Homeland Security Watch

Carl Sagan’s words about science echoed today as I tried unsuccessfully to think about what is going on in Japan.

“We have … arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces.”

If what happened in Japan were a table top exercise, no one would allow the scenario to be used.

“OK, first we’ll do a huge earthquake; bigger than anyone has ever seen before.”

“Right. Then comes the tsunami.”

“Excellent, and we make sure the waves also hit another continent.

“Perfect. And the earthquake is so massive it knocks the earth off its axis.”

“What?”

“Right. That’s too much. How about this. We blow up a nuclear power plant.

“Outstanding. Make it three power plants and maybe we really have something.”

—————

Quotes from one of the hundreds of news reports:

“People are suppressing hunger with instant noodles or rice balls.”

“Not much was left when search-and-rescue teams finally reached Natori on Monday. There was searching, but not much rescuing. There was, essentially, nobody left to rescue.”

“People are surviving on little food and water. Things are simply not coming.”

“We have repeatedly asked the government to help us, but the government is overwhelmed by the scale of the damage and the enormous demand for food and water.”

“We are getting around just 10 percent of what we have requested.”

“We have requested funeral homes across the nation to send us many body bags and coffins. But we simply don’t have enough.”

“We just did not expect such a thing to happen. It’s just overwhelming.”

“We are patient because everyone in the quake hit areas are suffering.”

“I’m giving up hope.”

“I never imagined we would be in such a situation.”

“I had a good life before. Now we have nothing. No gas, no electricity, no water.”

“All my other relatives are dead. Washed away.”

—————

I was on the US east coast when the earthquake hit. I heard that by 11 AM eastern time, the US west coast would get hit by waves that traveled 500 miles an hour. I live about an hour from the Pacific Ocean. My family will be ok.

But still. How could that be?

Then Sagan’s voice again: “… almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster.”

—————

More quotes from news reports:

“…radioactive releases of steam from the crippled plants could go on for weeks or even months…. More steam releases also mean the plume headed across the Pacific could continue to grow. The White House sought to tamp down concerns, saying modeling done by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission had concluded “Hawaii, Alaska, the US territories and the US West Coast are not expected to experience any harmful levels of radioactivity.”

I am never comforted by passive voice sentences. But it’s the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). They ought to understand this stuff. I certainly don’t.

So I went to the NRC’s website, because people who read blogs go to websites to learn things.

The site is http://www.nrc.gov/. The home page had a picture of 3 men in ties and one woman staring at paper on a desk. Maybe its a stock photo. The caption under the photo says:

“The NRC has been monitoring the Japanese reactor events via its Headquarters Operations Center in Rockville, Md., on a 24-hour-a-day basis. MORE”

Click on MORE and you download a one page press release that says toward the end:

“The NRC will not comment on hour-to-hour developments at the Japanese reactors. This is an ongoing crisis for the Japanese who have primary responsibility.”

Good policy decision. For 1955 maybe.

But I want to give the NRC the benefit of the doubt. I’m sure they are busy.

They do offer a link to their “Emergency Preparedness and Response” page:

The vapidity of the prose on that page makes me long for ready.gov (whose main page provides links to information about tsunamis, flooding and the 2011 national level exercise).

I’ll look at that later. Right now I want to know more about how the west coast is “not expected to experience any harmful levels of radioactivity.”

—————

I know water traveled from Japan to Oregon at 500 miles an hour. I know weather travels from west to east. I know something called “radioactive steam” is being released and may continue to be released “for weeks or even months.” I also know first reports are frequently wrong. But I want to do my part as a prepared citizen.

What if the modeling and the passive voice sentences are wrong?

What if some crap in the atmosphere modified by the word “radioactive” makes its way across the Pacific?

I know with almost moral certainty that’s not likely to happen. Just as I know with almost moral certainty terrorists will not attack the elementary school a mile from my house. And the creek in my backyard is not going to flood and sweep my house away. One — a person, a community, a nation — accepts certain low probability, high consequence risks.

“We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces,” Carl Sagan tells me.

—————

The NRC’s “Emergency Preparedness and Response” page seems to be mostly information for people who live near nuclear power plants.

In 2011, does living on the same planet as Japan mean I now live near a nuclear power plant?

No, says the NRC.

I have to be within a 10 mile radius before the page will speak to my concerns.

—————

I do a little more reading on the NRC page and see something about potassium iodide.

You can learn about obtaining potassium iodine, which reduces the absorption of radioactive iodide, by contacting your State or local government’s emergency organization (see FEMA’s State Offices and Agencies of Emergency Management ). Potassium iodide can also be purchased from local pharmacies. You can learn more about the Use of Potassium Iodide on NRC website.

“Reduces the absorption of radioactive iodide.” OK. That’s got to be a good thing.

So I follow that link and read:

If taken properly, potassium iodide (KI) will help reduce the dose of radiation to the thyroid gland from radioactive iodines, and reduce the risk of thyroid cancer. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has issued guidance on the dosage and effectiveness of potassium iodide.

The NRC provides this link to a PDF document on the FDA website.

Click on that link and this is what you see:

Page Not Found

Our apologies. The link or location you used does not exist or was moved.

Clicking on the other NRC links does not immediately provide any more useful information — whether from federal resources or from my state.

I know as this “event” continues to evolve, the national knowledge construction machine will triangulate a coherent story about any radiation threat and what to do — if anything — about it.

But I want to do something now.  See something, do something.

—————

I’m not panicking. But I am being ignorant — in (I hope) a good way. I lack knowledge about the potential effects of radioactive stuff mixing with the Oregon rain and falling on my children.

Probably never going to happen. Not in a million years. But still, I do like to be prepared. Just in case.

One of the mantras from my special event days came back to me: “It’s better to have something and not need it, than to need it and not have it.”

I’ve done enough research for today. Time to get some potassium iodide.

—————

I know I’m never going to need it, but the NRC site did say “Potassium iodide can also be purchased from local pharmacies.”

I went to the health food store first. Then one pharmacy. Then another. Then a third.

All out.

Seems there may have been a small run on potassium iodide.

“We have more coming in tomorrow,” one guy told me. “I’ll call you when we get it in.”

A pharmacist at a national chain store stuttered when I asked.

“People have been asking about that. It must be for that…. that thing”

She couldn’t think of the word. Or maybe she didn’t want to say it. I didn’t say anything either.

Then — like the first time you go through a back scatter device at a TSA checkpoint — I surrendered.

“That ‘radiation’ thing?”

“Yeah,” she agreed. “That radiation thing. We don’t carry it. You want me to call the store manager?”

“No thanks,” I said, wondering why she asked me that.

I checked its availability on Amazon.

Crooks! Gouging!” shouted one (somewhat factually inaccurate) reviewer published on Monday. “This is OBSCENE! These pills go for 5 dollars per pack. Even l0 would be too much. Just this morning they jacked it from 9 to 49 and 10 minutes later… jacked it up to l00 dollars. They jacked it up twice in less than an hour.”

Interesting.  An internet panic?

Am I contributing to prudent preparedness or ignorant panic?

—————

Since last autumn, FEMA has been talking about changing planning assumptions from whatever they are now (I think all hazards) to something called “whole community” and “maximum of maximums.” For an example, see http://blog.fema.gov/2010/12/70-earthquake-in-midwest-planning-for.html

The slightly Freudian acronym for “maximum of maximum” is MOM. Perhaps MOM was meant to be somewhat comforting. Or disturbing.  Or confusing.

