Prospects for Lone Wolf and SIMAD terrorism

• The average of the group's estimate of the year in which 100,000 people or more might be killed in a single SIMAD attack was 2067.
• Given a number of possible choices of the fields from which lone wolf weapons would be derived, the group favored biotech and synthetic biology over other possibilities.
• There was sharp disagreement over a number of issues: slightly over half the group believed that an attack killing 100,000 people might occur well before 2050 and the remainder of the group, by 2100 or never.
• Levels of confidence were high. This is remarkable since the events that were being judged are so intrinsically uncertain and in many cases unknowable.
• We should use the lead-time provided by this and similar studies to design methods for averting LW and SIMAD catastrophes. This will involve international effort, and ultimately confronting many new trade-offs between civil liberties and risk.

The recent terror events committed by individuals in the streets of Jerusalem, the Canadian Parliament and in New York have raised attention to the phenomena of Lone Wolf terrorism.While there is no internationally-agreed upon definition, generally a lone wolf (LW) is described as a single individual acting essentially alone who kills or injures people or significantly damages infrastructure to bring about political, religious, or ideological aims, to right perceived wrongs, to gain recognition or in response to schizophrenic aberrations or other insane impulses. We call a LW with intent to use weapons of mass destruction resulting in a high number of casualties “SIMAD” standing for “Single Individual Massively Destructive.” A new kind of arms race is developing. On the one hand, massively lethal weapons are becoming available to individuals who intend to use them, and on the other hand, methods of mass surveillance and for apprehending such individuals are increasing as well. Will the methods of detection be adequate and timely enough to avoid catastrophe? The outcomes of this race are important because weapons that become available to LWs will have enormous destructive power, and interdiction in their acquisition may involve new and repressive social constraints. No matter which way the scale tips, the world changes.To reach a broader understanding of this threat, the Israel Node of The Millennium Project initiated a Real-Time Delphi study of prospects for LW terrorism with the participation of some 60 worldwide experts in the field of security and other related specialties. The participants generally had high confidence in their answers, but there were some sharp and important disagreements. We have early warning about this issue; we should use this time to better understand it, and take steps to mitigate or avoid its threats.