Hmm. I dunno. Just a thought, but is it worth $30,000 of equipment to discreetly shut down an already vulnerable patient's medical support, when a terrorist (who presumably doesn't care too much about collateral damage) could score far more kills with an AK-47? I suppose it depends on the range of the hacking equipment and how much of a medical facility it could take down at once. Plunging a whole cardiac ward into chaos would have potential terrorist "value." Being able to kill one selected victim at a time sounds more like assassination fodder. Of course, that's still a scary enough possibility that it's entirely worth closing those security loopholes ASAP, I definitely agree with you there... Hell, it sounds like a handy piece of equipment for a mobster with aging enemies, or a foreign spook with a hit list.
That's something I've always wondered about the "War on Terror," though. It would be so easy for someone with anti-American sympathies to just get a hold of an automatic weapon and cut loose in a ballpark, a shopping mall, a public school, whatever. Hell, lone nuts do it here pretty often, which demonstrates how easy it would be. And in the immediate aftermath of 9-11, it would've been intensely demoralizing -- look at what the Beltway Sniper attacks did to the national psyche with just 10 dead, 3 wounded -- not to mention the logistical and resource costs of trying to protect everything, everywhere.
I just wonder why they didn't. Is al-Qaeda obsessed with bigger attacks for propaganda or ideological reasons? (If so, bin Laden is an even stupider strategist than we thought! This is the same guy who helped fend off the Soviets?!) Is it that hard for them to project power into the US? Is it just that it's that much of a wasted resource to out an agent for a small attack? Is al-Qaeda really that small, atomistic, and disorganized? It just doesn't make sense to me.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2008-03-12 02:23 pm (UTC)That's something I've always wondered about the "War on Terror," though. It would be so easy for someone with anti-American sympathies to just get a hold of an automatic weapon and cut loose in a ballpark, a shopping mall, a public school, whatever. Hell, lone nuts do it here pretty often, which demonstrates how easy it would be. And in the immediate aftermath of 9-11, it would've been intensely demoralizing -- look at what the Beltway Sniper attacks did to the national psyche with just 10 dead, 3 wounded -- not to mention the logistical and resource costs of trying to protect everything, everywhere.
I just wonder why they didn't. Is al-Qaeda obsessed with bigger attacks for propaganda or ideological reasons? (If so, bin Laden is an even stupider strategist than we thought! This is the same guy who helped fend off the Soviets?!) Is it that hard for them to project power into the US? Is it just that it's that much of a wasted resource to out an agent for a small attack? Is al-Qaeda really that small, atomistic, and disorganized? It just doesn't make sense to me.