Pipe bombs and pressure cookers don't necessarily mean a sophisticated attacker
Ahmad Rahami was arrested on Monday after a shootout with police on suspicion of planting explosives in three different locations in New Jersey and New York City, one of which injured 29 people after detonating in Manhattan.
But the number of bombs Rahami is suspected of planting and perhaps building does not necessarily make him a sophisticated assailant.
For now, officials have said they're not pursuing anyone else in connection with the explosives.
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Two types of explosives Rahami is suspected of leaving in New York City and New Jersey -- pipe bombs and pressure cooker explosives -- are easy to make and only require materials anyone can buy at a hardware or sporting goods store without raising the eyebrows of cashiers, much less the FBI.
"People know exactly how to make these and do them well," Tom Sanderson, a terrorism and intelligence expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said of pressure cooker explosives. "The information and knowledge can be instantly picked up online.”
Pressure cookers, such as the one that exploded in Manhattan on Saturday, can be found in many a kitchen. Instead of using the pressure to heat soup, anyone looking to build an explosive would pack the device with TNT and whatever they wanted to use as shrapnel, then set off the homemade bomb from a distance with a smartphone or another digital device.
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Pipe bombs, like the one that took no victims after exploding in Seaside Park, New Jersey on Saturday, are composed of little beside a pipe, some type of explosive powder, and a fuse.
“Even for a not very experienced person, you can do real damage with these kind of devices…but the average lone actor will not be as good as an experienced one," Brian Jackson, a senior physical scientist at Rand Corporation, a think tank, told Mashable.
Only one of the three pipe bombs placed in Seaside Park actually detonated, and a backpack at least partially filled with pipe bombs in Elizabeth, New Jersey, was discovered by passersby and dismantled by a team of robots before it could cause any injuries or worse. In New York City, one bomb blast detonated and caused mostly surface-level injuries, while officials believe another in the city was inadvertently disabled.
Of course, as Sanderson said, the sophistication of the bomb doesn't necessarily indicate the sophistication of the bomb-maker or the person who placed the explosives.
Officials are likely to probe the reasons for Rahami's suspected actions as well as how and why he learned to make such bombs in the coming days.
That will help them determine whether the alleged orchestrator behind the explosives was someone who got all his information from the internet, or if he acted with assistance from others with specific skills.
Colin is Mashable's US & World Reporter. He previously interned at Foreign Policy magazine and The American Prospect. Colin is a graduate from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. When he's not at Mashable, you can most likely find him eating or playing some kind of sport.
