Engineers Make Good Terrorists?

An anonymous reader writes "Engineers' focus and attention to details, along with their perceived lack of social skills, make them ideal targets to be recruited as terrorists, according to EETimes. Planning skills make engineers good 'field operatives' was written up by Raphael Perl, who heads the Action against Terrorism Unit of Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. He offers that 'Engineers ideally make excellent strategic planners, and they make excellent field operatives. They think differently from how other people think.' That may sound like a stereotype, but Perl claims that 'because of those traits, terrorist groups actively recruit engineers.' He says that Al-Qaeda has widely acknowledged that a significant number of the group's top leadership had engineering backgrounds." This is the second time in just a few months that engineers have been likened to terrorists.

Comments

Ecelctic Recluses Maybe

[laxiepoo]

But terrorists? Only if the engineers are lonely, disgruntled people in-general. I think most engineers would be more Constructive than Destructive by nature. Though if this holds true, then any group looking to forcibly recruit should start with engineers first. Movementarians included.

Re:Ecelctic Recluses Maybe

[Anonymous Coward]

I disagree. Simply put, engineers would be excellent terrorists. Engineers look to solve problems. The problem is just determined from a frame of reference. As terrorists, the problem is bringing down some infrastructure by determining its weaknesses and exploiting them. As engineers, the problem is developing the infrastructure and designing them to be robust.

An anecdote: I recall eating lunch one day a couple summers back with some coworkers (all aerospace engineering senior undergrad or grad students). We spent 45 minutes discussing how one could take down a plane while in flight using simple things - nothing fancy such as explosives. Whether any or all of them would be remotely successful is one matter. Nonetheless, in 45 minutes of eating and discussion we had a list of 10 of so items that could be plausible to taking down an aircraft.

Re:Ecelctic Recluses Maybe

[Monchanger]

Sure, engineers have skills useful to terrorists. But on the other hand, those skills are useful at fighting the same engineers that terrorists employ. For example, many US engineers are trying to protect our troops against IEDs, the most well known being the good folks at iRobot. As for planes, you forget that the same kind of brainstorming session is required by those in the FAA, to prevent planes going down. Who's going to do that- bureaucrats?

I'd argue that Engineers make less effective terrorists than say political science or theology students, since they seek real proof. Given the lack of scientific evidence that I'd get 72 virgins, it'd be difficult to convince me that there's something good about blowing myself up or enabling another to do so. This is especially true given my ability to create a good life for myself with a normal job. I've got too much to lose hanging out with that Bin Laden nut- screw living in some smelly cave on rice with goat milk! I want my pizza, Mountain Dew, and time to waste reading Slashdot.

EETimes

[netruner]

IIRC, this isn't the first article that the EETimes has put out making this connection recently - maybe the EETimes should be investigated.

Wargames...

[jemenake]

Reminds me of the quote in Wargames: "He does fit the profile perfectly. He's intelligent, but an under-achiever; alienated from his parents; has few friends. Classic case for recruitment by the Soviets"

I agree and take no offense

[pembo13]

I frankly find the analysis to be flattering. I don't have to agree with who I am being compared with to appreciate the comparison.. only the qualities being compared are important.

So, thanks for the complement

Re:New Display System

[morgan_greywolf]

*The keymapping on '/' (to move the thread toolbar) is the same as the quick search in Firefox. Any quick search will move the toolbar around in an annoying fashion. Firefox also supports Ctrl+F for find, in addition to '/', which I think is included to appease pesky Vim users. ;)

*The margins are too wide except for those who have wide screen monitors* Works for me just find on my 17" monitor.

*The 'more' functionality is fundamentally broken. It loads new entries by date instead of the logical position in a thread. Individual threads should be fully populated or at least have a 'click here for more entries' option. For old stories you shouldn't have to search the page again from top to bottom for the more darkly shaded newer comments after you click on more.* Agreed.

*The parent and reply buttons are wasting huge amounts of bandwidth. For example, for one entry we have 479 bytes wasted: Piffle. You probably hate Google Maps, too.