The National Level Exercise in May will use a maximum of maximum assumption to simulate a major earthquake along the New Madrid fault.

FEMA’s whole community strategy “is built upon a foundation of a meta-scenario consisting of the maximum of maximum challenges across a range of scenarios.”

Maximum of maximums (or maximax) is also a decision science term, referring to a “strategy … that prefers the alternative with the chance of the best possible outcome, even if its expected outcome and its worst possible outcome are worse than other alternatives.”

That definition takes a bit of unpacking before meaning emerges.

FEMA is less abstract about MOM. They are talking about an event that

- Affects about 7 million people

- Covers 25,000 square miles

- Affects several states and FEMA regions

- 190,000 fatalities in initial hours

- 265,000 citizens require emergency medical attention

- Severe damage to critical infrastructure

- Severe damage to essential transportation infrastructure

- Ingress/egress options limited.

—————

I went to a conference last week where FEMA leaders talked about their new strategy. I think they are waiting for President Obama to sign a new national preparedness directive before they make a really big deal about this change.

There were a few dozen experienced emergency management and homeland security professionals in the room when the FEMA representatives talked about “whole community” and “maximum of maximum.”

My sense was some people did not understand it. Some people understood it and liked it. Other people understood it but were concerned that now states and cities would have to change their planning assumptions (again).

I’m not sure I understood all of it. But today, FEMA’s definition of MOM does not go far enough for me.

It says nothing about the earth moving off its axis.

Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, a former CIA officer and Chief of the Weapons of Mass Destruction Department following 9/11, as well as former Director of Intelligence and Counterintelligence at the Department of Energy, has published a new report on “Islam and the Bomb.”  This is not a philosophical or religious tract on the underlying beliefs of Muslims concerning violence, but instead an analysis of the arguments made for and against acquisition and use of nuclear weapons. From his preface:

When I began this project, my goal was to develop insight into the deeper thought process behind al-Qaeda’s nuclear intent. I expected to find evidence that their interest is strong, perhaps unshakable, but hinges on capability, i.e., they will use weapons of mass destruction if they are able to acquire them. Specifically, I set out to examine the impact al-Qaeda’s apparent frustration in acquiring WMD has had on the group’s intent; perhaps their interest has waned in recent years, or has been overtaken by global events.

I was surprised to discover that al-Qaeda’s WMD ambitions are stronger than ever. This intent no longer feels theoretical, but operational. I believe al-Qaeda is laying the groundwork for a large scale attack on the United States, possibly in the next year or two. The attack may or may not involve the use of WMD, but there are signs that al-Qaeda is working on an event on a larger scale than the 9/11 attack.

Mowatt-Larssen is concerned that Al Qaeda has gone out of its way to not simply justify violence against its enemies but a very particular and vast scale of destruction.

For years, I chased leads to al-Qaeda’s efforts to acquire weapons of mass destruction (WMD), without finding the answers to fundamental questions. Yes, it is clear that al-Qaeda is seeking high-end WMD, specifically nuclear and biological weapons capable of causing mass casualties. But why has al-Qaeda set their sights so high? Isn’t a “dirty bomb” or a chemical device a more probable threat, since such weapons are much easier to obtain? What is al-Qaeda’s justification for using WMD — how much of a factor is religion in their thinking? What can terrorists hope to achieve by indiscriminately killing people on a mass scale?

Due to Al Qaeda’s use and seeming requirement of religious justification for such acts, Mowatt-Larssen contends that those justifications require analysis.

Considering the daunting challenge of divining what lies in someone’s mind, my modest objective is to present a framework for analyzing key factors that impact on the religious justification under Islam for and against nuclear weapons. Al-Qaeda (Sunni extremism) and Iran (Shia theocracy) are offered as two case studies in this regard, because their potential acquisition of nuclear weapons is of greatest contemporary concern. Presenting them side by side will invite a comparison of the respective arguments of a state and sub-state actor, in both houses of Islam. However, their inclusion together in this project should not be construed as an effort to compare or equate al-Qaeda and Iran with one another, either their motivations, or in moral terms.

The sections of this report represent a compilation of the various arguments that are being made in the Islamic community today. I have endeavored to faithfully represent the views of key voices in the Muslim world, scholars, and extremists, whether they are for or against nuclear weapons — and to put their testimony on the record. For this reason, the paper contains a large number of quotes and excerpts of key lines of reasoning for and against the bomb.

During a time when the majority of pundits and terrorism experts express the opinion that Al Qaeda represents an ideology that perhaps motivates action or inspires franchises and not a direct operational threat, Mowatt-Larssen’s ideas and conclusions will be controversial (never mind for those who discount the threat of nuclear terrorism entirely).

The entire report can be downloaded here: http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/files/uploads/Islam_and_the_Bomb-Final.pdf

Also challenging the conventional wisdom regarding Al Qaeda’s strength is Leah Farrall, an Australian counter terrorism analyst with an article in the latest edition of  Foreign Affairs. “How al qaeda works” argues that:

Despite nearly a decade of war, al Qaeda is stronger today than when it carried out the 9/11 attacks. Before 2001, its history was checkered with mostly failed attempts to fulfill its most enduring goal: the unification of other militant Islamist groups under its strategic leadership. However, since fleeing Afghanistan to Pakistan’s tribal areas in late 2001, al Qaeda has founded a regional branch in the Arabian Peninsula and acquired franchises in Iraq and the Maghreb. Today, it has more members, greater geographic reach, and a level of ideological sophistication and influence it lacked ten years ago.

For a limited time you can read the entire article for free on her blog, “All Things Counter Terrorism:” http://allthingscounterterrorism.com/foreign-affairs-article-how-al-qaeda-works/

Today’s post was written by Nick Catrantzos.  Nick writes for the All Secure blog and is the security director for a large public organization.  He has written once before for homeland security watch.

————————————

I would rather consult a twice convicted Vegas bookie on the odds of a terrorist attack than any number of government- or industry-subsidized risk whisperer purveyors of formulae.

Why? Because the latter — whether they do this openly or subconsciously — tailor their products to their masters, who increasingly call for risk assessments as a means of demonstrating how much more their given operation or jurisdiction merits funding over a lesser competitor, i.e., an entity not nearly facing so much risk of dire consequences.

The same approach holds true regardless of whether the risk calculation involves the likelihood of terrorist attack or of natural disaster. The master wants as much of the pot of available money as can be won by legitimate wrangling and maneuvering, as for Urban Area Security Initiative funds. Hence the recent news from the New York Observer (details here) that an amendment has just passed the House that would enable New York City to receive more anti-terrorism funding.

Where do calculations of risk come into play?

This amendment proposes that only the 25 “highest-risk” cities would receive UASI funding. Alas for those cities that may actually be more vulnerable because they lack the resources to detect, counter, or mitigate an attack. One wonders if America’s adversaries are sufficiently respectful of such maneuvering to heed the risk whisperers and to limit their attacks only to the 25 designated cities.

Now for a return to the Vegas bookie. Isn’t he a little more palatable by contrast? Why? Because he has a vested interest in the results of his oddsmaking. If he is wrong, the bet that has to be paid off affects his bottom line. If he is right, the profits are what he has earned.

Today’s risk whisperers, by contrast, have everything to gain and nothing to lose by offering their dire predictions and calculations of relative risk.

First, no public or private institution accords risk assessors executive decision-making authority. This is why the Department of Energy, despite generations of sponsoring Sandia and its computationally intensive risk assessment methodologies, does not look to its own in-house risk gaugers to decide budget priorities to counter leaks of nuclear secrets or security breaches.

