制造炸弹：为什么这么多恐怖分子拥有工程学位？
作者：本杰明·波普尔 2009年12月29日
https://slate.com/technology/2009/12/why-do-so-many-terrorists-have-engineering-degrees.html
大多数人不会将工程与宗教联系起来。建造房屋和桥梁的混凝土行业似乎建立在世俗的科学原则之上。但今年圣诞节期间，机械工程师乌马尔·法鲁克·阿卜杜勒穆塔拉布发动的未遂袭击提醒我们，这种组合在历史上曾长期滋生暴力极端分子。
相关的轶事证据一直都很有力。“9·11”恐怖袭击的策划者穆罕默德·阿塔是一名建筑工程师。哈立德·谢赫·穆罕默德拥有机械工程学位。据信是孟买恐怖袭击幕后黑手的“虔诚军”（Lashkar-e-Taibi）的三位创始人中有两位是拉合尔工程技术大学的教授。今年夏天，两位社会学家迭戈·甘贝塔 (Diego Gambetta) 和斯特芬·赫托格 (Steffen Hertog) 发表了一篇论文（PDF），为这一观察提供了实证证据。他们研究了来自中东和非洲30多个国家的400多名极端伊斯兰恐怖分子，这些人大多出生于20世纪50年代至70年代之间。此前的研究表明，恐怖分子往往比他们的同胞更富有、受教育程度更高，但甘贝塔和赫托格发现，尤其是工程师，成为暴力恐怖分子的可能性是金融、医学或科学领域同行的三到四倍。排名第二的极端化程度最高的专业是伊斯兰研究，但与工程师相比差距甚远。
那么，为什么会有这么多恐怖分子工程师呢？一个简单的解释是，工程学恰好是那些滋生暴力极端分子的国家中一个特别热门的专业。但甘贝塔和赫托格在校正了各国工程专业的入学人数后，仍然得到了类似的结果。即使在西方出生或长大的伊斯兰恐怖分子中，也有近60%的人拥有工程背景。
另一种可能的解释是，工程师拥有技术技能和建筑知识，这使他们成为恐怖组织的理想招募对象。但最近的研究发现，工程师在这些组织中担任领导职务的可能性与他们实际操作爆炸物的可能性一样高。无论如何，他们的技术专长可能并非那么有用，因为恐怖袭击中使用的大多数方法都比较原始。诚然，9·11事件的25名劫机者中有8名是工程师，但最终起作用的是他们使用美工刀和飞行学校的经验，而不是他们高贵的学位。
甘贝塔和赫托格提出，阿拉伯国家一些工程师可能因为本国缺乏合适的工作而走向极端化。他们研究的毕业生成长于一个时代，当时人们认为，从竞争激烈的技术课程中获得的学位能够保证获得高地位的工作。但现代化和发展的承诺往往因镇压和腐败而受阻，20世纪80年代许多年轻工程师失业，倍感沮丧。沙特阿拉伯是个例外，在这个经济不断扩张的国家，工程师们很容易找到工作。巧合的是，沙特阿拉伯也是这项研究发现工程师在激进运动中占比并不高的阿拉伯国家。
还有什么原因可以解释这么多工程系毕业生的激进暴力政治倾向？是否存在某些特质使工程师更容易参与恐怖主义活动？为了回答这个问题，甘贝塔和赫托格更新了一项最初发表于1972年的研究。当时，西摩·利普塞特和卡尔·拉德两位研究人员调查了美国同行学者的意识形态倾向。根据最初的论文，与其他任何领域的教授相比，工程师更常将自己描述为“强烈保守派”和“虔诚的信徒”。甘贝塔和赫托格对1984年收集的数据重复了这项分析，因此可能更符合他们研究的恐怖分子样本。他们发现了类似的结果：46%的（美国男性）工程师自认为既保守又信教，而科学家中这一比例为22%。
甘贝塔和赫托格指出，工程师群体中存在一种特殊的思维模式，他们鄙视模棱两可和妥协。他们可能更热衷于为社会带来秩序，并将激进伊斯兰教中提出的僵化的宗教律法视为实现这些目标的最佳途径。阿卜杜勒穆塔拉布在网上发帖表达了他对世俗生活方式与极端宗教观点之间冲突的担忧。“如何才能找到平衡点呢？”他写道。
恐怖组织似乎已经意识到了这种倾向——显然是在阿卜杜勒穆塔拉布身上，但也普遍存在于工程师群体中。英国情报部门2005年的一份报告指出，伊斯兰极端分子频繁出入大学校园，寻找可能易受影响的“好奇”学生。报告特别指出，他们的信息传递目标明确，尤其针对工程师。
Build-a-Bomber Why do so many terrorists have engineering degrees?
