GAO has released new testimony on DHS and FEMA readiness preparations for response to major natural disasters by a GAO expert. Apparently it contains no new recommendations, but may be an interesting read if anyone gets a chance.
A new report by the GAO argues that the U.S. export control program, which restricts certain exports based on security concerns, is filled with vulnerabilities, and inadequate controls over things that one would not want to fall into the wrong hands. The problems are utterly famliar — the chronic difficulties of vital systems security in the United States. First, the regulation of exports is spread among different agencies, and it is up to exporters to figure out which one is doing the regulating. Second, there are limited mechainsms for enforcement. Third, there is great difficulty in keeping up with a rapidly changing definition of what constitutes a security threat. In sum, while the U.S. government focuses on the malign proliferators of weaponizable materials there is little assurance that the source might be us.
Seems that after long years of running his dirty bomb scenario by endless audiences in Washington Stephen Flynn managed to convince DHS that the real issue with a dirty bomb attack was the auto-immune response that might shut down global supply chains. The LA Times reports that DHS has released a Strategy to Enhance International Supply Chain Security (the full report can be found here). An object lesson in many things, including in the way that imaginative scenarios can sway policymaking in areas where archival knowledge doesn’t tell us much about the likelihood of future catastrophes. The scenario mentioned in the LA Times article — which concerns a Long Beach nuclear detonation — was created by RAND and is often repeated in discussions of nuclear terrorism. But of greater concern to planners — because it is deemed more likely — is a dirty bomb scenario. And here it is not the immediate impact but the secondary “economic” impacts of the bombing that concern DHS:
“Detlof von Winterfeldt, director of the USC Center for Risk and Economic Analysis of Terrorism, a research center funded by Homeland Security, said that “Our research suggests a dirty bomb could create cancer in tens or hundreds of people. But the economic impacts of the radioactive contamination could be devastating.”
The dirty bomb threat, in other words, is being treated as a quintessential vital systems security threat. As the head of DHS Michael Chertoff said at the launch of the strategy:
“Cleary, if terrorists want to devastate our economy, then from a cost/benefit perspective, one way of doing that is to launch devastating attacks on those essential vehicles for commerce and trade.”
CDC suspended on Saturday all work at Texas A&M biodefense lab due to the failure to report a series of incidents.
Andy and I have written about the origins of “vulnerability thinking” and many dimensions of vital systems security in total war and strategic bombing. In reading Churchill’s “Their Finest Hour,” the second volume of his four-volume series of World War II, I came across a couple interesting nuggets along these lines. In World War II, concern with vital systems was essential to strategic thought on both sides, and at certain points was the dominant consideration. After the fall of France, when Hitler turned his attention to Britain, there was a kind of military stalemate, or at least a situation in which neither side could turn its major strength on the other. The overwhelmingly dominant German army was prevented from invasion across the channel by British naval dominance. Churchill claims that he never believed that Germany could launch a successful invasion. As a consequence, the major concerns revolved around attacks on vital systems. Churchill writes that he considered German u-boat attacks on shipping to be the most serious strategic threat, and the Germans engaged in various forms of terror bombing and strategic bombing during the Battle of Britain, particularly on major centers of industrial production (particularly aircraft production — which seems to have been rather concentrated). Churchill also has some very interesting things to say about vital systems and civil defense, among which the following about preparations for a German invasion. Note the interesting use of quotes around ‘vulnerable points’ — perhaps it was something of a neologism at the time:
Obstacles were placed on many thousand square miles of Britain to impede the landing of air-borne troops. All our aerodromes, radar stations, and fuel depots…needed defence by special garrisons and by their own airmen. Many thousands of ‘vulnerable points’ — bridges, power-stations, depots, vital factories, and the like — had to be guarded day and night from sabotage or sudden onset….The destruction of port facilities, the cratering of key roads, the paralysis of motor transport and of telephones and telegraph stations, of rolling stock or permanent way, before they passed out of our hands were planned to the last detail. Yet, despite all these wise and necessary precautions…there was no question of a scorched earth policy. England was to be defended by its people, not destroyed (p. 177).
Melinda Cooper recently drew my attention to an interesting study conducted by Harvard Medical School Center and sponsored by Swiss Re and the United Nations Development Programme. The study predicts that “climate change will significantly affect the health of humans and ecosystems and these impacts will have economic consequences.” In addition, the study attempts to “survey” existing and future costs of climate change. It argues that the insurance industry “will be at the center of this issue, absorbing risk and helping society and business to adapt and reduce new risks.”