Secret of getting serious on security

As Americans we reflexively take deep dives into details. It is part penchant and part pride that make us act as if examining every minute detail, exposing it to some level of public scrutiny, tracing its antecedents and speculating on why's and wherefores constitutes Part One of solving the problem. Then Part Two becomes an engineering challenge of making minute corrections for every perceived flaw, in the confident hope that this pain-giving form of painstaking will surely order events in such a way as to foreclose future failures. Sadly, results of this approach are as elusive in homeland security as in disaster relief.

Cases in Point:
• Mirandizing instead of interrogating the Christmas underwear bomber, effectively seconding the objective of defense through collection of perishable intelligence to a legalistic and armchair warrior's concern over public relations proprieties
• Trying 9/11 attackers by planning to give them a Manhattan platform from which to conduct a propaganda attack that Guantanamo does not offer.

That this penchant pervades our culture is evident beyond the security realm. Witness the story of a botched relief effort in Haiti chronicled in yesterday's Wall Street Journal (See Haiti Aid Efforts Go Awry in the 'Convoy to Nowhere' by Christopher Rhoads at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704878904575031673153590414.html). Planned to the nth degree, with competent altruists volunteering to drive relief supplies where needed, the effort failed. Why? Could it be that our natural biases rob us of a view of the larger picture? All the relief was about concentrating supplies in one place, transporting them to another, and then breaking them into smaller concentrations to be distributed from yet another central point. What did this create? Multiple, cascading points of failure. What if we started dispersing supplies through air drops instead of concentrating and planning complicated truck deliveries that end up blocked or diverted?

The allure of concentrating too intently is almost as irresistible as that of its cousin, focusing over much on detail. After all, isn't it easier to secure anything -- including food and medicine -- if you keep it all in one place, transport it altogether, and then distribute it from a single, fortified location. The answer is a thoughtful "yes, but." Yes, but putting all the eggs in one basked invariably makes an unmistakable target of that basket. Dispersing the assets, instead, exemplifies the Security 101 rule of distributing one's risk. In the long run, such dispersal makes it harder for misfortune or bureaucratic error to undermine your relief effort and for rogues to target your supplies. Direct, wide dispersal would also remove middle men (the province that thugs and crooks like to reserve for themselves) from standing in the way between needed supplies and needy beneficiaries. The right priority should help reveal the right tactic.

Similarly, for security, a little more alacrity in putting defensive objectives ahead of political navel-gazing might be the shorter path to excellence.

-- Nick Catrantzos