public that drastic action was necessary to protect america. but the traffic action the bush administration takes is to invade iraq, which at the time has no active nuclear program or weapons of mass destruction or any connection to al-qaeda. meanwhile, the real work of stopping the real threat of nuclear terrorism proceeds almost frantically. the cia, the defense intelligence agency, find out if al-qaeda has a bomb, if the next attack could be nuclear. find out how their efforts to get one could be stopped. in 2003, from russia to georgia carrying 170 grams of bomb-making uranium. they trace it back to a nuclear agency in siberia. three years later, another smuggler caught with more
small terrorist operation provokes their target into an existential product of their making. you mean if they swing ourselves into exhaustion, which we ve basically done. which we have, in some ways, done. that s the example that explains why terrorists do what they do tactically? which, by the way, associates of bin laden said it s what he wanted to do. he wanted us to get involved in all these costly foreign wars in order to break us. i feel like america started to grasp that dynamic, that that was the goal, that the risk is a self-imposed existential crisis. the thing that i think is actual the the exception to that dynamic is the threat of terrorism. that s where a small group of people can really make a difference. maybe one person is able to carry out a nuclear attack or even a dirty bomb attack, the results would be serious. february 2010, an elite team
last 20 years, so you have roughly one a year of weapons usable material. so this is material that if terrorists got their hands on it could put it in a bomb that could produce yield. this is usable material that could create an efficient device if terrorists got their hands on it. there are also more that the u.s. government and others are aware of than those, and i can t talk about it because it s classified. but in any case i m aware of, the material was not missing from the city of origin until it was found on the black market. so the security problem is the root of the black market program. i feel that if terrorist groups were able to get radioactive material, what they would likely be able to do is
put radioactive material into a conventional bomb, a dirty bomb, but the idea they would actually be able to cause a nuclear explanation, set off nuclear weapons, set off mushroom clouds, that s impossible? the common wisdom is wrong. al-qaeda s goal, which we ve known for 15 years, at least, their goal is not to produce the dirty bomb but to produce the actual hiroshima bomb. in the 1990s, they gradually scale up their effort to physically secure nuclear material for other countries. the agency in the energy department, the national security administration, watches a four-year effort to secure all the known loose material all over the world. countries like chile, where they complete their task of recovering 40 pounds of highly rich uranium despite a high-risk operation. they decide to lock up the material to keep it out of the hands of terrorists and leads to uranium in 18 different countries in the world. carrying off something like this
requires a major commitment from the united states. late in his first term, president obama ramped these efforts up, adding billions to the budget. today i want to secure all nuclear material around the world within four years. the fact there has not been an incident of nuclear terrorism since 9/11 is a great sign for the decade since. the persistence of that black market, however, means there are still paying customers out there, trying to take terrorism nuclear. how would the last decade have been brilliant if 9/11 had been a nuclear blast or even a dirty bomb attack? how would the next decade unspool if that ever does happen. if al-qaeda or another group