Clark Kent Ervin, former inspector general of DHS, has an op-ed in today’s NYTimes advocating a menu of specific steps to “reduce our vulnerability [to terrorism] to as close to zero as possible.”

I have a host of problems with Ervin’s article, the most fundamental being his assumption that we ought to reduce our vulnerability to as close to zero as possible. We need to take the costs - both financial and moral - of efforts to reduce vulnerability in account because, as in all policy decisions, we face important fiscal and legal restraints. If we do not explicitly consider the cost of a policy recommendation, then we do not force ourselves to consider which policies have the greatest impact (and instead allow easy “cover your ass” solutions to slide by unopposed). So our goal should be to reduce our vulnerability to as close to zero as possible within appropriate legal and financial constraints. Such a statement immediately begs the question “what are the appropriate legal and financial constraints,” which is appropriate since these parameters must be established if any usefully scoped policy analysis is to follow.

Addressing Ervin’s specific proposals, I am concerned that most of them are exceptionally expensive measures to reduce a fairly narrowly focused threat. For example, installing “backscatter” machines at every airport checkpoint in the US may reduce our vulnerability to aircraft hijacking, but it doesn’t reduce our vulnerability to cascading attacks. Instead of devoting huge sums of money preventing a particular means of attack, we should be looking for investments that will mitigate the consequences of a broad range of attacks. These latter types of investments offer the most impact per investment dollar in our fiscally constrained environment.

Many of Ervin’s proposals are decidedly tech-centric. Instead of addressing the trickier (but essential) aspects of personnel and training, Ervin advocates new technologies, new equipment, and automated information systems. This is disappointing, because as Bruce Schneier has discussed, many examples of successful anti-terror efforts relied on well-trained personnel using existing technology and equipment. Technology won’t save us, but it sure will eat up our funding quickly. Just as in the DoD acquisitions system, technological fixes can seem like a quick fix (throw $X at this system and you’ve solved your problem!) and a tidy policy solution, but that doesn’t mean they’re effective.

I’m also concerned that policies like endng our visa-waver program with Britain and France will do more harm than good as we kill good connectivity in the attempt to cut off bad flows of immigration. Much of our strength will come from our allies and our economic strength, creating a countervailing need (that Ervin does not mention) to allow access to our country. These are balancing decisions. When someone ignores an entire side of the scale, I worry.

What we need instead, as I’ve discussed before, is resiliency. This will produce systemic reductions in vulnerability which will both provide a more robust defense as well as a more cost-effective defense against disruptions in general (of which terrorism is just one type of system perturbation).

The Air Force’s fleet of warplanes is older than ever and wearing out faster because of heavy use in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to the service’s top combat commander.
Gen. Ronald Keys, who leads the Air Combat Command, points to cracked wings on A-10 attack planes and frayed electrical cables on U-2 spy planes.

…The Air Force recently bought replacement wings for 132 of its workhorse A-10s at $7 million per plane. The Air Force wants another $34 million for more replacement wings this year.

Once again, the aircraft the Air Force never wanted is so useful that it accumulates wear and tear at such a rate that it requires some serious investment to keep it flying.

The larger problem of the increasing average age of the USAF’s aircraft is so systemic that I wonder if its only solution might be turn even more to UAVs. Pulling the human out of the cockpit might be the key to moving us back towards the many and the cheap instead of the few and insanely expensive (to both procure and maintain).

Excellent NYTimes article today on the ongoing debate about how to update cold war deterrence policy.

A previously undisclosed meeting last year of President Bush’s most senior national security advisers was the highest level discussion about how to rewrite the cold war rules. The existing approach to deterrence dates from the time when the nuclear attacks Washington worried about would be launched by missiles and bombers, which can be tracked back to a source by radar, and not carried in backpacks or hidden in cargo containers.

…But that meeting of Mr. Bush’s principal national security and military advisers in May 2006 broke up with the question unresolved, according to participants. The discussion remained hung up on such complexities as whether it would be wise to threaten Iran even as diplomacy still offered at least some hope of halting Tehran’s nuclear program, and whether it was credible to issue a warning that would be heard to include countries that America considers partners and allies, like Russia or Pakistan, which are nuclear powers with far from perfect nuclear safeguards.

We’re still workng to rewrite cold war rules, more than fifteen years after that era ended. Think of all the new rules that had been established fifteen years after WWII ended. We need change on that scope.