Re:They have the skills, but the desire, maybe not

[inzy]

one man's freedom fighter is another terrorist

al-quaeda are terrorists to americans, but freedom fighters to palestinians/other oppressed muslim countries. engineers may well decide to fight for what they see as a good cause

Re:They have the skills, but the desire, maybe not

[mollymoo]

You have very blinkered view of terrorists. The ones who blow themselves up are the bottom of the food chain. Above them are people planning attacks, recruiting people, training them, making bombs, raising and moving money, implementing secure communications and all the other things you need to make a terrorist organisation function effectively. Many of these are intelligent, pragmatic people who realise that terrorism may well be the only effective tool they have to influence the political process. It's not like terrorism has never worked where political means have failed. If some superpower came and shat all over your country I suspect you'd consider being a freedom fighter (which is what terrorists typically consider themselves) too.

Re:They have the skills, but the desire, maybe not

[Beardo the Bearded]

But then, what if you're not?

What if you start out as a fresh, recent graduate? You didn't get to the top of the class, since you realized that you could get a B average with just a little work. That left more time for fun and family.

The other students hated you for it. They picked on you, stole your stuff, and set fire to it. You let it go rather than force expulsion. You graduate.

Then you get a real job. You do your job well, and then you get told that you can't get a raise because you didn't put in enough unpaid overtime. "If you want to be a computer guy, that's how the industry works." You reply with "A carpenter isn't a hammer guy." Work goes downhill from there.

So you get another job. Your supervisor got his training from a company so he's an "Alphabet Soup" quasi-engineer. You work with him. A while later, you find out that he spends all his time saying how you don't do any work, and look at all the accomplishments he's made. They look familiar, but it's too late. You say that the thing you're working on probably isn't safe, and there's a chance that someone will die if they use it. Of course, you don't have the experience to form such an opinion.

Then tragedy strikes. Personal tragedy - and an Engineering failure to boot. Not yours, but it actually physically hurts your family. Your work morale goes to shit. You don't want to go to work, and you don't want to cancel on your obligations. You get worse and worse assignments. So you say something in public. A joke. To kids. It gets taken out of context. Your Big Boss hears about it. You find yourself on the carpet.

Then you're unemployed. Months pass. Unemployment doesn't pay the bills. You take a few side jobs to keep ends together, but you can't take too many of those or you lose your benefits, and then your house. You still don't have a job. You get leaned on by everyone in your family - "Hey, the unemployment rate is at 4% - why aren't you working yet?" There aren't any holes in your resume, you don't talk badly about your last jobs, there's nothing wrong with your references.

So then, someone says, "Hey, I've got a job for you. It pays cash."

I used to daydream about that last paragraph. The rest is true.

Some one better keep a eye on the mythbusters

[Joe The Dragon]

Some one better keep a eye on the mythbusters as they have easy access to bomb makeing parts and are good at bypass Security and safety devices.

Worst possible choice

[pvera]

A real engineer would not be an asset to a terror-seeking team. If it is terror driven by religion, I can guarantee you that the engineer will always be the odd man out that won't want to stick to the rules, be it scheduling of prayers or that pork rinds are not acceptable, etc.

What you want is a sleeper. You find the right kind of young recruit that will make a good engineering student. Indoctrinate first, engineering education later. If you try to indoctrinate an engineer you will probably end up losing your own religion over the ordeal.
--

Re:Worst possible choice

[RKBA]

"A real engineer would not be an asset to a terror-seeking team. If it is terror driven by religion, I can guarantee you that the engineer will always be the odd man out that won't want to stick to the rules, be it scheduling of prayers or that pork rinds are not acceptable, etc."

