A Threat in Every Port

Op Ed Entry #2
A Threat in Every Port
By: Lawrence M. Wein
President Obama’s “profound “vision of a world without nuclear weapons was reassured in the article A Threat in Every Port, when author Lawrence Wein reveals a possible plan to prevent terrorist attacks on United State’s soil. Wein states that the prevention program, referred to as the game theory, is plausible and necessary, but the funding for the project is raising problems. The government has recently spent $2.8 million on a non-specific, inefficient anti-terrorist program. The game theory presents an alternative to these uneconomical programs. The game theory analyzes 132 different ways a terrorist could import nuclear weapons to the United States in four likely modes of transport: cruise ship, container ship, cargo airplane, and commercial airplane. The article continues to illustrate each possible situation and how the game theory will predict, analyze, and prevent each situation. The major issue addressed in the article is the lack of funding for such a program. The Domestic nuclear Detection Office has been working to develop a funding program to pay for a specialized terrorism program, but such a plan has not been put into place. Without funding, this “ingenious” game theory is nothing more than a bright idea.
Lawrence Wein wrote in refreshing and alerting prose. In order to more effectively convey the graveness of the issue at hand, the article included many situations of certain terrorist attacks. The use of actual situations made the reader feel nervous for his or her own well-being. These hypothetical attacks on the U.S. proved to the reader that a plan such as the game theory is a necessary investment of government money. Yet, there is an absence of concrete, factual evidence due to the fact the situations are all hypothetical. Wein presents a variety of circumstantial and supposed evidence, but there is no experimental evidence that proves that the game theory actually works. As a result, the credibility of the article as a whole becomes questionable. While attempting to explain the technology of the game theory, Wein tended to include too many details regarding the minor aspects of the theory. A more succinct article may have been more effective in relaying the purpose of the article. Despite the article’s factual vagueness and occasional wordiness, the article presented a crucial problem with our anti-terrorism program, and provided a possible solution to this problem.