A few national security experts suggest that some of the forest fires being set in America may be lit by terrorists. Al Qaeda’s online magazine, Inspire (the same magazine that claims to have inspired the Boston Marathon bombings), published an article in 2012 titled, “It is of your freedom to ignite a firebomb.” The article described the immense damages wild fires have caused over the years in America, and gave instructions on how to create an “ember bomb” to ignite such a blaze. After citing several instances of historically large wild fires, the magazine encouraged its terrorist readers that they, too, could recreate such catastrophic damage “in a shorter time and with much bigger destructive impact.”

In July 2012, former National Security Agency official and Aviation Week editor William Scott delivered an American Center for Democracy presentation on “Fire Wars” with a detailed discussion of how terrorists use fire as a weapon of war. “Perhaps the most simple form of economic warfare is wild land arson,” Scott told a panel. “For any terrorists that are determined to inflict significant damage with very little investment or risk, fire is an extremely high-leverage weapon of mass effect.” Scott said that Navy SEALs found documents after capturing Osama bin Laden that revealed a plot to set fires in America. “U.S. officials have pretty much determined that some of the fires that burned in California [in 2011] were ignited by al Qaeda operatives,” Scott said.