SOURCE: Toffler, Alvin, and Nathan Gardels. “Third Wave Terrorism.” NPQ: New Perspectives Quarterly 12, no. 3 (summer 1995): 4-6.

In the following interview, Toffler discusses the implications for the future of terrorist warfare and the probability of rogue individuals having access to weapons of mass destruction.

Just as the Non-Proliferation Treaty was renewed, the Supreme Truth sect raised a new spectre in the Tokyo subway: Mass destruction weapons are no longer controlled by states or diplomats signing pledges at the United Nations. Will democratic societies be able to control rogue groups as easily as rogue states now that lethal knowledge is available across the planet? We sought our futurists, counterterrorist officials and a former director of the FBI and CIA to ponder the question.

Alvin Toffler is author with Heidi Toffler of Future Shock, The Third Wave, Powershift and, most recently, War and Anti-War, a study of the effects of the...