I once tried to enlist in the ROTC while I was in college, but failed the physical when I refused to wear the prescription eyeglasses the military doctor prescribed for me. All I said was "I'd rather not wear glasses because I can use a keypunch just fine without them" (this was before the widespread use of CRT's as mainframe computer terminals, and long before the advent of the microcomputer). All the f*cking doctor did was make a notation on my form and show me the exit. He never even explained the nuances of how the military works (ie; you must be willing to take orders from total morons without questioning those orders). Once I realized what I had narrowly averted purely by my fortuitous audacity in questioning what was implicitly an "order", I resolved to spend the remainder of the Vietnam war in prison or in Canada should the military try to draft me. I'm not sure whether it was my engineering mindset or the fact that I'd always felt like an outsider because of my atheism, but there is no way in Hades I would ever have taken an order from some dufus I thought was wrong and that is why I would have been a "failure" as a soldier.

One thing I can tell all of you who never lived through Vietnam and the forced military draft of those years, is that peaceful protests DO NOT WORK! They never have worked and never will work. Peaceful protests were completely ignored by Johnson and the military/industrial/government complex. It wasn't until the vast majority of Americans finally became opposed to the undeclared "war" and President Johnson "lost Cronkite" (his own words) that the war finally ended. The moral of the story is that protesting is a waste of time unless you bring something more intimidating and dangerous to your enemy than a protest sign, SNCC emblem, or flowers (it was popular to pelt the Jack Booted Thugs (JBT's) with flowers back in those heady days of psychedelia). The only thing any government fears is force - the same force they use to subdue populations, and the only thing that can stop them is an opposing force of greater or equal magnitude. The JBT's are usually vastly outnumbered by those opposing them who generally just want to be left alone by the government so they can live their lives in peace, but unless and until peace lovers are willing to take advantage of their numbers and cunning and to use deadly force to enforce the will of "We the People" and to permanently eliminate those who would rule us instead of representing us, nothing will change. The colonists were willing to fight and sometimes die for their freedom - nowadays we are a nation of sheep. If a draft is instigated to fight the Iran war that starts Sunday and is likely to escalate into WWIII, don't bother with peaceful protests. Go for the jugular without hesitation. If you're going to have to kill someone, it should be the warmongers - not some total stranger halfway around the world that you don't even know, and probably have more in common with than any of the filthy rich elitists who have never done an honest day's work in their lives and rule the nation by virtue of their inherited money, power, and familial dynasty connections, and who send others to die without shedding a tear.

Re:Worst possible choice

[ScrewMaster]

If you try to indoctrinate an engineer you will probably end up losing your own religion over the ordeal.

Even if you do manage to indoctrinate an engineer with some particular set of terrorist ideals, he may later decide that you're full of shit. Then he'll be the guy that figures out how to fix ALL your clocks. So yeah ... better start out with somebody who's so thoroughly programmed that he has no chance of ever thinking for himself, and then see if he has any aptitude for technology.

It's because engineers are iNtuitive Thinkers

[GnarlyDoug]

The Myers-Briggs personality theories predicted this congruence. Engineers tend to be NTs, or iNtuitive Thinkers. So do CEOs, generals, scientists, programmers, mathmeticians, and revolutionary leaders. Might as well say that CEOs, scientists, and generals share a lot in common with terrorists. Fact is that they do, and it's because intuitive thinkers (NTs) parse the world in terms of principles, axioms, models, and abstractions based on logic and reason as the NT understands them. They can be willing to fight, kill, and die for a principle or belief. Most people will fight to protect themselves, to protect family, or by extension their own country, but most will not fight for an abstraction. However to an NT an abstraction can be real and worthy of being defended. That is why IMO the NT mindset can be persuaded to join a revolutionary group and be effective at it and at the same time morally at peace with himself over his actions, even if those actions are seen to be high treason by the majority.

Gee

[Bob9113]

'Engineers ideally make excellent strategic planners, and they make excellent field operatives. They think differently from how other people think.' ... 'because of those traits, terrorist groups actively recruit engineers.'

Well, gosh. I'd've never thunk it.

The part that surprises me is not that terrorist groups recognize that good strategic thinkers should be actively recruited, but that US corporations typically pay more to socially proficient people even if they lack good strategic thinking skills. That is not to say that there are no business people who are exceedingly adept strategic thinkers (they may even be more rare and perhaps more valuable than good engineers), just that there are so many nimrod schmoozers getting wheelbarrows full of cash for short-term-oriented stupidity (see Bear Stearns; how could I see the real estate crash coming in 2002 and they missed it?!? With all those MBAs! And they get bailed out?!?!?! FEH!).

