Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


I just finished writing a column about our insane post-9/11 security apparatus, so I can hardly believe I’m about to say what I’m about to say. But here’s Matt Yglesias on airport security:

One question I always have when I go through airport security is exactly how many planes the relevant authorities think al-Qaeda would be blowing up if planes were no better secured than an intercity bus. My experience of intercity bus travel is that there’s absolutely nothing stopping a person from bringing a bomb onto a bus. And yet, over the past ten years exactly zero buses have been exploded by terrorists. A person with the means and inclination to blow up an airplane, who finds himself stymied by tight airline security, could just go blow up a bus instead. But nobody does this. So my baseline assumption is that approximately zero airplane detonations have been prevented by airline security screening, since were screening preventing suicide bombers from blowing up planes we’d see bomb-displacement onto other transportation segments.

Matt goes on to admit that “terrorists do seem to have a unique fascination with planes,” but that only increases his estimate to one saved plane.

And hell, I can’t prove him wrong. But seriously? Given everything we know about terrorist attempts to bring down airplanes — the 1995 Bojinka plot, 9/11 itself, Richard Reid, the British plot to blow up 10 airplanes using liquid explosives, the underwear bomber, the cargo plane plot — do we really think terrorists wouldn’t have blown up a helluva lot of planes if doing so didn’t require a ton of planning and secrecy, but instead was as easy as packing a couple of kilos of C4 into your carry-on luggage and strolling on board? Common sense suggests that most bombing plots never get very far precisely because they have to be carefully planned to evade airport security, something that makes it hard to pack enough punch to do any serious damage. But if getting on a plane were really as easy as boarding a bus, the evidence of the past decade warns us that airplanes would be dropping out of the sky with alarming frequency.

It’s worth asking whether the fantastic amount of additional post-9/11 airline security has made air travel much safer. That’s a lot harder to say. But Cuban hijackers ended the era of boarding planes like buses. We’ve all been standing in line at airport security checkpoints since the 70s, and even the pre-9/11 security routine was enough to prevent most airline bombings. Given al-Qaeda’s obvious fascination with air travel, it’s hard to imagine that any of us would feel especially safe boarding a plane if there were no security at all.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate