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"The plot cost al Qaeda somewhere in the range of $400,000–500,000, of which

approximately $300,000 passed through the hijackers’ bank accounts in the United

States. The hijackers returned approximately $26,000 to a facilitator in the UAE in the

days prior to the attack. While in the United States, the hijackers spent money primarily

for flight training, travel, and living expenses (such as housing, food, cars, and auto

insurance). Extensive investigation has revealed no substantial source of domestic

financial support.

Neither the hijackers nor their financial facilitators were experts in the use of the

international financial system. They created a paper trail linking them to each other and

their facilitators. Still, they were easily adept enough to blend into the vast international

financial system without doing anything to reveal themselves as criminals, let alone

terrorists bent on mass murder. The money-laundering controls in place at the time were

largely focused on drug trafficking and large-scale financial fraud and could not have

detected the hijackers’ transactions. The controls were never intended to, and could not,

detect or disrupt the routine transactions in which the hijackers engaged." from the 9-11 commission, Exective Summary, Terrorist Financing.

I don't know if it's what I heard or about what I would have guessed but yeah the attacks on the Pentagon, World Trade Center Twin Towers etc. cost half a mil. 

To put it in perspective, the September 11 plot cost less than 0.25% of one of the hijacked planes. (though I cbf'ed adjusting for 23 years of inflation.)

Now in terms of the budgetary costs, the post 9-11 wars "on terror" is estimated around $8 trillion USD. 

So what I see when I look at this, as an incredibly fragile structure, and the cost-benefits is going to get very complex, like military-industrial-complex. I think it is reasonably beyond a civilian like me to comprehend the counterfactuals.

To me in all the years that have passed I've never really heard an argument that justifies the war in Iraq that would not also oblige the US to also prosecute a war against North Korea.

I'm getting side tracked, because in recent weeks something interesting happened in that some kid almost shot the presumptive Republican Presidential candidate with an AR-15.

There was a lot of reflexive talk and news coverage, because it is interesting, but this was more in line of 24 hour News Channel anchors interacting with pundits to speculate on what happened, what could have happened, what will happen etc.

Both more interesting and more disconcerting is that we still live in more or less the same world that managed to kill Frans Ferdinand. An event you can see dramatized in the historical fiction spy movie "The King's Man". 

Except, 20 million people likely wouldn't get dragged into trench warfare over a bunch of anachronistic treaties a  bunch of different nation states have in place to declare war with each other should some figure get popped.

I think many of my well-meaning left-leaning friends maybe don't appreciate how bad the chaos could have been had Trump's head popped like a melon. There's a great temptation on the left to think Trump is causing partisan insanity rather than being a symptom of it, at best a foci. 

And predictably it is a failure of the Secret Service, there job is to protect candidates so that one person gets one vote, not one person gets the only vote.

But let's look at the cost of the assassination attempt. Obviously it cost the shooter his life, so right there like the 9-11 attacks you probably rule out 99% of the worlds population through cost alone. Most people aren't willing to give their lives up. Sure there's a bunch of soldiers and cops and stuff, but the recruiting videos for those professions aren't "You will definitely die!"

Beyond that, like, the plot must have cost between $200~$300 USD. Okay, turns out I was wildly wrong, I blame media stereotypes. We are talking an AR-15 rifle retailing between $800-$1200 USD. Then a ladder which might be a couple of hundred bucks, it sounds like camo gear was just everyday wear for the shooter, and then the gas to drive from home to the rally.

Now Trump has a coffer of campaign funds in the vicinity of half a billion and it is probably reasonable to expect the reaction to his assassination to cost more than the 2020 George Floyd riots.

I'm going to indulge in expressing my ire at something that really annoys me, and that is when Trump boosters refer to his surviving the assassination attempt as "miraculous" because it isn't. Anyone interpreting the outcome as divine intervention needs to just go down to a shooting range and try and recreate the shot on a paper target. I think you would find the probability of missing, quite high.

Which again lends credence to the idea that a disturbed youth of no particular ideological bent executed a dumb plan that went badly (an innocent person was killed) and could have been disastrous.

Even with Andrew Jackson's failed assassination which required not one but two pistols to misfire at close range is not miraculous, given it predates the quality revolution in manufacturing by like 150 years. 

We just live with a basic asymmetry where it takes a second to wreck stuff and time to build. Maybe it's terrifying to contemplate that there's no amount of money that can be spent to guard against the forces of entropy but this thought should be most terrifying to the tyrants of the world. 

I feel, quite strongly, that the main thing that prevents us being victimised by crime, is that most people aren't criminals. I mean most people have probably pirated some IP illegally at some point in this internet age, but the fear of believers that without God anything is permitted is ill-founded.

That fact of reality is that everything is permitted in so far as if you are physically capable, you can do it. Society does the bulk of the negative reinforcement, for example a government agency sniper will shoot you dead if you open fire on a campaign rally.

Before that though, there's just the sheer fact that much as you might fantasize about doing violent things to people causing you anxiety and angst and disappointing you in the human race, almost nobody does it and that's actually a good thing.

The secret service will no doubt have to tighten things up, I'm sure there's some degree of contagion, like the US's tragic history of school shooting where Columbine was but the first high profile school shooting.

To some degree, putting up millions of dollars to fix a thousand dollar problem is the problem. But not necessarily so, the situation might be like the movie "The Martian" where the expense was justified by the significance of the human frontier, or it could be like the movie "se7en" where there's just no amount that you can shoot Kevin Spacey that is going to undo the damage he did.

In the next pandemic, I'd be more pleased to here the Victorian government in Australia paid Quarantine security $2,000 an hour than that they got the army in to do it. 

This is the main takeaway for those who want to live in an ordered and structured society. When half-a-million dollars can force you to spend 8 trillion, it makes sense to just create $200m a year in government jobs to track the terrorists. When a breach in quarantine costs a state billions in lockdown economic losses, it makes sense to pay hotel security 10x their hourly wage. 

It probably would behoove the Trump campaign to stage his rallies in Stadiums and other venues with security, than keep skimping on cheap outdoor venues and passing the cost onto taxpayers to basically have infinite secret service protection.