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So before I incite an online riot, I should note this
disclaimer: I do not believe you, sir or madam, are a terrorist.
 However, your intrinsic knowledge of technical and
mechanical principles makes you about four times more likely to be a
terrorist…and therefore I've already submitted your IP address to the
Department of Homeland Security. (I'm joking; we all know they don't need the
likes of me for such tedium!)
I mean what is "terrorism" anyway? Nothing but a difference
in ideals and an enflaming label to rally behind. But the past 20 years has
shown subversive rebels in our midst represent a real, dangerous threat to
everyone, everywhere-no matter your allegiance or location.
First, the anecdotes. In 2010, several high-profile
terrorist acts were perpetrated by engineers. In February of that year, a
software engineer crashed his plane into an IRS office. In March, an
engineering grad student shot up the Pentagon. May was a busy month, as a
network engineer tried to bomb Times Square, and a civil engineer was caught smuggling
weapons onto an airliner. Let's not forget the mastermind behind 9/11 was an
architectural engineer, and eightof the hijackers were engineers themselves. Lashkar
e-Taiba, the Pakistani group responsible for the Mumbai attacks, and Hezbollah,
the terrorist organization in power in Lebanon, aggressively recruit engineers
to their ranks.
 But there is hard data to back up this conclusion. This
study reviewed 400 known terrorists from 30 nations in Africa and the
Middle East, who had been born between 1950 and 1979. They discovered that
terrorists tend to come from prosperous families, are better educated, and are
three to four times more likely to have an engineering degree than any other type.
And of those radical Muslims born or raised in Western countries, 60% are
engineers. Other studies suggest that engineers are likely to have leadership
roles in terrorist organizations, but are unlikely to exploit their knowledge
when carrying out attacks. This means that the link between engineers and
terrorism is based more on an individual's ideological beliefs than a targeted
need for knowledgeable individuals.
There are a few hypotheses to explain this link. First, it's
likely that engineering jobs in many Middle East countries were scarcer than
the individuals qualified to fill them. Unemployment and class disparity
quickly leads to civil unrest-remember the Occupy movement? The lone country
examined where engineers did not compose a disproportionate number of
terrorists was Saudi Arabia, a country where oil riches have indeed trickled
down.
Also, in a demographic survey of engineers, it was
determined that engineers are twice as likely to consider themselves both very
religious and right-wing conservative; 46% of American engineers identify as
religious and conservative, compared to 22% of scientists. It's been
empirically proven that conservative attitudes prefer questions which provide
closure, rather than open-ended challenges with myriad solutions.
In a stark contrast to engineer-terrorists, there is no
disproportionate ratio between engineers and communists, anarchists or gang
members.
So now it is your turn to weigh in CR4. Do you believe that
engineers are more likely to be turned into terrorists? How do you explain the
unusually high number of engineering-bred terrorists?
Please remember to be mature and thoughtful in your
responses.
Resources
NYT - Idea Lab: Engineering Terror
Foreign Policy Blog - There's A Good Reason...
Slate - Build-a-Bomber
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Re: Do Engineers Make Good Terrorists?
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