The international community is called upon to understand the logic of al Qaeda and to establish appropriate countermeasures to prevent their predicted behavior. In order to reach the necessary level of understanding, the authors call for academic disciplines to cross boundaries and work together, including the disciplines of political science, engineering, cultural anthropology, communication studies, and life sciences. The analysis revealed that al Qaeda’s ideology, which is a distorted perspective of Islam and demands violent acts against noncombatants, coupled with developments in science and medicine virtually guarantee that al Qaeda will pursue biological terrorism as a tactical option if it can harness the science behind it. In fact, the only obstacles keeping bioterrorism at bay are technical feasibility problems and the difficulty of accessing materials. Yet, the authors argue that neither of these obstacles will remain a challenge for much longer. As such, preventing a bioterrorism attack by al Qaeda will depend on the extent to which the behavior of al Qaeda can be anticipated and prevented. It is illustrated that the politics that prevented a nuclear holocaust during the Cold War no longer apply to the political or strategic decision making processes of organizations like al Qaeda. The authors charge the counterterrorism community to understand al Qaeda and its weaknesses to the same extent that al Qaeda understands the United States and its weaknesses. Notes