Building the Bomb: A Further Exploration of an Organizational Approach to Nuclear Terrorism

A terrorist organization constructing and detonating a nuclear device is often a topic of popular, academic, and political concern. Yet, assessing this risk is a challenging task. This article aims to contribute to the encompassing nature of any future nuclear terrorism threat assessments by further exploring the often overlooked organizational dimension in probability assessments on nuclear terrorism. Particular emphasis is given to the role of the organizational design. In order to do so, this article theoretically builds on a 2017 research article and empirically studies Aum Shinrikyo’s chemical and biological armament activities. This article confirms and further refines the idea of an effectiveness-efficiency trade-off for a terrorist organization implementing a nuclear armament project. It particularly zooms in on the constraints that follow from the covert nature of this type of plot and elaborates on the role of Aum Shinrikyo’s value-rationality.