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Comment by herbig | Hacker News Reader

I think the level of sophistication required increasingly points to a much simpler explanation than terrorism.

why do people underestimate what terrorist groups are capable of? Some have training from various countries and quite a few have financial and material backing.

If anything, the common theme on this site was to find every possible explanation other than terrorism. Sorry to be the party pooper, but there are people out there who operate without regard to our beliefs and at times love to exploit the stories we tell ourselves.

I don't know that it's underestimation so much as Occam's razor

Yes, but I think what Herbig is saying is that the increased sophistication of assumptions means decreased likelihood that this was a deliberate hijacking. We get further away from Occam's razor in order to satisfy that.

As of yet we haven't seen any group take responsibility, no claims of hostages or anything remotely indicative of this. So if it was taken by a terrorist group, where is the terrorism they plan to conduct with it?

This is the kind of target that would have someone claiming responsibility. The plane wasn't from a country that's known for disproportionate responses to attacks(i.e. the US or Russia). I would figure that if any group actually did pull this off, they'd be making public announcements that they took down the plane, or were holding it for ransom.

Aum Shinrikyo aerosolised and released anthrax for a week. They were caught. They didn't make any announcement about it. Announcing it a few days afterwards would have caused significant panic and distress.

(Luckily they used the "wrong" anthrax, so not much harm done).

The same organisation also did odd things in Australia. They made sarin and VX gas, tested that on sheep, and the. Used the gases in several assassinations.

They released sarin in Matsumoto, killing 8 people and harming 200. They didn't claim that attack.

Aum Shinrikyo are well funded, have smart people working for them, and are happy to murder people.

You mean "was", "had", and "were", since everybody connected with the sarin attacks is now arrested or dead. The rump "Aleph" group is a shadow of its former self, has renounced their predecessor's tactics, and is very heavily monitored.

Also, IIRC Aum never used anthrax (although they did stockpile it), only sarin and VX, which are chemical agents, not biological.

I'm kind of relieved that they are much diminished.

Here are some links to the anthrax stuff:

http://www.cnas.org/files/documents/publications/CNAS_AumShi...

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC88589/#!po=5.952...

This attack could have been significantly worse.

Brace yourself, I'm going to go further into conspiracy land, but there's the possibility the end goal wasn't just to steal a plane for scrap metal, or to use it as a ride for the local fair. If that's the case, you'd want the world to continue thinking it disappeared in the ocean, and you don't want to raise any alarms by taking credit.

The 777 is a fairly common long distance aircraft. Would it be possible to give it a new paint job, and then in similar fashion to the OP, fly in the shadow of an existing flight?

For example, you paint it up like a Lufthansa 777, and then try to follow one of those flight paths at some point between London and New York. If anyone gets a visual on the mystery plane flying into US airspace, it looks like a commercial flight simply not responding. Not quite as suspicious as a jet or military aircraft. Would they shoot down a commercial 777 that's flying a standard route, with no indication of it being hijacked, or a threat?

I'll admit, the above idea is absurd, but this entire situation is making little sense. I hope we get some answers one day.

Edit: A lot of people are saying in other comments that hijacking a plane isn't an effective method of acquiring a 777, or stealing cargo, or kidnapping people. However, it's been 10 days, and we simply know the plane disappeared. That seems pretty effective, a 777, 230 passengers, and cargo, all gone, and no one even knows if they were targeted, or if the plane malfunctioned and crashed in the ocean. If any of the above were of value to someone, it wasn't only effective, it was near perfect.

I've had a feeling for several days, but I don't know if it is technically possible. After reading your post I wonder if it is possible to fly as high as possible until you reach the target and then you nose dive to the ground. I can't help thinking that the summit in The Hague next week would be a perfect opportunity if someone was planning such an act.

Well if anything, we are certainly doing a good job of telling future whack jobs just what to do if they want to try it.

China isn't exactly a country I would mess with, I think they would be about as restrained as Russia. Terrorist would expect a big response from them, or do they see them the same as pre-Bush US?

