Seems that after long years of running his dirty bomb scenario by endless audiences in Washington Stephen Flynn managed to convince DHS that the real issue with a dirty bomb attack was the auto-immune response that might shut down global supply chains. The LA Times reports that DHS has released a Strategy to Enhance International Supply Chain Security (the full report can be found here). An object lesson in many things, including in the way that imaginative scenarios can sway policymaking in areas where archival knowledge doesn’t tell us much about the likelihood of future catastrophes. The scenario mentioned in the LA Times article — which concerns a Long Beach nuclear detonation — was created by RAND and is often repeated in discussions of nuclear terrorism. But of greater concern to planners — because it is deemed more likely — is a dirty bomb scenario. And here it is not the immediate impact but the secondary “economic” impacts of the bombing that concern DHS:

“Detlof von Winterfeldt, director of the USC Center for Risk and Economic Analysis of Terrorism, a research center funded by Homeland Security, said that “Our research suggests a dirty bomb could create cancer in tens or hundreds of people. But the economic impacts of the radioactive contamination could be devastating.”

The dirty bomb threat, in other words, is being treated as a quintessential vital systems security threat. As the head of DHS Michael Chertoff said at the launch of the strategy:

“Cleary, if terrorists want to devastate our economy, then from a cost/benefit perspective, one way of doing that is to launch devastating attacks on those essential vehicles for commerce and trade.”