Why Are Terrorists Often Engineers?

An anonymous reader writes "As a follow up to their September 2008 article, IEEE Spectrum revisits the question of why a disproportionate number of terrorists have engineering degrees. According to their own summary of the interview with political scientist Steffen Hertog, 'nearly half of [individuals involved in political violence] with degrees have been engineers,' a rather ambiguous statement especially for a publication targeted at engineers. The interview makes some interesting points (lack of job opportunities for engineers despite a relatively high social status) and some suspect ones (e.g. framing Islamic culture into the western left vs. right politics). Above all, IEEE Spectrum tries really hard to associate engineers with terrorism for some reason."

Comments

Aptitude

[Sonny Yatsen]

Maybe a little mechanical or chemical aptitude is the reason. A bomber with an engineering degree might have the skills necessary to build a bomb and not blow themselves up in the process, whereas a non-engineer bomber might either fail to build a bomb or wind up blowing themselves to kingdom come.

Just look at Faisal Shazad, the guy from Connecticut who tried to blow up Times Square. He tried to build his bomb with a toy clock and M80 firecrackers. He had a business degree.

Re:Aptitude

[morgan_greywolf]

And, more to the point, it's more likely that those terrorists got their engineering degrees as a result of their choice to be a terrorist, rather than the other way around. There are millions of engineers in this country that aren't going around blowing stuff up and killing people.

Re:Aptitude

[robot256]

THIS!!

There have been news articles about terrorist organizations specifically recruiting engineers for their skills so they can build weapons. This is not some coincidence of psychology, it is a fact of necessity. If terrorists were selected randomly, or were a naturally occurring phenomenon, then yes, we would have lots of non-engineers trying to make bombs and messing up. But terrorists are made, not born, and they intentionally proselytize engineers because they don't want to waste time cleaning up after idiots.

Re:Aptitude

[somersault]

Yeah, I expect it depends how you define "terrorist". If it's "someone who causes havoc by blowing stuff up", then it seems rather desirable to have some kind of technical training. If you extend terrorist acts to suicide sprees with a gun for example, does the ratio hold?

If you restrict "terrorists" to the category of "people who have successfully blown stuff up", then the headline is kind of like saying "why are professional drummers often good at banging things rhythmically together?"

I tried to RTFA but it's been Slashdotted, so if they do have a really wide definition of terrorism then I agree that it makes for a decent question. The answer is probably something obvious like the fact that engineers are generally relatively clever and technically capable, but not great at socialising.

Re:Aptitude

[Thanshin]

The bombs dropped on Japan in WWII weren't just the products of scientists, you know...it's hard to build a bomb with a crowbar.

The bombs dropped on Japan were the end result of a country wide effort that implicated people from every (useful) discipline.

I agree that a matematician or a physicist can have a deeper impact than almost any other professional. But right after them come the rulers, high level politicians, economists, etc.

Re:Aptitude

[johnny cashed]

Not to mention that Defense Contractors working for the United States Government are also specifically recruiting engineers who have the skills needed to build weapons which are designed to kill people.

Imagine that. Engineers building bombs and weapons. Sometimes a noble profession, sometimes just another job.

Re:Aptitude

[Ubergrendle]

You are modded as funny, which is a sad reflection of the value judgment of the slashdot community. I type this from my desk as a director of IT, managing a department of 50+ computer science graduates and computer engineers -- my degreee is double major in english/history.

My boss, who is scary smart, has a masters in philosophy.

Sadly, technical degrees still do not provide very valuable training in the world of evaluation and judgement. "How to do this" is rarely more important that the ability to formulate an argument on why you should do it. I'd argue humanities, teaching you how to evaluate shades of gray and formulate arguments on subjects that don't have objective right/wrong answers, provide the ability to understand context -- and as a result is a better training ground for future managers and leaders.

Re:Aptitude

[grahamd0]

Is it only us Europeans these days who know that your Civil War was fought to maintain the union and not to forcefully abolish slavery?

No, you're not.

While that's technically correct, the political tension that led to the potential dissolution of the union was almost entirely over the issue of slavery. The south seceded because they feared the north would abolish slavery, the north fought to preserve the union, then did abolish slavery.

Like Newtonian gravity, the simple explanation for the US civil war is inaccurate, but good enough for most people.

Meaningless

[elrous0]

I am sure you would find that an unusually high number of non-Terrorist Asians and Middle-easterners are engineers too (compared to the west). These people are often from wealthy families in Saudi Arabia and Yemen (and a few other parts of Asia and the Middle east)--and university students in those areas are known mostly for their interests in hard science, business, and engineering. You don't see a lot of history or literature majors in those areas (when's the last time you saw a Saudi come to the U.S. to study journalism or art?).

Maybe because terrorism is mostly engineering?

[mrogers]

I think this can be answered by looking at how the question is framed. The question doesn't ask why politically radical people are likely to be engineers. It asks why that subset of politically radical people who decide that the best solution to political problems is through the direct application of technology are likely to be engineers. Well guess what? That subset of any group that tries to solve every problem by applying technology probably contains a lot of engineers.

It's unfortunate for the world that most problems can't be solved that way. But that doesn't stop a lot of technically adept people from trying.