> You can't protect against an opponent who's motivated to learn the inherent vulnerabilities of our systems, many of which can't be protected against due to the laws of physics and practicality - short of forcing everyone to travel naked and strapped in like cattle, with no luggage. And even then, what about the extremist who works for the airline?
This is said as an axiom, but we have protected against the motivated terrorist, as shown by the safety record.
As horrific as truck attacks, mass shootings, and suicide bombings have been, no-one have been on the same order of magnitude as airborne terrorism attacks.
The Bataclan, Las Vegas, Nice truck attack - all enormous tragedies. But compare to 9/11, Lockerbie, Flight 182, etc.
No, the vast majority of terrorist truck, car, bombing, shooting, stabbing attacks have single digit casualties due to the security measures in place and the level of difficulty (thankfully) in killing large numbers of people.
For a given number of people, money, resources, and risk, an attack against an airliner will have disproportionate casualties and effect. As above, a similar amount of co-ordination was required for Bataclan vs 9/11, with an order of magnitude fewer casualties.
My point is that if improved airport security just shifts terrorist attacks to other places, the overall safety benefit is not as great as it may at first seem.
If those attack vectors are intrinsically less effective at causing mass destruction then that’s an improvement.
A plane hijacking can evidently cause enormous destruction with minimal equipment and personnel. Even just a bomb on a plane can easily kill 200-500 people depending on the plane’s capacity.
Ground-based attacks since 9/11 have been evidently less effective because a bunch of guys with guns attacking a train station or a rock concert can’t do as much damage as quickly as a hijacker essentially flying a cruise missile into a major office building.
That's nonsense - if it was true, all anti-terrorism measures would be self-defeating, but they're not. Decades of aircraft-based terrorist attacks have been completely halted by airport security, and there's no been no correlated increase in other mass casualty events.
This is said as an axiom, but we have protected against the motivated terrorist, as shown by the safety record.