Second, risk whisperers have no skin in the game. They suffer no penalty for getting it wrong. Instead, they have the luxury of proclaiming that unknown variables came into play, or that their advice was imperfectly followed, or any other reasonable-sounding excuses.

Imagine what would have happened if carnage experienced at Oklahoma City, Virginia Tech, or Fort Hood had to be anticipated through the same risk assessments that now determine which 25 cities are in greater danger than any others. Would any of these venues have made the list? Probably not. One can already hear the disclaimers being whispered: not the same kind of attack … different situations … other variables.

But the bookie would have to pay for getting it wrong and, so chastened, would be a little more careful in handicapping the next event.

Give me the bookie any time.

Thursday the nation’s intelligence chiefs appeared before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.  Below is the line-up of those testifying. As of February 12 only the DNI’s testimony is linked on the Committee’s website (and below).   I cannot — yet — find other prepared testimony.

Media and partisan attention has, as usual, focused less on the substance of the prepared remarks and much more on two spontaneous comments by Messrs. Clapper and Panetta.

Given the dramatic events unfolding in Egypt it was inevitable — and really entirely reasonable — that the live testimony would focus mostly on making sense of the immediate crisis.  This opportunity might have been embraced as an opportunity for intellectual humility and honest examination of the innate limitations of intelligence analysis and operations.  But humility does not often make an appearance inside the beltway; nor on rare appearance is humility usually rewarded, quite the contrary.

James R. Clapper, Director of National Intelligence

Click immediately above for full prepared testimony. Answering a question about the Muslim Brotherhood, he characterized it as, “a very heterogeneous group, largely secular, which has eschewed violence and has decried Al Qaeda as a perversion of Islam.”  See more from ABC News and The Telegraph.

Leon E. Panetta, Director of the Central Intelligence Agency

The CIA Director offered committee members, “I got the same information you did, that there is a strong likelihood that Mubarak may step down this evening.”  When a few hours later the Egyptian President decided to spend one more night in office, Panetta’s statement and judgment became a target.  See a thoughtful take by Jena McGregor in the Washington Post.

Michael E. Leiter, Director of the National Counterterrorism Center

I cannot find the February 10 testimony to the Intelligence Committee, but you can read the February 9 testimony to the House Homeland Security Committee: Understanding the Homeland Threat Landscape.

Lieutenant General Ronald L. Burgess, Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Department of Defense

Robert S. Mueller, III, Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation

Back in September Director Mueller testified to the House Homeland Security Committee on Nine Years after 9/11 Confronting the Terrorist Threat to the United States.

Caryn A. Wagner, Under Secretary for Intelligence and Analysis, Department of Homeland Security

In late September 2010 Ms. Wagner testified before the House Committee on Homeland Security Subcommittee on Intelligence, Information Sharing, and Terrorism Risk Assessment.

Thomas A. Ferguson, Principal Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, Department of Defense

Philip S. Goldberg, Assistant Secretary of State, Bureau of Intelligence and Research, Department of State

If any HLSWatch readers find the missing prepared testimony — or especially good coverage of the hearing — please provide a link in the comments.  By “good coverage” I mean attention to the threat analysis, not just supposed gaffes in answering questions.  With thanks to Librarian Stephanie (see comments) you can also access video coverage of the live hearing from CSPAN.

Retrospectively, over the last year and more the best sustained intelligence and analysis on Egypt has probably been forthcoming from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and especially its Bipartisan Working Group on Egypt.  Carnegie products on Egypt and the Muslim Brotherhood — developed prior to the current crisis — are available from the Carnegie Guide to Egypt’s Election.  More current analysis is available from the Carnegie Endowment’s Middle East Program.

Last week several of us agreed, disagreed, discussed and attempted to discern the meaning involved in a collision between tens-of-thousands of National Capital Region commuters with five inches of snow.   This week it was the turn of commuters from Oklahoma City to Boston with a foot or more of snow.

Immediately below  – with thanks to the Chicago Sun-Times —  is Tuesday night’s outcome along Chicago’s Lakeshore Drive.

“We know that hundreds of people were very inconvenienced, and we apologize for that,” Mayor Daley’s Chief of Staff Ray Orozco said.

“While we wanted to get to these people as quickly as possible, we wanted to get to them as safely as possible,” Orozco said.

Some motorists criticized the hours of delay, as they coped without food or water in their cars.

Lincoln Park resident Julius Jellinek, who was trapped on Lake Shore Drive for six hours, called it “a disgrace” that the city took as long as it did to move cars blocking the exit ramps.

“There was absolutely no reason to hold us hostage,” he said. “With a little planning or a little thinking, they could take all of the cars off Lake Shore Drive, the ones that were stuck.”

–+–

To which I feel compelled to respond, might others than the government have done a little planning or a little thinking before the blizzard arrived?

Sunday afternoon I was talking to my Dad who lives in rural Illinois.  A rigid rule for Midwesterners is to acknowledge the weather.  ”Sounds like a really big one heading your way Tuesday, eh Dad?”  ”Well, its our turn.  Good couple of days to stay home and drink coffee.”  Perhaps all those trapped on LSD were not real Midwesterners but Californians on vacation.

On Monday, January 31 the Chicago Tribune’s Weather Center said of Tuesday, “Snowfall totals in excess of 12 inches coupled with winds of 25 to 40 mph will make long distance travel extremely dangerous if not impossible.”  Short-distance too.

Something Chicago’s Lake Shore Drive commuters shared with those on the District’s 16th Street a week before was the timing of the storm.  In each case, the really bad weather rolled in during mid-to-late afternoon on a work day.   On Tuesday the first snow-bands hit Chicago shortly after 2:00PM.

Here’s a Tribune weather blog about an hour after the first snowflakes: “3:31PM  UPDATE: From bad to worse.   Winds gusting to 40mph will make this storm a showstopper.   A spotter in Tinley Park reports that visibility is down to zero with snow drifts building quickly.”

We should be encouraged that over the last week usage of the National Weather Service website increased five-fold.  Most Chicagoans and others were paying attention and making mindful choices.

Maybe the glass is more than half-full… even eighty-percent full.  In both the NCR and Cook County the vast majority minimized their risk.  Some others understood the risk, made the best choice they could, and lost the bet.  Still others were oblivious.  Taken together the unlucky and stupid probably total no more than Professor Pareto’s twenty-percent.  But is it possible we spend 80 percent of our time, energy, and money on that twenty-percent (or less)? (See more on the Pareto principle)

In both Chicago and the National Capital Region the weather (risk) forecast was accurate.  But many either missed or discounted the risk.  We do the same with hurricanes, wildfires, terrorism, and industrial catastrophes.  Unfortunately, it can go from bad to worse very quickly… and twenty percent can add up to a great many.

Real resilience will never emerge from a government program, though government programs can help or hurt.  Real resilience is the outcome of personal and social habits involving attention, self-reliance, and other-awareness (another way of rendering the headline).   It is my experience that most people are inclined toward resilience and welcome working with others to enhance overall resilience.  I am not sure how to address the persistently oblivious minority.

Even if the risk is communicated — clearly and in advance — some significant number will not plan or think about the risk until too late.  It is the grasshopper and the ants all over again.  Because I am in relationship with the grasshopper — and enjoy his music — I want to help as much as possible.  But when the grasshopper’s own choice (or non-choice) puts him at risk, could we at least stop criticizing the ant for not getting there more quickly?

No wonder emergency responders are so often fond of dark humor.  They need to laugh or they might cry.

