Testimony Before United States Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Hearing on Nuclear Terrorism: Assessing the Threat to the Homeland

Chairman Lieberman, Ranking Member Collins and esteemed Members of the Committee, I would like to thank you for inviting me to speak today on the threat of nuclear terrorism. While it may not currently constitute the most likely threat to U.S. security from non-state actors, the prospect of terrorists detonating a nuclear device on American soil sometime within the next quarter century is real and growing. Such a calamitous attack on the homeland would represent a “game-changing” event far exceeding the impact of 9/11 on the nation. Besides the obvious physical devastation and catastrophic loss of life, a successful act of nuclear terrorism would forever change the way the world conceives of security and undermine many of the tenets upon which our democracy is based. It would represent the apogee of individual destructive capacity, and in a sense the “consumerization” of the ultimate military power.