The world is a dangerous place, and most people who have accumulated wealth or other assets in uncertain or risky environments have one thing in common: defending them. This is why the equivalent of city hall in Shanghai looks like a veritable fortress, why the well-to-do in nations from the poorest to the most wealthy, from Seoul to London, Rio to Tokyo, are unabashed to erect high walls, strong gates, and the kind of electronic and physical barriers intended not just to thwart the paparazzi. They are also intended to stop acquisitive and destructive aggressors from attacking, inflicting harm, or otherwise causing damage or mayhem. Everywhere, that is, except in the United States.
Instead, we find such defenses unseemly. They strike us as aesthetically unsavory, as, well, overbearing and contrary to the American tradition of openness and accessibility to the everyday fellow human. Look no further than a book written by a relatively modern historian, The Architecture of Diplomacy, and you will see the same philosophy applied to the design of American embassies at the height of the Cold War. At the time, it was always the Communist and other totalitarian regimes, particularly the Soviet Union, that seemed bent on erecting the most forbidding and dungeon-like structures as ambassadorial representations of might and invincibility. So, in the best contrarian American tradition, what did we do? The opposite. Thus our embassies came to be emblematic of our society: open, friendly, transparent. In order for this to happen, all but the structurally indispensable walls gave way to glass, opening the embassies up to light and airiness. At the time, this seemed desirable. Events like the Oklahoma City Bombing and other attacks showed us a new reality: how easily standard glazing and unhardened buildings fall victim to progressive collapse.
So the century turns and the world changes. Today, we see that openness as a strategy is no more supportable than leaving one’s front door wide open at home. The rest of the world understands the need to fortify. But it seems that only in the West, and in America in particular, do we agonize over the obvious. “What might it say about our manifest distrust of our neighbors if we lock our doors too securely?” we seem to wonder. It’s not that we cannot learn the lessons of self-protection. We just tend to forget them sooner and act on them later than others. We have had embassies in Syria, Iran, Tanzania, and Kenya attacked. There will be others. But if we wait for the attack before we fortify, it is like getting a good deadbolt and reinforced door frame for the front door only after the burglary or home invasion. Some lessons are not nearly so valuable when absorbed only after the loss has occurred. So, maybe it is time to get smarter.
Good security must be a habit in order to deliver value. This means locking all your doors and using all the protective measures at hand before the loss occurs, not after. Doing this not only strengthens defenses and contributes to peace of mind. It also provides a visible and meaningful deterrent. After all, life’s worst adversaries tend to be focused and businesslike. They base their decision to attack or pass us by depending on how soft or hard a target we are or appear to be. Is there really any reason to call on aesthetic or emotional arguments to institutionalize weakness and design vulnerabilities into security posture in the post-9/11 world? Not if you value your assets.
– Nick Catrantzos
Sunday, April 20, 2008
Friday, April 11, 2008
Securing a Symbol: The Olympic Torch
The Olympic torch, taken objectively, is a marvelously expensive frivolity whose parade through a chain of metropolitan venues hardly offers novelty in the modern age. Until recently, that is, when anti-Chinese fervor made it a target. Whether it is a legitimate protest target is mildly interesting to the security professional. If it is an asset, it needs to be protected. How?
The answer differs little from the steps one would take to defend other assets on the move from hijacking or foul play. The answer is a layered defense. And the chief component is unpredictability. Security measures in such an environment typically include decoys, unannounced schedule changes, and keeping out of the way of where both crowds and antagonists are most likely to appear. Related measures include introducing obstacles and disrupting patterns.
Say what you will about San Francisco's current reputation for extremes. When it came to preventing a nasty scene with the Olympic torch at its only U.S. appearance, this week, San Francisco got it right. Organizers kept the torch in motion, deviated from known and vulnerable routes of travel, and altered all predictable stops well enough to get the Olympic flame in and out of town without missing a beat. That was a vivid demonstration of good security.
– Nick Catrantzos
The answer differs little from the steps one would take to defend other assets on the move from hijacking or foul play. The answer is a layered defense. And the chief component is unpredictability. Security measures in such an environment typically include decoys, unannounced schedule changes, and keeping out of the way of where both crowds and antagonists are most likely to appear. Related measures include introducing obstacles and disrupting patterns.
Say what you will about San Francisco's current reputation for extremes. When it came to preventing a nasty scene with the Olympic torch at its only U.S. appearance, this week, San Francisco got it right. Organizers kept the torch in motion, deviated from known and vulnerable routes of travel, and altered all predictable stops well enough to get the Olympic flame in and out of town without missing a beat. That was a vivid demonstration of good security.
– Nick Catrantzos
Saturday, April 5, 2008
Finally: A Voice for Realistic Homeland Defense
Favorite teachers are seldom easy and undemanding. They impress their students by challenging them, introducing bold ideas, and making them think. So, in this process, does the great teacher attain immortality in student eyes. So, too, by following this process has former combat pilot and National War College department head Randall Larsen probed the folly and substance of homeland security in Our Own Worst Enemy (New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2007) to present compelling and radical ideas on the realities of homeland defense.
Larsen first arouses reader attention by showing how ill conceived, reflexive responses to real and perceived homeland threats have created more problems than they solved. According to Larsen, over-investment and deficient analysis risk jeopardizing the homeland through irresponsible spending in areas ranging from detection technology at ports to building of walls at America’s undefended borders. Absent a reversal of this trend, Larsen argues cogently that it is precisely such actions on our own part that will realize our adversaries' objectives, bankrupt our economy, and make of all Americans our own worst enemy.