Sally Forth on February 1, 2011 by Francesco Marciuliano, drawn by Craig Macintosh, distributed by King Features.

Today’s lead editorial in the Washington Post is blistering — it also neglects the most valuable lesson to be learned from an admittedly hard knock.

NO OFFICIAL EXCUSE, rationalization or explanation can justify the terrible – and in many instances terrifying – commute that many motorists and bus riders experienced Wednesday night. That the nation’s capital was brought to its knees by what in some places was no more than five inches of snow from a long-predicted storm is more than embarrassing and infuriating: It should also be cause for real worry about the region’s ability to cope with far more serious threats to its safety.

In the aftermath of the late-afternoon winter storm that swept the region, officials were advancing a number of explanations for the hellish circumstances that gridlocked area roads and trapped commuters in their cars for as long as 13 hours: Rain washed away the preconditioning salt treatment of roads. A layer of ice formed and was followed by an intense period of heavy snowfall. Add in the rush-hour timing and the notorious inability of many Washington residents to drive – or even show some common sense – in the snow, and some problems were inevitable.

Read the entire editorial here: How did five inches of snow turn into a disaster?

Today the National Capital Region’s airwaves and hallways are abuzz about how Wednesday’s snow event demonstrates the region’s lack of readiness to conduct an effective evacuation.  I would argue Wednesday afternoon and evening tells us much more about how we have focused too much attention on evacuation and too little on shelter-in-place.

At 2:08AM on Wednesday morning, I received the following from AlertDC (sign up here!)

National Weather Service has issued a Winter Weather Advisory from 10AM to 4AM Thursday morning. A mix of rain, sleet, snow to start becoming all snow during the mid to later afternoon. Accumulations of 3 to 5 inches or expected. precipitation is expected to change to all snow by late afternoon with the heaviest of snowfall is expected between 4PM and midnight. Temperatures in the mid 30′s with a northwest winds 10 to 15 MPH.

This is almost precisely what happened.

At 11:00 AM on Wednesday AlertDC — provided free-of-charge to your hand-held or other digital device by the District’s Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency — added a sense of urgency:

National Weather Service issued Winter Storm Warning until 4:00 AM Thursday for the Metropolitan Area (including District of Columbia). Precipitation of snow, heavy snow at times late in the afternoon hours. Expected accumulations of 5 to 10 inches of snow.

The same message was being shouted aloud by every radio and TV station.  I wanted to stay where I was Wednesday morning.  But I could not re-calendar a critical meeting.  I was able to shift the time and place to allow me to drive in, park, and absolutely plan to not drive anywhere — even a few blocks — after 3:00.

What happened on Wednesday afternoon is the urban core evacuated into the heart of the storm.  Look at the weather data posted below (thanks to Weather Underground).  At precisely the time the federal government’s Office of Personnel Management gave what was, in effect, an evacuation order the temperature fell and the precipitation spiked.   The federal enclave was evacuating directly into the plume… fortunately this time it was only ice and snow.

In the vast majority of threat scenarios shelter-in-place should be our default.  We should plan, prepare, and train for shelter-in-place.  We should plan, prepare, and train individuals to access pertinent information, consider the entire context, and make decisions that match their considered priorities, the context, and a full range of options.  Evacuation is often a bad option. That’s the lesson to be learned from Wednesday.

Twenty-five years ago today the space shuttle Challenger exploded.

Last year there were no airline fatalities in the United States.

The financial crisis was avoidable, according to the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission.

On Wednesday and Thursday the Dow Jones Industrials briefly reclaimed 12,000 for the first time since June 2008.

In the aftermath of the street revolution in Tunisia, this morning the streets of Cairo, Sanaa, Tripoli and elsewhere were full of the angry (and hopeful).

Are these headlines in any (reasonable) way related and meaningful to homeland security?

In her USA Today special on the Challenger explosion, Traci Watson offers some intriguing lessons learned.  The lessons suggest how an ambitious and potentially meaningful program came to a close.  The final space shuttle flight is tentatively scheduled for June with no substantial successor program identified.

To better suggest possible relevance with homeland security I will — slightly — amend headliness for two of the  four lessons learned:

1. The mission takes big bucks… so it requires a big justification.
2. The strategy and vehicle selected couldn’t sustain its business plan.
3. Complacency is hard to avoid. (verbatim)
4. There will be accidents (verbatim)

Ergo, if the business plan cannot really justify the big bucks then when a bit of human complacency results in a dramatic failure (or two), the entire enterprise — no matter its nobility or potentiality — will tend to implode.  If you are not familiar with “business plan” consider raison d’etre, practical purpose, or return-on-investment.

Please read Ms. Watson’s original for details related to the Challenger, but it does not take much imagination to apply the word-problem to homeland security.

In contrast to the space shuttle program, even as the number of flights and passengers have increased, the number of airline fatalities has decreased.  According to another USA Today article (can you tell I have been staying in hotels alot?):

The average number of deaths fell from about 86 a year in the 1990s to 46 a year since 2000, a 46% drop. Last year also marked the first time that there were no passenger fatalities on any airline based in developed nations, says Arnold Barnett, a professor who specializes in accident statistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management. ”In the entire First World, fatal crashes are at the brink of extinction,” Barnett says.

Improvements in aircraft engineering, maintenance,  decision-processes, and training/education have substantially reduced the probability of fatal accidents.  The same might be said for the space shuttle as well.  The difference is almost certainly the perceived (actual?) value of the business plan.  The advantage of commercial air travel — despite everything — remains clear.  The advantage of the shuttle compared with alternatives is not nearly as distinct.  But, make no mistake, there will be airline fatalities and human complacency or intention are likely to play important roles.

Yesterday the 576 page report of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission was released.  They found:

The crisis was the result of human action and inaction, not of Mother Nature or computer models gone haywire… The captains of finance and the public stewards of our financial system ignored warnings and failed to question, understand and manage evolving risks within a system essential to the well-being of the American public. Theirs was a big miss, not a stumble… The greatest tragedy would be to accept the refrain that no one could have seen this coming and thus nothing could have been done. If we accept this notion, it will happen again.

I am entirely prepared to accept this finding, except for the implication of the last sentence. No matter what improvements are made, it will happen again. Something like the financial crisis is inevitable. The most important precondition for mitigating the consequences is a very keen sense of impending failure.

Regarding the recent stock market rally Dan Caplinger writes, “When everyone is frightened about the stock market, opportunistic investors start looking for bargains. But right now, after a huge rally over the past four months, investors are getting cocky with their profits — and contrarian investors should be looking for ways to protect themselves.”  What goes up will come down.

Yesterday in Davos, French President Nicholas Sarkozy warned that monetary imbalances “have risen five-fold in recent years … and could bring down the whole house of cards.”

On January 13 speaking at the Doha Forum for the Future of the Middle East, Secretary Clinton said:

We all know this region faces serious challenges, even beyond the conflicts that dominate the headlines of the day. And we have a lot of work to do. This forum was designed to be not just an annual meeting where we talk with and at each other, but a launching pad for some of the institutional changes that will deal with the challenges that we all know are present.

For example, a growing majority of this region is under the age of 30. In fact, it is predicted that in just one country, Yemen, the population will double in 30 years. These young people have a hard time finding work. In many places, there are simply not enough jobs. Across the region, one in five young people is unemployed. And in some places, the percentage is far more. While some countries have made great strides in governance, in many others people have grown tired of corrupt institutions and a stagnant political order. They are demanding reform to make their governments more effective, more responsive, and more open. And all this is taking place against a backdrop of depleting resources: water tables are dropping, oil reserves are running out, and too few countries have adopted long-term plans for addressing these problems.

