Counter Terrorism Commission (CTC)

Topic Update!

Download the topic update (pdf)

Counter-Terrorism Committee
Michael Murrietta
CTC@bruinmun.org

 
Dear Delegates,

 
It is with great excitement that I welcome you BruinMUN 2011’s Counter-Terrorism Committee! My name is Michael Murrietta, and I will be your chair for BruinMUN 2011. I was born and raised right here in Southern California in the city of Whittier. After two highly active years of MUN in high school, I eagerly joined MUN at UCLA. In the short year that I’ve been a member, MUN has already given me some of my fondest college memories. A member of the class of 2014, I plan on majoring in political science with a minor in Spanish. If all goes as planned, I will also be attending law school after my career as an undergraduate. Aside from Model United Nations, I am involved in the Political Science Student Organization, the Pre-Law Society, UCLA’s Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu club, and the Academic Advancement Program.

 
At BruinMUN 2011, you will be given the unique opportunity to interact with students who share a similar passion for international politics while attempting to rid the world of two unique brands of terrorism: bioterrorism and cyber terrorism.

 
Networking technology has been a benign development for the livelihood of the entire globe, but with the broad and ever-increasing reach of a loosely regulated digital infrastructure, cyber terrorism threatens nations, private enterprises, and individual rights. As many nations have recently declared cyberwar the fifth domain of war, the time has come for nations and their prospective MUN delegates to address this topic of unprecedented importance.

 
Although numerous treaties prohibit the use of chemical warfare, easily accessible and cheap precursor ingredients have made compliance increasingly difficult to verify. In the recent decade, there have been incidents of chemical warfare perpetrated by terrorist groups in the Middle East. Additionally, Russian special-forces are rumored to have used chemical agents in a hostage crisis in 2002. You and your fellow delegates must surmount this issue carefully. I look forward to hearing your thoughts on both issues.

 
If you have any questions, comments, concerns, or grievances (hopefully not the latter), please feel free to contact me via the provided email address. I am confident that your knowledge and creativity, in conjunction with the unpredictable nature of our two topics, will create an exciting academic experience.

 
Until November,

Michael Murrietta
Counter Terrorism Committee

 
Topics

Download Topic Synopsis! (pdf) Updated June 1. Document is password protected.

Topic A: Cyber Warfare
Cyber warfare is a topic that has only recently surfaced in MUN discussion. As networking technology develops at an ever-increasing pace, defensive measures quickly become outdated or outsmarted by an innovative attacker. Recent cyber attacks in Estonia and on power grids in Brazil only scratch the surface of this increasingly ominous issue. Cyber attacks can quickly result in the loss of terabytes of classified government information, as was demonstrated by the agent.btz virus in the past decade. Neglecting discussion of this issue will only put nations in a greater state of peril.

 
Topic B: Bioterrorism
The reason why bioterrorism has become such a popular option for terrorists is the psychological impact of the mere threat of a bioterrorist attack. A devastating bioterrorist attack can potentially cause the collapse of public health systems, as was attempted by the sarin gas attacks in Japan in the 1990s. Recently, Al Qaeda’s 2007 chlorine gas attack in Iraq have renewed the relevance of bioterrorism as a topic of discussion.

 
Contact Your Chair: CTC@bruinmun.org