A terrorist temptation

Now that a week of effort has finally dislodged the Ever Given from the bank of the Suez Canal, the backlogged flow of trade can get moving again.  But we shouldn't dismiss this as a freak event to be forgotten now that it's over.  We should learn from it, because certain others doubtless have.

Any terrorist group worth its salt has surely noted the massive trade disruption caused by a simple accident.  What if, they must already be thinking, such a huge ship were actually sunk (as far as a ship can sink in such shallow water) at a narrow point in the canal?  What if it were induced to roll violently in the process, dumping half its absurd Jenga tower of shipping containers into the canal in a disorderly heap?  What if such a blockage took months to clear?  And isn't the Panama canal, with its system of locks providing ready-made vulnerable points, even more susceptible to such sabotage?

I don't know what kind of weapon would be necessary to blow a big enough hole in an Ever-Given-size cargo ship to sink it quickly in a pre-determined spot.  A mine would certainly do it -- terrorists would not normally have access to one, but pretty much any rogue state could supply it.  Sabotage from within, by infiltrating or bribing the crew or by an armed gang storming and seizing the ship after it entered the canal, might do it.  The point is, after witnessing the mess created during the week of the crisis, terrorists are likely to think such an act would provide an impressive return on whatever effort they had to invest in it.

As ships get bigger and more overloaded (to lower the per-container cost of shipping), various margins of safety get ever thinner, and the potential consequences of accidents or sabotage become more serious.  It's one more vulnerability for evil people to exploit.