Each country, of course, has its own distinct challenges, and each its own achievements. But in too many places, in too many ways, the region’s foundations are sinking into the sand. The new and dynamic Middle East that I have seen needs firmer ground if it is to take root and grow everywhere.

The next day the long-time Tunisian strongman, Ben Ali, fled to exile in Saudi Arabia.  That pebble in the pond continues to ripple.

Airline travel is a highly engineered complex human-machine interface operating within sometimes extreme, but generally predictable conditions. There is constant risk.  A large population has, for now, decided the benefit justifies the risk and cost.

The space shuttle is a highly engineered complex human-machine interface operating at the edge of our experience and knowledge. There is constant risk.  It has been decided the benefit no longer justifies the risk and cost.

The stock market is a complex human system facilitated and amplified by highly engineered machine processes.  There is constant risk. A large population has, for now, decided the benefit justifies the risk and cost.

In the Middle East we are on the sharp edge of a profound demographic and social shift.  A large population has decided the current approach to social engineering is no longer worth the costs. Risk is spiking.  Whether very soon or a bit later, the current arrangements will be superseded.  By what is not nearly as clear.

Whatever else, the homeland security business plan involves risk anticipation.  Do you see what I see?

Late last week the US Geological Survey and others reported out a study of a historically documented pattern of super-flooding along the West Coast. Even in California the report has not gotten the attention I expected.

Moreover, much of the limited attention has signaled world-weary fatalism or knee-jerk skepticism.  The effort deserves more balanced and simply more attention.

Following is a related news story from the Sacramento Bee with some online links — click on any blue text below — and interlinear comments by yours truly.

CALIFORNIA HAS HIGHER RISK OF CATASTROPHIC RAIN STORMS THAN ANY REGION, STUDY SAYS

SACRAMENTO, Calif. – California has more risk of catastrophic storms than any other region in the country – even the Southern hurricane states, according to a new study released Thursday.

(A 183 page overview of the study is available from USGS)

The two-year study by the U.S. Geological Survey is the most thorough effort yet to assess the potential effects of a “worst-case” storm in California.

It builds on a new understanding of so-called atmospheric rivers, a focusing of high-powered winds that drag a fire hose of tropical moisture across the Pacific Ocean, pointed directly at California for days on end. The state got a relatively tame taste of the phenomenon in December.

(Is an Atmospheric River the cause of the epic flooding in Queensland?   See: Australian Bureau of Meteorology)

The team of experts that developed the scenario can’t say when it will happen. But they do say it has happened in the past and is virtually certain to strike again.

(We can seldom predict catastrophe, all the more reason to anticipate it.)

“This storm, with essentially the same probability as a major earthquake, is potentially four to five times more damaging,” said Lucy Jones, USGS chief scientist on the study. “That’s not something that is in the public consciousness.”

(It is a low frequency — but periodically recurring — event with very high consequences.)

The study aims to fix that.

A conference on the subject, ending Friday at California State University, Sacramento, brings together hundreds of emergency planners to discuss the worst-case storm and how to prepare for it.

(I wonder if there are specific plans to extend the conversation beyond emergency planners? Hope so.)

The USGS is assessing a variety of natural hazards across the country. California was chosen for the latest project, called ArkStorm, because the state “has the potential for the biggest rainfall events in the country,” Jones said.

(You can scan USGS work on a range of natural hazards at their website.)

In December, an atmospheric river threw a series of wet storms at the state, breaking rainfall records in many areas across California. One part of Los Angeles County got 17 inches of rain in three days. Disasters were declared in 11 counties.

(I understand this is the same weather pattern behind the Queensland flooding.)

In the study, researchers used computer models and a composite of three historical storms to estimate a worst-case event: a torrent of tropical rain for nine straight days.

It amounts to a 500-year storm. In the lingo of disaster managers, that does not mean it happens only once every 500 years, but that it has two-tenths percent chance of occurring in any given year.

The Central Valley and the Sacramento region are likely to suffer the worst effects because they lie within a funnel for the state’s biggest rivers.

Such storms have happened. The primary example in the study occurred over December and January, 1861-62. Rain fell on and off for 45 days. Sacramento was inundated, and Gov.-elect Leland Stanford famously took a rowboat to his inauguration.

The researchers used soil samples to estimate that similar megastorms hit the state on at least six other occasions in the past 2 millenia, at 200- to 400-year intervals.

(In my thinking, the geologic and historical record differentiates this study from other modeling or projections.)

Of course, a lot has changed since 1861 – for better and for worse. Central Valley levees are generally stronger and more comprehensive now. On the other hand, millions more people and more economic activity depend on those levees.

The report acknowledges that some experts disagree with the severity of the scenario, especially in Sacramento and the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.

Joe Countryman, president of MBK Engineers in Sacramento, who has decades of flood-control experience in the region and saw a draft of the study several months ago, said it lacked detailed analysis of reservoir operations and river flow capacity.

“As an exercise to test emergency procedures, OK. I’m not against it,” he said. “It seems to me much bigger than anything could actually be.”

(Given the geologic record — or just what we are seeing in Queensland — what is the source of skepticism?)

But the researchers also note that none of the levees is built for a 500-year storm. The best – such as those in Yuba County’s Plumas Basin and parts of Sacramento – are built for a 200-year storm.

Potential consequences include:

-$1 trillion in damages statewide – five times worse than a massive earthquake, which likely would affect only one region.

-1.5 million people displaced, about the same number affected by Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans in 2005.

-Potentially hundreds of people killed, based on the inability of some vulnerable groups to evacuate, or for help to reach them.

-Pollution from flooded wastewater treatment plants, refineries and dairies. Some sewer plants might not return to operation for months.

“For a lot of people in California, we don’t think of ourselves as being this flood-prone,” said Laurie Johnson, an urban planning and disaster recovery expert, and co-author of the report. “It’s just too difficult to comprehend.”

What should people do?

Anyone living behind levees should buy flood insurance, Jones said. Only 12 percent do currently.

Citizens can also support urban planning efforts to steer development away from flood-prone areas, and support continued levee improvements.

The study estimates that upgrading urban levees to withstand the worst-case storm might cost $25 billion – a sum that pales next to the potential for hundreds of billions in storm damages.

Officials hope emergency planners use the ArkStorm report to prepare for the worst.

The next step is to develop a storm-rating scale similar to that used for hurricanes. It would assign a number to a storm based on predicted severity.

END OF SACRAMENTO BEE STORY

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Much more is available regarding ARkStorm (Atmospheric River plus k Storm, get it?) and other high consequence hazards from USGS and CalTech at the Multi Hazards Demonstration Project website.

From a USGS news release:

According to FEMA Region IX Director, Nancy Ward, “The ARkStorm report will prove to be another invaluable tool in engaging the whole of our community in addressing flood emergencies in California. It is entirely possible that flood control infrastructure and mitigation efforts could be overwhelmed by the USGS ARkStorm scenario, and the report suggests ways forward to limit the damage that is sure to result.”

I hope so.  This is the kind of information that needs to be packaged and pushed out to the public for broad consideration.  We  should not wait to develop official answers and assurances before engaging the public.  In dealing with potential catastrophe, such answers do not exist.  But in my experience when clear historical precedence is presented with credible empirical analysis it can capture public attention and spur the creativity of communities.

