this ends up costing the locality, state, or country even more financially—a multiple-win scenario if ever there was one.

Security forces, policymakers, and legislative bodies are gearing up our nation’s defense in an extremely laudable manner and effort. We’ve recently come to realize and find the means to attenuate the threats against our water supply, our nuclear energy facilities, and the information infrastructure. But, from the enemy perspective, these things were fairly hardened targets prior to 11 September in terms of risk, requisite investment, and necessary sophistication of planning and execution. One person, acting alone, without training or logistical support, would have to spend far more time and energy to acquire assets, gather intelligence, and conduct attack operations, with far less chances of success, at any of the installations or targets at which we’re concentrating our efforts.

But low-tech, low-observable, low-risk relatively unplanned attacks … these are the threat we can’t afford to ignore: A man with a commercial driver’s license intentionally crashing his semi-tractor trailer, dumping a load of ball bearings on an interstate spur; a woman dropping a lit cigarette into a drought-afflicted national park; some random person committing a random destructive act at a random location, with motivations that are expressly malicious but almost completely excusable as inadvertent, careless, or simply stupid—here’s a threat to which America is far too susceptible.

Here’s the kicker, if you’re a terrorist—why bother to even take the risk of actually performing the activity, when the threat itself can serve your purposes almost as well? Phoning a media outlet, a government office, a corporation, and expressing intent to bomb, set fire to, or visit with automatic weapons would just as effectively disrupt work activities, communications and emergency response, with a resultant price tag far above the thirty-five cents used to make the call from an anonymous public phone. Better yet, the terrorists could claim credit for incidents that were, in fact, accidental or chance occurrences: train derailments, multiple-automotive accidents, fires, etc.

If performed often enough, in random locales nationwide, this kind of attack could lead to a number of favorable outcomes for an enemy: new laws that regulate or degrade our society to the point that we’ve chosen to abrogate our own freedoms; disproportionate expenditure by government and private security forces to the point of diminishing returns; and simple, unadulterated fear that festers into paranoia that could hurt our populace more so than any nuclear, chemical, technical, or biological attack.

It would be foolhardy and dangerous to halt our efforts in the areas where we’ve begun to develop deterrence and response, but it would serve our nation’s best interests even less if we were to ignore other, less catastrophic methods of attack. Our enemies can surely foresee the usefulness of such operations; we have to do the same.