Let’s Not Overreact This Time

Matt Yglesias explains why increasing security at airports is counterproductive:

Benjamin Friedman points to Nate Silver’s calculation that in the last decade of US flights, there was one terrorist incident per 11,569,297,667 miles flown.

Under the circumstances, investing additional resources in defending airplanes is unlikely to be a cost effective investment. It’s also worth underscoring the fact that flying in an airplane is much safer than driving. Insofar as stepped-up security makes flying both more expensive and more annoying, and therefore pushes more people to drive long distances, we’re going to cost lives rather than save them. And at the end of the day, you have to understand that terrorists are not going to weaken America by killing us all a hundred at a time with bombs. They do much more to weaken America by induc[ing] us to waste money and strangle our economy.

And here’s Spencer Ackerman giving a logical explanation of and reaction to the unsuccessful attack: