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.

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: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.

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.
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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.

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

[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.