OK, maybe I'm just venting.

Exactly, now what should we do about it?

[darkvizier]

Bravo, you hit the nail on the head there. As you said, I doubt anyone *IN* the engineering community actually takes this seriously, but my question is how do we get word out?

This is one issue among many. The problem is not this issue, but the trend that it represents. In order to restore political and social stability, we need to change the cognitive norm.

There's a small minority with innovative thoughts and real solutions to real problems, but in order to make things happen they need the backing of the community at large. Right now their voices are, for the most part, drowned out in the noise of infomercials, advertisements, and propaganda. So how do we change the intellectual landscape at large?

These are the questions I ask myself. It's not enough for me to throw my opinion out there, I need to do something. We all do. We see the problems, is it not our responsibility then to *DO* something about them? There must be a way to change the situation. So slashdotters, what do you have to say? What do you think can be done to revolutionize the way the world thinks? Can we turn this boat around, or are we doomed to kill each other over religious and political differences, just before the space age finally begins?

Combat Engineering, the ancient art

[jimdread]

Right you are. The Brotherhood of Nod were pioneers in this style of warfare.

They weren't "pioneers" in this style of warfare. Combat engineers have existed since ancient times. In fact the word "engineer" comes from their activities, working the siege engines such as catapults, battering rams, etc. As an aside, in the British and related armies, a "pioneer" is an infantry soldier with some combat engineering training. A pioneer in those armies is trained to blow things up in close combat.

Engineering has traditionally been for fighting wars. See the Royal Engineers for example. Over time, people have started to think of engineering as a peaceful profession, but there are still many combat engineers in the world, ready to blow things up.

Re:They have the skills, but the desire, maybe not

[mjwx]

Al-queda are a lot like the KKK in western society, their ideal's only appeal to those who already thought in that frame of mind. The average westerner under ordinary circumstances would never join the KKK, same as the average Arab would not join Al-queda under ordinary circumstances, the problem is that in the middle-east, there is very little of what we would consider "normal circumstances" thus they have a higher recruitment than the KKK (Al-queda recruitment would still be around 1 in tens of millions).

We need only look at Asian Muslim nations such as Malaysia or Indonesia (Indonesia has some problems on the island of Java but has repeatedly put down fanatasism as most of the Muslim population is not fanatical and they have a large population of Buddhists and Christians) to show how fanaticism is not strictly a Muslim trait but more of a problem caused by social conditioning. Most of the problems caused by Muslims in Asia have been the result of Government screw up (like in Thailand), where it looks more like a insurgency (resistance, organised targeting of government and military) than a terrorist action (indiscriminate targeting of civilians, attacks for maximum damage with no regard for tactical gain) which is why in Thailand's case the bombings have only killed Thai's.

Re:They have the skills, but the desire, maybe not

[DrLang21]

I am a firm believer that this chaos is a natural and unfortunately neccessary phase of any developing society. It boggles my mind when people insist that ONLY on the basis of how long we have been at this, we can't win. They apparently forgot about the 100 years war. Central Europe experienced this kind of unrest from the 1400s all the way to the mid 1900s before it finally settled down. Unfortunately, we can't stay entirely out of it because terrorist organizations have brought us into it (even though I believe this was our own doing, it's too late to worry about that now). While I am only a hobby historian, I am fairly convinced that we won't see peace in the Middle East until they are allowed to play out this drama. No nation there is large enough to have a strong enough government to maintain control. In addition, forcing our disfunctional style of republicanism immediately onto their culture cannot be ideal. Even the United States didn't start with every citizen voting for the President. The citizens only voted for The House of Representatives (and they often had to be land owners to do so). The State governments were left to that task. They need to slowly evolve into their own fasion of democratic society for it to stick. I think a more careful approach would have been to somehow officially give the tribal elders a greater say in their national government. Admittedly though, I say this without having any deep knowledge of their social culture.