Last week I commended the Commission’s preview chapter for its punchy prose.  Policy makers had, it seemed,  learned how to channel Raymond Chandler.  The full report reads more like a wonk’s wet dream.  But policy pornography has its place.  Depending on your particular fetish, you are likely to fill your fancy somewhere in the 360-plus pages.

Find the full report here: Deepwater: The Gulf Oil Disaster and the Future of Offshore Drilling.

There are two recommendations that have strategic implications for most of the homeland security enterprise.

1. “The oil and gas industry should establish a private organization to develop, adopt, and enforce standards of excellence to ensure continuous improvement in safety and operational integrity offshore.” In other words, there is an inescapable need for participation, collaboration, and deliberation by the community. This fundamental precondition for resilience and readiness cannot be achieved any other way. Government regulation or intervention no matter how prescriptive cannot achieve what a self-organized community can achieve.

2. “Congress should significantly increase the liability cap and financial responsibility requirements for offshore facilities.” In other words, the community and its individual members should not be immune to the financial consequences of choices — intentional or not — that are freely undertaken. This includes construction in flood-plains, wildfire zones, along earthquake faults, or drilling in high-risk deepwater.

There are many more helpful recommendations, but these two make the dovetail which holds together the remainder of the structure.

I hope substantially increasing the liability cap is a self-evident incentive to take responsibility for how the industry engages reality.  Being told in advance the rather modest consequence you will suffer regardless of your action or consequences to others does not inspire prudence… in industries or individuals.

Less obvious and interesting is how the Commission urges establishment of a self-policing function modeled after the Institute for Nuclear Power Operations.

Leading companies in the offshore petroleum sector should likewise take responsibility for reshaping industry attitudes and practices to create an overall culture of safety. They should make a commitment to and investment in safer offshore operations by establishing an autonomous body focused solely on the core mission of achieving excellence in process safety.

The Commission report offers persuasive evidence and argument that — properly structured and governed — this industry-wide, private sector safety institute is the most promising means of preventing future drilling disasters and mitigating the results of such disasters.  The argument is cumulative.  I will not undermine the argument by attempting a summary.  Read the report.

Seeing how the government pushes this private sector instrument to advance the public good – and how the oil and gas community responds to the proposal — has implications for a wide range of communities and for national resilience.

The Commission has been about as effective as these efforts can be in framing the issues and providing lots of grist for the legislative and regulatory process.  There is plenty of all-purpose flour for private use as well.  Let the baking begin.

I will, though, expose my own wonkish fetish and critique the Commission’s report in two ways.

First, the contrast between attention given to improved planning (HUGE) and that given training and exercising  (s c a n t)  is troublesome.  Plans are just about dead-on-arrival without training and exercising.  Plans are comparatively cheap and easy to file away, task complete.  Training and exercising have significant direct and indirect costs, but this is the only way plans are tested and readiness is realistically advanced.

Second, there is a subtext of  “never again” in the report that is, perhaps, as rhetorically required as it is epistemologically irresponsible. Consider the following paragraph excerpted in it’s entirety:

Properly managed, the presence of risk does not mean that accidents have to happen.  As Magne Ognedal, Director General of Norway’s Petroleum Safety Authority, put it: “risk must be managed at every level and in every company involved in this business. . . . In this way, risk in the petroleum sector can be kept at a level society is willing to accept. And we can reduce the probability that major accidents will hit us again.” (Page 218)

The Norwegian’s quote is, I suggest, entirely accurate… especially, “we can reduce the probability that major accidents will hit us again.”  This demonstrable truth is, however, in considerable tension with the belief that “presence of risk does not mean that accidents have to happen.” 

We are better advised to invest in the best possible while expecting something worse.

Just when I get close to the point of absolute frustration with the near total reactionary nature of DHS policy, a small bit of news appears to cheer me up.  Per the Homeland Security Newswire:

DHS has a new task force to battle the effects of climate change on domestic security operations; DHS secretary Janet Napolitano explained that the task force was charged with “identifying and assessing the impact that climate change could have on the missions and operations of the Department of Homeland Security”

While I personally believe in the danger of human-influenced climate change, what is most heartening about this DHS initiative is that it is truly forward looking.  Very little of the Department’s policies seem to fall in this category.  Instead, we are treated to security measures that deal with the last threat.  Though in all fairness, I was aware of some nascent FEMA efforts directed toward understanding potential climate change impacts:

The study, undertaken by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which runs the insurance program, aims to determine how seawater will surge onto shorelines around the United States as warming oceans expand and rise. It also seeks to establish how warming temperatures will affect inland flooding nationwide, potentially revealing the likelihood of more damage in some riverine areas.

I understand there is already backlash from some corners regarding the fact that DHS is even considering the possibility of climate change as something that will impact their operations.  As a pre-emptive rebuttal, I would just like to point out that this is something mature departments should do–for example, the Pentagon was already considering potential climate impacts on their operations during the Bush Administration:

Global warming may be bad news for future generations, but let’s face it, most of us spend as little time worrying about it as we did about al Qaeda before 9/11. Like the terrorists, though, the seemingly remote climate risk may hit home sooner and harder than we ever imagined. In fact, the prospect has become so real that the Pentagon’s strategic planners are grappling with it.

In sum, the risk of abrupt climate change remains uncertain, and it is quite possibly small. But given its dire consequences, it should be elevated beyond a scientific debate. Action now matters, because we may be able to reduce its likelihood of happening, and we can certainly be better prepared if it does. It is time to recognize it as a national security concern.

The Pentagon’s reaction to this sobering report isn’t known—in keeping with his reputation for reticence, Andy Marshall declined to be interviewed. But the fact that he’s concerned may signal a sea change in the debate about global warming. At least some federal thought leaders may be starting to perceive climate change less as a political annoyance and more as an issue demanding action.

If current terrorist threats aren’t enough to keep you up at night, seemingly out of nowhere comes the gopher menace.  These crafty and malicious creatures pose a dire threat to critical infrastructure, not just across the United States but around the world!

So writes Eric Holdeman in his latest column in Emergency Management magazine. His article, “If Gophers Were Terrorists,” is a funny piece that nicely encapsulates the trajectory homeland security has taken since 9/11.

First, the threat is exposed:

I’ve recently read several stories about burrowing animals weakening levee systems to the point of failure both in the United States and abroad. I thought about this new hazard I hadn’t previously considered. As with any new “threat,” it must be addressed, so envision what would happen if we discovered that these animals were, in fact, trained terrorist operatives attacking one element of our critical infrastructure.

Then the obvious initial reaction:

First, there would be the predictable congressional hearings by multiple committees in both the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate. Since there isn’t a designated Gopher Committee, these legislative bodies would have many committees that viewed this issue as part of their legislative domain. Testimony would come from newly minted gopher experts.

Everyone will tussle for funding:

There’d be lots of lobbying during the process; rural and urban states would compete for funding. Cities and counties would proclaim that, “All gophers are local.” Fire, law enforcement, public health, hospitals and other disciplines would lobby for funding for their field. They’d argue that animal control should not be getting all of the funds. For years, each would make the case that they should have dedicated funds for equipment.

After years of anti-gopher activity without further attacks, attention will turn to new threats:

A new threat might capture our attention. Take pigeons for instance: Have you ever noticed how they seem to be everywhere, listening to our conversations and monitoring our movements?

