"THE ODDS are no better than 50-50 that our present civilization on earth will survive to the end of the present century," says Martin Rees, Cambridge professor and England's astronomer royal in his 2003 book "Our Final Hour."
Current weapons of mass destruction -- nuclear, chemical, biological --
will get continually cheaper, more available, and more destructive. Bill
Joy, a founder of
While terrorism is the current focus of attention, and clearly terrorism and WMD overlap for some purposes, they are different, and efforts to deal with each are different. It is weapons of mass destruction that represent the ultimate threat. If these weapons were somehow brought under reasonable control, terrorism would remain a serious problem but no worse a one than, for instance, cancer, AIDS, starvation, or global warming. But if the deaths and injuries from terrorism were significantly reduced, the long-term danger would actually increase. Work on more potent WMD would progress while -- at least with our current approach -- the public would succumb to its natural desire to believe that the danger had receded.
Important work now being done on more immediate threats -- guarding nuclear materials, hiring ex-Soviet scientists in the WMD field, counterterrorist intelligence efforts, sensors for WMD, preparing medical facilities for the aftermath of an attack -- will save lives near-term, and must be accelerated. But eventually these efforts will be overwhelmed by the onslaught of technology. The offense has consistently remained well ahead of defensive measures; more than a half-century after the first use of atomic weapons, we are further from a useful defense than we have ever been.
WMD do not require terrorists to be deadly; they can be triggered by accident or by crazed individuals feeling they are acting on divine orders. And if used by terrorists, they will require far less manpower, organization, and facilities in the future than is the case now.
Many knowledgeable people -- Sam Nunn, Warren Buffett, Warren Rudman, Gary Hart, and William Cohen, among others -- have warned of this rapidly approaching scenario. But these warnings have received scant attention from the public or the media.
Many people who sense the magnitude of the threat sense also that it is destabilizing to dwell on it -- they therefore reject it as being too horrible to contemplate, as something that the government has to deal with. And they don't know what they can do about it. And yet active and vocal public involvement is key to getting the resources needed to take critical measures.
Quoting Bill Joy again: "If too many of the possible futures are catastrophes, then we have to try to steer down less dangerous paths . . . somehow managing markets, geopolitics, and human behavior."
Therefore I suggest the creation of a major, ongoing multi-disciplinary effort -- a new Manhattan Project. Its goal would be not to lessen the danger of WMD and ameliorate the after-effects of their use, but to eliminate this catastrophic danger -- or come as close as possible to doing so. It would be complementary to today's programs using current technologies and methods to offset current dangers, but would be longer-term in its focus, concentrating on newer technologies and methods, and utilizing a wide variety of experts, many never before involved in the weapons field.
And the public would do well to keep in mind that advances in science, some with implications distasteful to many Americans, are clearly on the horizon. These include methods of altering or controlling human behavior far more effective and targeted than those available today. They will be used by someone. We must be knowledgeable about them, to be able to counter their use if not to use them ourselves. If we ignore these new techniques, we will be their victims.
Ralph Kaplan is a managing member in a New York
investment firm. 