RT Article
T1 Building the Bomb: A Further Exploration of an Organizational Approach to Nuclear Terrorism
JF Terrorism and political violence
VO 33
IS 5
SP 1012
OP 1031
A1 Volders, Brecht
LA English
YR 2021
UL https://krimdok.uni-tuebingen.de/Record/1765098157
AB A terrorist organization constructing and detonating a nuclear device is often a topic of popular, academic, and political concern. Yet, assessing this risk is a challenging task. This article aims to contribute to the encompassing nature of any future nuclear terrorism threat assessments by further exploring the often overlooked organizational dimension in probability assessments on nuclear terrorism. Particular emphasis is given to the role of the organizational design. In order to do so, this article theoretically builds on a 2017 research article and empirically studies Aum Shinrikyo’s chemical and biological armament activities. This article confirms and further refines the idea of an effectiveness-efficiency trade-off for a terrorist organization implementing a nuclear armament project. It particularly zooms in on the constraints that follow from the covert nature of this type of plot and elaborates on the role of Aum Shinrikyo’s value-rationality.
K1 WMD terrorism
K1 nuclear security
K1 Terrorism
K1 Shinrikyo, Aum
K1 Nuclear terrorism
DO 10.1080/09546553.2019.1598387