Superfreakonomics_ global cooling, patri - Steven D. Levitt [40]
For one, the military used to be much larger: 2.1 million on active duty in 1988 versus 1.4 million in 2008. But even the rate of death in 2008 was lower than in certain peacetime years. Some of this improvement is likely due to better medical care. But a surprising fact is that the accidental death rate for soldiers in the early 1980s was higher than the death rate by hostile fire for every year the United States has been fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq. It seems that practicing to fight a war can be just about as dangerous as really fighting one.
And, to further put things in perspective, think about this: since 1982, some 42,000 active U.S. military personnel have been killed—roughly the same number of Americans who die in traffic accidents in a single year.
If someone smokes two packs of cigarettes a day for thirty years and dies of emphysema, at least you can say he brought it on himself and got to enjoy a lifetime of smoking.
There is no such consolation for the victim of a terrorist attack. Not only is your demise sudden and violent but you did nothing to earn it. You are collateral damage; the people who killed you neither knew nor cared a whit about your life, your accomplishments, your loved ones. Your death was a prop.
Terrorism is all the more frustrating because it is so hard to prevent, since terrorists have a virtually unlimited menu of methods and targets. Bombs on a train. An airplane crashed into a skyscraper. Anthrax sent through the mail. After an attack like 9/11 in the United States or 7/7 in London, a massive amount of resources are inevitably deployed to shield the most precious targets, but there is a Sisyphean element to such a task. Rather than walling off every target a terrorist may attack, what you’d really like to do is figure out who the terrorists are before they strike and throw them in jail.
The good news is there aren’t many terrorists. This is a natural conclusion if you consider the relative ease of carrying out a terrorist attack and the relative scarcity of such attacks. There has been a near absence of terrorism on U.S. soil since September 11; in the United Kingdom, terrorists are probably more prevalent but still exceedingly rare.
The bad news is the scarcity of terrorists makes them hard to find before they do damage. Anti-terror efforts are traditionally built around three activities: gathering human intelligence, which is difficult and dangerous; monitoring electronic “chatter,” which can be like trying to sip from a fire hose; and following the international money trail—which, considering the trillions of dollars sloshing around the world’s banks every day, is like trying to sift the entire beach for a few particular grains of sand. The nineteen men behind the September 11 attacks funded their entire operation with $303,671.62, or less than $16,000 per person.
Might there be a fourth tactic that could help find terrorists?
Ian Horsley* believes there may. He doesn’t work in law enforcement, or in government or the military, nor does anything in his background or manner suggest he might be the least bit heroic. He grew up in the heart of England, the son of an electrical engineer, and is now well into middle age. He still lives happily far from the maddening thrum of London. While perfectly affable, he isn’t outgoing or jolly by any measure; Horsley is, in his own words, “completely average and utterly forgettable.”
Growing up, he thought he might like to be an accountant. But he left school when his girlfriend’s father helped him get a job as a bank cashier. He took on new positions at the bank as they arose, none of them particularly interesting or profitable. One job, in computer programming, turned out to be a bit more intriguing