The Pernicious Effects of Threat Inflation

Gallup finds some pernicious effects of threat inflation in its latest survey of public opinion:

 As the Biden administration continues to explore how it will respond to Russia's large-scale cyberattack against U.S. companies and federal agencies last year, 82% of Americans say cyberterrorism is a "critical threat" to the vital interests of the U.S. over the next decade.

While cyberterrorism ranks atop a list of 11 potential threats to the U.S., the development of nuclear weapons by North Korea and by Iran are not far behind, with 77% and 75% of U.S. adults, respectively, considering them to be critical threats. Four other matters are likewise viewed as critical threats by majorities in the U.S.: international terrorism (72%), the spread of infectious diseases throughout the world (72%), China's economic power (63%), and global warming or climate change (58%).

I take a critical threat to be something that seriously threatens to do great damage to U.S. vital interests, and if we use that definition most of the things identified as the top “critical threats” don’t mean that definition. “Cyberterrorism” does not qualify as one. At least North Korea has nuclear weapons, and theoretically those could be used to cause massive destruction, but it is extremely unlikely that these weapons would ever be used. Despite the exaggerated attention that our government has paid to it for the last twenty years, terrorism remains a relatively minor, manageable threat. Iran doesn’t even have a nuclear weapons program, so it seems absurd that it is rated as the third threat on the list. Politicians and pundits have spent so many decades hyping these manageable or non-existent threats that the public consistently rates them as the greatest dangers to the country, but they aren’t. That distorted vision not only makes our policies toward those countries worse, but it also distracts us from paying attention to things that matter more.

For Iran’s non-existent nuclear weapons program to outpoll pandemics as a critical threat after we have just seen COVID-19 cause the deaths of 550,000 Americans in one year shows just how warped the perception of the threat from Iran is. The world’s sole superpower hasn’t been this irrationally afraid of a smaller Middle Eastern country since the last time it freaked out over non-existent weapons programs and attacked Iraq. Climate change represents a far greater and more enduring threat to Americans’ health and environment than most of the other things included on that list. The U.S. is extraordinarily secure against physical threats from other states and terrorist organizations, and we are least prepared to defend against things that actually claim huge numbers of American lives. I would have thought that the experience of the pandemic would have driven home how relatively unimportant minor threats from distant countries are to our security and well-being when compared to something that can disrupt our lives and kill us by the hundreds of thousands, but that isn’t happening.