Diminishing Returns

Breaking news from the U.K.

Plane Terror Plot Thwarted

Police say they have disrupted a major plot to blow up as many as 20 planes over UK and US cities with explosive devices smuggled aboard as hand luggage. Police are have arrested 20 people in London – the culmination of a covert counter-terrorist operation lasting several months.

Passengers trying to board international flights from the UK are not being allowed to carry on normal hand luggage. Sky News’ Crime Correspondent Martin Brunt said there were concerns that certain explosives, possibly liquid, could be missed during x-ray screening of hand luggage.

Brunt said the threat was thought to be imminent and those arrested were mainly young, British-born Asian men. He said the plan allegedly involved people boarding flights and detonating explosives on planes over UK and US cities.

Considering how much easier it would be to carry out a few simple suicide bombings whether in the subway or simply downtown, this goes to show you that John Robb is correct in saying that symbolic terrorism suffers from the law of diminishing returns. This helps explains why America and Britain haven’t seen small scale attacks at home. As he notes

Each subsequent attack has less of a psychological impact than the first. In order to compensate for this, a terrorism planner must make each subsequent attack even more damaging or symbolically devastating than earlier attacks. The result is a death march until entire terrorism campaign runs out of steam.

Lucky for us.