Making matters even worse, Mr. Holdeman fails to point out the ability of our pigeon adversaries to use their droppings as an ingredient in gunpowder.  The possible amounts involved could be staggering…

All jokes aside, the article is a great bit of satire that does a marvelous job exposing the predictable manner in which the U.S. reacts to new threats.  The entire piece is worth reading:

http://www.emergencymgmt.com/safety/Gophers-Terrorists-Opinion.html

Of course to win the WOG (War On Gophers), we should turn to Bill Murray as he is already licensed to kill gophers by the Government of the United Nations:

License to kill gophers

According to the Times of London (subscription required)

WikiLeaks raised the stakes in its battle with America last night (Sunday night) by releasing a secret list of all the global industries and assets that the US most wishes to protect. Security experts said that the cable, published by the whistleblower website as part of an unauthorised package of diplomatic correspondence, was a gift for terrorist organisations. It spelt out hundreds of pipelines, undersea cables and factories across the world, including a number in Britain, that would cause most damage to US interests if destroyed.

The BBC has a related story that is available without subscription: List of facilities “Vital to US Security” leaked.

The Office of Management and Budget has instructed federal employees not to access the still-officially-classified documents.  A copy of the memo is provided by the TPM blog.   Avert thy eyes O ye innocents!

Now that nearly everyone else — including our adversaries – have access, we evidently are trying to contain the damage by restricting our own public servants access to the information. 

P.J. Crowley, the State Department spokesperson, suggested the OMB counsel’s office may be a bit “overzealous” here.  In the midst of all the serious fallout that PJ is in the middle of handling, I expect he had some choice words — behind closed doors — regarding the late Friday OMB circular.

As of Monday morning WikiLeaks continues to be available via a Swiss domain: www.wikileaks.ch

“When it does [get crazy], you attempt to stay disciplined and look for other solutions that may carry risk in a different way.’’ … “It’s what kind of risk can you tolerate.”

Insightful words coming from a leading voice in the homeland security community?

Unfortunately, no.  Instead, they encapsulate the operating philosophy of Theo Epstein, general manager (GM) of the Boston Red Sox.  Elsewhere in the same interview, Epstein brings up risk as a determining factor in Red Sox decision making several more times.  In terms of baseball, the risk he is discussing involves filling positional requirements by investing in free agent players.  Whether they are superstars or bench players, free agents are normally priced according to their past accomplishments, not their expected future performance.  Often their best years are behind them and teams pay top dollar for declining returns.

To manage this risk, GMs can drive hard bargains with free agents, promote a prospect, or trade prospects for another team’s player.  As Epstein stated, these options all carry risk in a different way.  Obviously, managing risk is the means to putting together a winning team.  Savvy GMs do not put all their eggs in one basket—for example, putting together a team of sluggers but ignoring defense and pitching (an accusation levied against the Texas Rangers until recent seasons, paying off with a World Series appearance last season).  They do not fall in love with particular players, cutting the cord when the time comes for the sake of the team.  While they learn from the past, they are always cognizant of future trends.

If only homeland security officials could adhere to a similar philosophy.  I fear that despite constant affirmations regarding adherence to risk management principles, administrators, departments, agencies, and offices are often unwillingly to let go of “star players” in the form of politically popular grant programs or policies that are designed to react to the last threat or failed attack (that may or may not involve taking the measurement of your private parts).

I recognize that the Department as a whole has adopted the mantra of risk-based decision making and that several of the components have taken that to heart in their planning and daily operations. Yet when policy push comes to shove, few have been willing to stand up for such principles and call for commensurate security arrangements.  More importantly, few have been willing to end any program that proves ineffective if it has already attracted some institutional support.

Instead, we have statements such as those recently aired in a New York Post op-ed by Peter King (R-NY), incoming chair of the House Homeland Security Committee:

“Rep. John Boehner, who’ll be the next House speaker, and I have discussed the necessity of having the committee actively oversee DHS to ensure that it’s fulfilling its mission of protecting America against Islamic terrorism and effectively coordinating its activities with all elements of the intelligence and law-enforcement communities.”

While I have not asked Congressman King’s office to elaborate, this seems to me like an interesting interpretation of DHS responsibilities and priorities.  DHS was created in response to an act of terrorism perpetrated by followers of an Islam-related ideology.  Yet it does not seem prudent to focus only on one threat and ignore others, such as terrorism motivated by different ideologies, or those large natural catastrophes that seem to occasionally plague the U.S.

“As chairman, I’ll make securing our homeland from terrorists the committee’s primary focus. This seems like an odd thing to say, because that should be its top priority already. Yet, over the last four years, the committee’s Democratic leadership has moved its sights from that target. The Democrats have convened hearing after hearing on such issues as Hurricane Katrina and diversity in the DHS workforce. Those are important issues, for sure. Yet they convened those hearings to the exclusion of hearings on such serious terrorism issues as the al Qaeda-linked massacre at Fort Hood and President Obama’s plan to close the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay and transfer terrorists to the US homeland.”

Again, apparently the lessons learned from Katrina (and the more recent BP oil event) are considered important “for sure,” but not serious.  The Fort Hood shootings were tragic, and the issues of radicalization and lone wolf terrorists are worthy of continued investigation.  However, shouldn’t natural and technological disasters also be worthy of attention?  Or will it have to wait until there is an event that threatens to collapse the national preparedness and response structure?  This sounds like a move away from a well-rounded team to one that focuses only on home run hitters.

“I’ll work to strengthen Securing the Cities, a proven partnership among federal, state and local authorities to prevent nuclear and radiological terrorism, through a ring of detection devices in and around the New York metro area. The administration has twice tried to end funding for this critical counterterrorism program; each time, I’ve succeeded in securing continued funds to protect New York City — and I hope to see it copied in other cities throughout the nation.”

This could prove to be an especially interesting issue.  Representative King will likely push through funding for this program with little resistance, but hopefully he will have to explain the cost-benefit ratio for the program when compared to other potential investments in deterring dirty bomb attacks (because let’s be honest: the vast majority of sensors currently deployed are unlikely to detect a nuclear weapon) and explain how this
“pilot program” can benefit other metropolitan areas that lack the vast resources and political capital and support of the NYPD.

Representative King hails from New York City, so I will not insult him by suggesting that Theo Epstein be hired as a consultant for the House Homeland Security Committee.  But is it too much to hope that he may reach out to the general managers of the Yankees or Mets?

USA Today published a story this week regarding the threat of solar storms and Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) that highlighted an issue inherent in homeland security more broadly—how to walk the line between resilience and overreaction.

The piece summarizes the threat posed by both natural solar storms and EMP caused by high-altitude explosion of nuclear weapons.  If you are unfamiliar with either or both, the USA Today article provides accessible descriptions of both phenomena.

In the overreaction column:

Gingrich last year cited the EMP Commission report in warning, “One weapon of this kind that went off over Omaha would eliminate most of the electrical production in the United States.”

There are others with more measured analysis:

There are “some important reasons for concern,” says physicist Yousaf Butt of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass. “But there is also a lot of fluff.”

You would really need something the size of a Soviet H-bomb to have effects that cross many states,” Butt says.

The solar storm story is less political:

On March 9, 1989, the sun spat a million-mile-wide blast of high-temperature charged solar gas straight at the Earth. The “coronal mass ejection” struck the planet three days later, triggering a geomagnetic storm that made the northern lights visible in Texas. The storm also induced currents in Quebec’s power grid that knocked out power for 6 million people in Canada and the USA for at least nine hours.

The sensible mitigation effort in the face of EMPs, solar storms, or even cyber threats would be simple (if not cheap) steps to stockpile extra transformers and other hard-to-replace electrical grid-related equipment.

