Why the cost of terrorism matters
Terrorist attacks are both cheaper, and more expensive, than you think, and it matters for how we counter terrorism.
Three years ago, I wrote an initial post on the cost of terrorism. I was motivated to look at this question because of critiques of counter-terrorist financing policies that suggest that they are ineffective because terrorism is cheap. But is it really? Over the last few years, we’ve been expanding our dataset on the cost of attacks, so I thought it was time to update our analysis and answer a few key questions. I also introduce a new way of thinking about counter-terrorism below, drawing from my economics background. Have a read, and let me know what you think!
Is Terrorism Cheap?
First of all, “cheapness” is a relative and subjective term. In North America, we might think that a $1,000 for a terrorist attack is inexpensive. But in other parts of the world, $1,000 goes much further and is more out-of-reach for people (and terrorists), making it subjectively more expensive.
Currently, the average cost of a terrorist attack is $56,000.1 However, the cheapest terrorist attack cost less than $10, while the most expensive attack cost $1.1 million. There is huge variation in what attacks cost depending on the target, the attack method, the equipment used, and the planning and preparation. My dataset on terrorist attacks contains 55 fully-costed attacks between 1985 and 2023. I have further categorized these attacks as no cost ($0), very low-cost (<$1,000), low-cost ($1,000-$5,000), medium-cost ($5,000-$10,000), high-cost ($10,000-$50,000), or very high-cost (>$50,000). The graph below shows the distribution of data according to these groupings: