It is true that since the anarchists fell in love with dynamite, most terrorist operations have been conducted with guns or bombs. It may even be true that terrorists are “operationally conservative.” However, it seems to me flabby thinking to jump from the first point to the second.

So true.

I’d be more receptive if the argument was that terrorists have been “operationally conservative” for strategic reasons, i.e. the acquisition of more complex/rare weapons would tend to attract more attention, and risks disrupting operation security. If the terrorists are saying, “Well, we could go grab this nuke, but where do we store it and how do we deliver it without everyone immediately knowing what we’re trying to do?”

To suggest that it’s a mindset just makes me scratch my head. Terrorists are using boats packed with explosive, commercial jetliners and IEDs because that’s what they can get their hands on and that’s what they can successfully carry out attacks with. To think that it’s because they aren’t interested in a weapon that could annihilate New York City or Washington, DC in a second seems foolhardy.

Stout follows up with:

Consider this: for more than 100 years armies have inflicted the vast majority of their battlefield casualties with artillery and small arms. Most soldiers who personally engage in killing the enemy are infantrymen who kill with small arms.

Does the fact that armies are so fixated on small arms and artillery make them “operationally conservative”? Hardly.

The fact that armies (even transnational terrorist organizations) are utilizing one level of technology doesn’t mean that they aren’t interested in escalating, it means that they are using what’s available (and usually what’s cheap, widely available, easily trained on, and for terrorists relatively easy to disguise).

This type of underestimation of the forces that oppose us is disturbing.