He flatly asserts the folly of succumbing to the rhetoric that America can “win the war against all those who would threaten our homeland,” arguing that the best we can do about attacks is to limit their frequency and severity (pp 84-85). Yet, in Larsen’s view, only a unifying strategy – containment – will prevent the wasteful spending and overreactions by political leaders while offering a degree of focus that will lend credibility to homeland defenses that are otherwise effective only in inflicting greater eventual damage to the economy than terror attacks themselves. Reviewing and cataloging the key threats presenting catastrophic risk, Larsen rates them by a scale (p. 73) that ultimately ranks biological and nuclear weapons as the most severe.
The author then makes the case for focusing on these top two that would potentially drive any nation to its knees. He uses the discussion of nuclear weapons to illustrate how otherwise brilliant scientists, enraptured by the allure of technology solutions often advocated by contractors who stand to profit from selling their devices, can fall prey to impractical solutions. Two such scientists with Homeland Security responsibilities seriously proposed equipping every motor vehicle in America large enough to carry a nuclear bomb with radiological detectors, leaving Larsen to challenge them with analytical questions. As Larson explains, the nuclear devices of greatest concern use highly enriched uranium which is a lower radiation emitter than that of the materials used in nuclear power plants. Why, argues Larsen, would a terrorist smart enough to lay hands on weapons-grade uranium not invest in lead shielding that would make the device capable of eluding the detectors? Moreover, why bankrupt taxpayers with the burden of wasting billions on such a flawed implementation of technology?
Biological weapons, though, strike Larsen as a greater danger. In the Internet age and with the proliferation of information on bioengineering, they are increasingly falling within the capacity of any terrorist to produce in the space of a garage without giving away any telltale signs or signatures necessary for rapid detection and pre-emption. Thus Larsen concludes that biological attacks are inevitable and must be approached as something to be mitigated rather than prevented.
On the one hand, Larsen's unvarnished prose and bulldozing style at times oscillate between the facile and the theatrical. Repeatedly, he holds forth before senior political executives, reporters, and congressional representative at length, challenging their assumptions and parrying their sound-bite-suited questions with his curmudgeon's refrain, "Wrong question." The refrain, which permeates the opening chapters or fusillade of the book, becomes old by page 30. Yet Larsen the pragmatist compensates for the limitations of Larsen the evangelist. And he makes a good case for bringing astronomical excesses under the banner of homeland security back down to Earth.
– Nick Catrantzos
Larsen first arouses reader attention by showing how ill conceived, reflexive responses to real and perceived homeland threats have created more problems than they solved. According to Larsen, over-investment and deficient analysis risk jeopardizing the homeland through irresponsible spending in areas ranging from detection technology at ports to building of walls at America’s undefended borders. Absent a reversal of this trend, Larsen argues cogently that it is precisely such actions on our own part that will realize our adversaries' objectives, bankrupt our economy, and make of all Americans our own worst enemy.
He flatly asserts the folly of succumbing to the rhetoric that America can “win the war against all those who would threaten our homeland,” arguing that the best we can do about attacks is to limit their frequency and severity (pp 84-85). Yet, in Larsen’s view, only a unifying strategy – containment – will prevent the wasteful spending and overreactions by political leaders while offering a degree of focus that will lend credibility to homeland defenses that are otherwise effective only in inflicting greater eventual damage to the economy than terror attacks themselves. Reviewing and cataloging the key threats presenting catastrophic risk, Larsen rates them by a scale (p. 73) that ultimately ranks biological and nuclear weapons as the most severe.
The author then makes the case for focusing on these top two that would potentially drive any nation to its knees. He uses the discussion of nuclear weapons to illustrate how otherwise brilliant scientists, enraptured by the allure of technology solutions often advocated by contractors who stand to profit from selling their devices, can fall prey to impractical solutions. Two such scientists with Homeland Security responsibilities seriously proposed equipping every motor vehicle in America large enough to carry a nuclear bomb with radiological detectors, leaving Larsen to challenge them with analytical questions. As Larson explains, the nuclear devices of greatest concern use highly enriched uranium which is a lower radiation emitter than that of the materials used in nuclear power plants. Why, argues Larsen, would a terrorist smart enough to lay hands on weapons-grade uranium not invest in lead shielding that would make the device capable of eluding the detectors? Moreover, why bankrupt taxpayers with the burden of wasting billions on such a flawed implementation of technology?
Biological weapons, though, strike Larsen as a greater danger. In the Internet age and with the proliferation of information on bioengineering, they are increasingly falling within the capacity of any terrorist to produce in the space of a garage without giving away any telltale signs or signatures necessary for rapid detection and pre-emption. Thus Larsen concludes that biological attacks are inevitable and must be approached as something to be mitigated rather than prevented.
On the one hand, Larsen's unvarnished prose and bulldozing style at times oscillate between the facile and the theatrical. Repeatedly, he holds forth before senior political executives, reporters, and congressional representative at length, challenging their assumptions and parrying their sound-bite-suited questions with his curmudgeon's refrain, "Wrong question." The refrain, which permeates the opening chapters or fusillade of the book, becomes old by page 30. Yet Larsen the pragmatist compensates for the limitations of Larsen the evangelist. And he makes a good case for bringing astronomical excesses under the banner of homeland security back down to Earth.
– Nick Catrantzos
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