Unfortunately, the threat of an EMP attack often is used to further an agenda based on a radical expansion of missile defenses that would include the ability to intercept missiles fired from freighters off the U.S. coast.  In a Heritage Foundation Foundry blog posting regarding the same USA Today article, the author stretches credibility to make this case:

“For countries less dependent on modern technologies and electronics, including both rogue states like Iran and North Korea as well as stateless terrorist groups, EMP provides a potential way to attack the United States through asymmetric means. EMPs could be used to circumvent America’s superior conventional military power while reducing vulnerability to retaliation in kind.”

The author of this particular quotation, Heritage analyst Jena Baker McNeil, seems to misunderstand the basics of deterrence.  It is certain that the U.S. would not retaliate to an EMP attack with only an EMP attack.  So regardless of the level of dependence of the attacker on modern technologies, the nuclear retaliatory strike would be directed at destroying what the enemy regime holds most dear—the regime itself.  In other words, any nuclear strike on the United States (even a single EMP strike) by an identified state (and even an attempt at a somewhat covert EMP attack by a state would certainly be identified through a combination of nuclear forensics and intelligence) would result in an overwhelming nuclear response.

A discussion of the nuclear terrorist threat requires a separate post.  I would just like to suggest that while I worry about nuclear terrorism, and believe it is a threat requiring urgent action, the threat of terrorists obtaining not only a nuclear weapon but one capable of being combined with a SCUD (and of course obtaining the SCUD itself) is not something I believe should be keeping anyone up at night.

(H/t to Armchair Generalist for an earlier post regarding the USA Today piece.)

Further Reading:

Yousaf M. Butt, “The EMP threat: fact, fiction, and response (Part I),” The Space Review: http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1549/1

Yousaf M. Butt, “The EMP threat: fact, fiction, and response (Part II),” The Space Review: http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1553/1

Contamination of the Artibonite River with human waste is the probable source of the cholera outbreak in Haiti.  As of Sunday afternoon there have been at least 250 deaths.  Cholera is a quick killer and difficult to contain.   (Read more from the BBC.)

This is the first time in nearly a century that cholera has presented in Haiti.  As a result human hosts are unlikely to have much immunity and the death rate could be much higher than in areas where cholera is more common.  Cholera has been absent from the Caribbean since about 1960.

The cholera epidemic is likely to worsen in the days ahead.  Major media will be covering.  For more detailed information the Pan American Health Organization is posting updates at http://new.paho.org/hai/index.php?lang=en

(Monday Upate: This morning the BBC is reporting, “Health officials have said there are signs that the cholera outbreak in central Haiti may be stabilising. Although the death toll moved past 250 with more than 3,000 people infected, fewer cases were reported.”)

The risk of cholera has been recognized since the January earthquake in Haiti.  A CDC Pre-Decision Brief on cholera is interesting to review nearly eight months on.  See CDC brief at: http://emergency.cdc.gov/disasters/earthquakes/haiti/waterydiarrhea_pre-decision_brief.asp

Field reports and requests for assistance are focusing on oral rehydration salts, clean water, soap, and water filtration devices, IV solutions (normal saline mostly), tubing and catheters, antibiotics: doxycycline, cipro, and trimethoprim/sulfa (cotrimoxazole).  Some resources have been predeployed.

–+–

On the same day that the cholera outbreak in Haiti was first being reported an advocacy group released a study pointing to serious problems ahead for US water systems.

 The Ripple Effect: Water Risk in the Municipal Bond Market assesses the risk of water scarcity for public water and power utilities in some of the country’s most water-stressed regions.  From the report:

Water is a linchpin of the U.S. economy, but its availability is being tested like never before. More extreme droughts, surging water demand, pollution, and climate change are growing risks that threaten water supplies in many parts of the United States. In some regions, water scarcity is already crimping economic production and sparking interstate legal battles. The stresses are especially severe in regions experiencing rapid population and economic growth, including the West, Southwest and Southeast. Among the most immediate threats:

 

The City of Atlanta’s water supply could be cut by nearly 40 percent as early as 2012 due to the ruling of a federal judge;

 

Lake Mead, the vast reservoir for the Colorado River, is quickly approaching a firstever water shortage declaration that would reduce deliveries to fast-growing Arizona and Nevada;

 

Hoover Dam, which provides hydropower to major urban centers in California, Arizona, and Nevada, may stop generating electricity as soon as 2013 if water levels in Lake Mead don’t begin to recover.

More regular droughts and heat waves are likely to increase the operating costs of power generators in the Southeast, among them the Tennessee Valley Authority,which was forced to slash power generation for two weeks at three of its facilities in Alabama and Tennessee because of heightened water temperatures, costing the utility an estimated $10 million in lost power production.

The water-related risk in Haiti is acute and life-threatening.  The water-related risk being reported in the United States is more a matter of managing an emerging chronic condition.  Other than water what they share is the challenge involved in working effectively to manage even known risks.

That is how a colleague, Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, characterizes the threat of terrorism. I interpret this to mean that when everyone is looking for the next strike to come from the center of the bell curve, the most devastating attack catches you by surprise at the edges.

The conventional wisdom is that we should expect, and our security services should be on guard for, an attack inspired by Al Qaeda ideology but likely originating within the U.S. utilizing explosives and/or small arms.  Besides the homegrown part, how is this different from the conventional wisdom concerning terrorism in the 1990s?

The following occurred during the last twenty years: A car bomb targeted at the World Trade Center, with the intention of toppling one tower into the other (with cyanide gas as a “backup”); Sarin gas in a subway attack; simultaneous embassy bombings; an attempted sinking of a U.S. naval warship; planes flown into buildings; anthrax delivered via the mail system.  All obviously recognized as major terrorist attacks, but events that did not fit easily within the bounds of the probable.  I might add the Oklahoma City bombing to this list as it was perpetrated by those who did not fit neatly within the expected enemies list.

What does this have to do with today’s threat environment?

Shortly after 9/11, the conventional wisdom was that Al Qaeda would only allow an attack within the U.S. that topped their greatest success.  Buttressing this argument, intelligence indicated that Al Qaeda members in Saudi Arabia had constructed a device that could be used to disperse chemicals in the New York City subway.  However, the attack was reportedly canceled by Ayman al-Zawahiri  because of plans for “something better.”

A threat from the edge.

Yet that was years ago.  Intelligence, law enforcement, and military efforts around the world have degraded Al Qaeda’s capabilities until “the group’s capabilities to implement such a large-scale attack are currently far less formidable than they were nine years ago or indeed at any time since.”  This is the judgment of Bruce Hoffman and Peter Bergen in their report “Assessing the Terrorist Threat.”  Given the types of attacks attempted over the past year that seems like a perfectly reasonable conclusion, and one shared by top intelligence and law enforcement officials.  It is also one that falls squarely in the center.

Former CIA Director Michael Hayden seems to be pushing back (at least a little) toward the edge when he writes:

“The classic al Qaeda attack, inflicting mass casualties by hitting iconic targets, is now very difficult for them to mount.”

“But we are far short of arranging a victory celebration. Al Qaeda’s capacity to mount its traditional brand of spectacular attacks has been reduced, not eliminated.”

On one hand, Al Qaeda members are under intense pressure around the world, perhaps not able to mount spectacular attacks.  On the other, how many people does it take?  The group has demonstrated the ability to compartmentalize operations and work under tight budget constraints to achieve operational goals that shocked security officials.  Is it safe to assume that the center is all we should be concerned about?

To mangle another analogy: I am not advocating taking our eyes off of the road, just suggesting that perhaps we should not forget to check our blind spots lest we be surprised again.