Lec 2 MIT STS.069 Technology in a Dangerous World
PROFESSOR: What struck me immediately on September 11th was the fact that-- at least as far as we know, there were no bombs involved in these attacks, and the energy that caused all this destruction was the energy, as John pointed out that's concentrated and held in the very systems that we rely on. And the terrorists did an unfortunately successful job of turning those systems in on themselves-- turning our systems in on themselves. And that's a striking fact in that it points to the sense, which has always been the case, that our own technologies are both potential saviors and potential tombs and potential weapons. It's also quite striking the degree of engineering talent that went into this attack. At least several of the attackers themselves were engineers. I was struck to learn that Bin Laden himself was trained as a civil engineer and that his family comes out of the construction business. So it's natural, in a sense, that he thinks about buildings w...