Even if they got the plane for later use, just trying to use it would be amazingly difficult. However we did tell them how we knew it flew so they do know what to knock out to fly it again.

As for claiming responsibility, disappearing a plane and not claiming it is simply amazing, do it twice and aviation will shut down in that part of the world, do it three times, well hell.

When, on that sliding scale, does a hijacking become a theft?

What would be the point in stealing a 777? There are not that many of them, really, and their history is usually recorded in extensive detail. I think it's unlikely in the extreme that anybody could successfully pass off the aircraft as their own without anybody noticing any inconsistencies.

Maybe the plane wasn't stolen for its intrinsic worth, but what it was carrying.

Not sure if your question is rhethorical, but… a hijacking is when what you are stealing moves on its own (and you use that ability in the process of getting it). If you ask: When does a hi-jacking becomes a theft? as in: it still was a hijacking, but actually should be understood as a theft? Well, depending on what you mean: either when what is being carried inside is more valuable than the carrier (i.e. the hijacking was just a convenient way to get the thing) or, when, oppositely, the carrier is more valuable that what is being carried (and the hijacking was actually the theft of the vehicle, not its content).

In other words: Yes. I’m not sure what you meant, but the answer is yes.

What if it was a heist? With a price tag of ~300 Million dollars it is a tempting target for some sophisticated thieves.

Acts of violence without the "publicity" are not terrorism.

Spot on, why would a terrorist guy hijack a plane, fly under the radar following another planes just to hide itself? They could just hijack the plane and fly straight to the target and crash into it 911 style...

Why do terrorists only get to be guys in caves? What was the difference between a pirate and a privateer in the 19th century? A government endorsement?

Wasn't that always the difference?

I think it's scary to think about the terrorist plots. If terrorist are capable of such feats as an undetected hijacking of an airliner, what else are they capable of? Putting their hands on some amount of nuclear waste? What kind of future plans other then the hijacking itself may include the airliner?

I was lolling my head off. I never understood why a way more complicated explanation is more appealing to people.

For two reasons: simplicity doesn’t really have a good metric to be minimised, not when it comes to unexpected, seemingly daring or irrational behaviour. Batman’s Jocker character provides tons of example of that, but more to the point at stake: some might see a plane cashing without a trace as complex, while others think hiding is hard. Some might see a highly normalised Relational table as simple, because it can be safely explored it it’s entire possibility space, while others prefer to have no norm, and one long list of untyped events, because its assumed structure is straightforward.

When it comes to likelihood and explanations, Dan Ariely has done tremendous work on explaining how a more detailed story, especially one pandering to our anecdotal prejudice, seems more likely: He commonly gives the example of how a shy person seems more likely to become a librarian than a factory worker but… ‘shy’ isn’t very specific trait, and the less glamorous option is ten times more likely overall, making the likelihood for a shy person to be screwing bolts far higher, dozens of times actually, than lending books.

There you have both: Are they terrorists? Are they skilled? Can pilots make mistakes? Both are unlikely events that may or may not match our experience, actually our mediated experience: few people have met active terrorist and lived (well, the same Dan Ariely is a known exception) or been flown by a bad pilot and been able to tell the story.

It's not complexity that they like, as much as a comfortable prejudice, that either Hollywood-grade airplane-acrobatics are common, or that horrible people are very cunning. You can quote statistics, but then again I don’t recommend it: you’ll become tedious, dull and insensitive before you are even done explaining your methodology about average-end-of-quality-of-life (death is too… binary) and how airplane catastrophies are actually generally positive.

I, for one, can’t get out of my head that there is an increasing disparity in every industry, especially all cultural ones, leading to PR becoming overly sophisticated, and that promoting a movie requires connexion to up to News casters (obviously, see all ‘promo’ segments) that might have been upped to pirates (for documenting Captain Philipps) therefore… this must be Liam Neeson promoting his latest action flick. That’s like, such a good idea I can’t believe no one has tried it earlier.

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