Send a congressman into space.  There.  It’s solved.  So why do we need this?

From the site:

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security will conduct the largest and most comprehensive counterterrorism exercise to date from Oct. 15-19 in Arizona and Oregon, and the U.S. territory of Guam. Top Officials 4 (TOPOFF 4) is the fourth in a series of congressionally-mandated exercises and involves various federal agencies as well as the governments of Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom…

TOPOFF 4 will involve more than 15,000 participants from all levels of government, international partners and the private sector in a full-scale, simulated response to radiological dispersal device attacks.

Our “premier terrorism preparedness exercise” is based on a dirty bomb threat?  And has been based on a dirty bomb threat for the last 8 years?

I’m only halfway kidding.  The United States has a lot of problems that, while they might not look as big as a “dirty bomb” going off, are a bit more pressing.  Case in point: 11 September was not a radiological, chemical or biological attack.

Future devastating attacks will be “black swans” (as John Robb calls them in Brave New War), attacks coming out of left field that are cheap and unexpected and targeted at infrastructure.  Why were the attacks of 11 September genius?  Hijackings had been around for decades by that point.  Dealing with them had become fairly old hat.

They were brilliant because they connected two things that people hadn’t connected before.  Who thinks of turning an airplane into a guided missile?  No one- until someone with great synthesis skills started turning over airplanes in their head.

The attacks on the Trade Center probably caused less casualties than a radiological attack would.  Why was that message chosen then?  Because it made people afraid to fly.  Because no one was thinking about defending against that kind of attack.  We’ve been preparing to respond to radiological emergencies for better than thirty years.

Wargaming programs like TOPOFF would be better off confronting “top officials” and first responders with something that they’ve never seen before.  Hit them with something like an attack on a power plant, or an oil refinery, or a bridge.  Attack the infrastructure.  This isn’t a new idea- it’s been around since John Warden’s The Air Campaign and we used it to toss Iraq in DESERT STORM.  Why do we assume that our enemies won’t be that smart?

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