The October 2001 anthrax attack on Capitol Hill may have been the first 5GW attack. Given the enormous investigative effort expended on finding the perpetrator(s) and the fact that we have not made a single arrest, one has to believe the attack was executed by an individual or a very small group. Had more people had been involved, someone would have leaked information or been found.
If this is a valid assumption, then we had a super-empowered individual or small group attack the legislative body of a nation-state using an advanced biological weapon in support of an unknown cause. This individual or group disrupted the operation of Congress for several months, created hundreds of millions of dollars in clean-up costs, and imposed mail screening requirements (and associated costs) that are still in effect today–not a bad payoff for a few ounces of anthrax and some postage.
The anthrax attack provided stark evidence that today a single individual can attack a nation-state. Over time, the combination of political motivation, social organization, and economic development has given greater and greater destructive capability to smaller and smaller groups. — T. X. Hammes
