“ These agents were designed to achieve four objectives:[21][22]
to be undetectable using standard 1970s and 1980s NATO chemical detection equipment; to defeat NATO chemical protective gear; to be safer to handle; and to circumvent the Chemical Weapons Convention list of controlled precursors, classes of chemical and physical form.[23]”
that is a very dangerous assumption to make.
Because the goal is reaching the goal, not the process.
Undoubtedly, if s terrorist group has access to this stuff, they won't reject the idea of using it just because driving a van or yielding a knife might appear simpler.
We're talking about lines of thinking that planned hijacking three commercial airplanes simultaneously to fly them into high visibility targets.
How is spreading poison something that's outlandish when compared to that?
And also, arguably this case is already the doing of a terrorist group. I mean, the end goal obviously was to get opposites to think twice for fear of risking their lives.
And, IIRC, most recent terrorist attacks have been committed by isolated individuals who radicalized, and they only used means that a motivated regular person could assemble. They didn't have the material backing of any organization sophisticated enough to manufacture a military nerve agent.
Though, I suppose if a specialist like a chemist got radicalized, then we might have a lone-wolf attack with a sophisticated poison.
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleph_(Japanese_cult) [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_anthrax_attacks
I'm specifically worried that the most dangerous thing about Coivd-19 is that it woke up the world to how much damage an infectious virus can cause. Technology is now at the point where you can engineer a virus like this in many university labs with maybe a team of a dozen or so and low millions of dollars of funding. That's potentially within reach of major terrorist organizations. If you're just lashing out at the world it's tough to get more bang for your buck so to speak.
Fortunately, the circles of educated, STEM type of people and radical Islamic militant types are largely exclusionary.
It's a way for Putin to publicly murder someone without having to say he did it.
The whole point is that this is hard to replicate.