Engineering is not a profession most people associate with religion. The concrete trade of buildings and bridges seems grounded in the secular principles of science. But the failed attack this Christmas by mechanical engineer Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was a reminder that the combination has a long history of producing violent radicals.
The anecdotal evidence has always been strong. The mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, Mohamed Atta, was an architectural engineer. Khalid Sheikh Mohamed got his degree in mechanical engineering. Two of the three founders of Lashkar-e-Taibi, the group believed to be behind the Mumbai attacks, were professors at the University of Engineering and Technology in Lahore. A paper (PDF) released this summer by two sociologists, Diego Gambetta and Steffen Hertog, adds empirical evidence to this observation. The pair looked at more than 400 radical Islamic terrorists from more than 30 nations in the Middle East and Africa born mostly between the 1950s and 1970s. Earlier studies had shown that terrorists tend to be wealthier and better-educated than their countrymen, but Gambetta and Hertog found that engineers, in particular, were three to four times more likely to become violent terrorists than their peers in finance, medicine or the sciences. The next most radicalizing graduate degree, in a distant second, was Islamic Studies. So what’s with all the terrorist-engineers? The simple explanation is that engineering happens to be an especially popular field of study in the countries that produce violent radicals. But Gambetta and Hertog corrected for national enrollment numbers in engineering programs and got similar results. Even among Islamic terrorists born or raised in the West, nearly 60 percent had engineering backgrounds.
Another possible explanation would be that engineers possess technical skills and architectural know-how that makes them attractive recruits for terrorist organizations. But the recent study found that engineers are just as likely to hold leadership roles within these organizations as they are to be working hands-on with explosives. In any case, their technical expertise may not be that useful, since most of the methods employed in terrorist attacks are rudimentary. It’s true that eight of the 25 hijackers on 9/11 were engineers, but it was their experience with box cutters and flight school, not fancy degrees, that counted in the end.
Gambetta and Hertog propose that a lack of appropriate jobs in their home countries may have radicalized some engineers in Arab countries. The graduates they studied came of age at a time when a degree from a competitive technical program was supposed to provide a guarantee of high-status employment. But the promises of modernization and development were often stymied by repression and corruption, and many young engineers in the 1980s were left jobless and frustrated. One exception was Saudi Arabia, where engineers had little trouble finding work in an ever-expanding economy. As it happens, Saudi Arabia is also the only Arab state where the study found that engineers are not disproportionately represented in the radical movement. What else might account for the radical, violent politics of so many former engineering students? Is there some set of traits that makes engineers more likely to participate in acts of terrorism? To answer this question, Gambetta and Hertog updated a study that was first published in 1972, when a pair of researchers named Seymour Lipset and Carl Ladd surveyed the ideological bent of their fellow American academics. According to the original paper, engineers described themselves as “strongly conservative” and “deeply religious” more often than professors in any other field. Gambetta and Hertog repeated this analysis for data gathered in 1984, so it might better match up with their terrorist sample. They found similar results, with 46 percent of the (male American) engineers describing themselves as both conservative and religious, compared with 22 percent of scientists. Gambetta and Hertog write about a particular mind-set among engineers that disdains ambiguity and compromise. They might be more passionate about bringing order to their society and see the rigid, religious law put forward in radical Islam as the best way of achieving those goals. In online postings, Abdulmutallab expressed concern over the conflict between his secular lifestyle and more extreme religious views. “How should one put the balance right?” he wrote.
Terrorist organizations seem to have recognized this proclivity—in Abdulmutallab, obviously, but also among engineers in general. A 2005 report from British intelligence noted that Islamic extremists were frequenting college campuses, looking for “inquisitive” students who might be susceptible to their message. In particular, the report noted, they targeted engineers.
