Science & Tech Quote by Ed Markey

Markey’s line is engineered to make an invisible threat feel concrete: not “terrorism” in the abstract, but radioactive materials with a paper trail and a body count implied. The first clause (“We know”) does heavy lifting. It asserts certainty without revealing sources, inviting the audience to treat fear as settled fact while sidestepping the messy, classified, or contested nature of intelligence. Then he pivots to “devastating attack,” a phrase broad enough to cover everything from a dirty bomb to sabotage, letting imagination supply the worst-case scenario.

The second clause is the real political lever. “Hundreds of radioactive sources have been lost or stolen” reframes the danger as partly homegrown: the vulnerability isn’t only al Qaeda’s ambition, but U.S. and global failures in regulation, inventory control, and security culture. It’s a two-front indictment designed to justify policy: tighter oversight of hospitals, labs, and industrial sites; stronger international safeguards; more funding for detection and interdiction. The quiet subtext is accountability without naming culprits, because naming them would trigger industry backlash and bureaucratic finger-pointing.

Context matters: this is post-9/11 security rhetoric shaped by the era’s appetite for preventive action. Markey, a legislator who has often pushed nuclear safety and oversight, is also carving out an argument that competes with the more familiar “weapons of mass destruction” frame. Instead of focusing on faraway stockpiles, he spotlights everyday radioactive sources that slip through mundane cracks - a scarier, more plausible pathway that makes “security” look like a domestic governance problem, not just a military one.