Schneier on Security: Homeland Security Cost-Benefit Analysis

[jmdrake]

This is the best analysis I've ever seen on why the whole GWOT (global war on terrorism) is utterly ridiculous.

http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/07/homeland_securi_2.html

Schneier on Security (http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/07/homeland_securi_2.html)

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July 17, 2008
Homeland Security Cost-Benefit Analysis

This is an excellent paper (http://psweb.sbs.ohio-state.edu/faculty/jmueller/ISA2008.pdf) by Ohio State political science professor John Mueller. Titled "The Quixotic Quest for Invulnerability: Assessing the Costs, Benefits, and Probabilities of Protecting the Homeland," it lays out some common send premises and policy implications.

The premises:

1. The number of potential terrorist targets is essentially infinite.

2. The probability that any individual target will be attacked is essentially zero.

3. If one potential target happens to enjoy a degree of protection, the agile terrorist usually can readily move on to another one.

4. Most targets are "vulnerable" in that it is not very difficult to damage them, but invulnerable in that they can be rebuilt in fairly short order and at tolerable expense.

5. It is essentially impossible to make a very wide variety of potential terrorist targets invulnerable except by completely closing them down.

The policy implications:

1. Any protective policy should be compared to a "null case": do nothing, and use the money saved to rebuild and to compensate any victims.

2. Abandon any effort to imagine a terrorist target list.

3. Consider negative effects of protection measures: not only direct cost, but inconvenience, enhancement of fear, negative economic impacts, reduction of liberties.

4. Consider the opportunity costs, the tradeoffs, of protection measures.

Here's the abstract:

This paper (http://psweb.sbs.ohio-state.edu/faculty/jmueller/ISA2008.pdf) attempts to set out some general parameters for coming to grips with a central homeland security concern: the effort to make potential targets invulnerable, or at least notably less vulnerable, to terrorist attack. It argues that protection makes sense only when protection is feasible for an entire class of potential targets and when the destruction of something in that target set would have quite large physical, economic, psychological, and/or political consequences. There are a very large number of potential targets where protection is essentially a waste of resources and a much more limited one where it may be effective.

The whole paper is worth reading.

[Pericles]

Some really good thinking there, with this exception - it is better to force your opponent to play defense rather than let it be known that you are making no effort to go after him. Thus you want some defensive effort to create doubt that any particular target is defended and making it more difficult to choose a place of attack.

[jmdrake]

Some really good thinking there, with this exception - it is better to force your opponent to play defense rather than let it be known that you are making no effort to go after him. Thus you want some defensive effort to create doubt that any particular target is defended and making it more difficult to choose a place of attack.

Thank you for your response. RPF works best when we critically but civilly challenge each other's ideas.

So here's my counter analysis. First, who really is the "opponent"? What is the opponent trying to do? Are we really playing "offensive-defense" or "defensive-offense" or whatever it is you're describing? Is the strategy really working? Are is it really difficult for anyone who isn't a low grade moron to find an easy place to attack?

Now you should know from my sig that I believe the entire GWOT is largely fabricated. But for the sake of discussion I'll assume it can be taken at face value.

So who's really the "opponent"? Al Qaeda? Not really. They're bit players and everybody knows that. The only question is who's pulling the strings? Let's assume this old story from WorldNetDaily (http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=25732) is accurate and it's really the Chinese. Well what are they trying to do? Al Qaeda itself said it wants to bankrupt the U.S. (http://articles.cnn.com/2004-11-01/world/binladen.tape_1_al-jazeera-qaeda-bin?_s=PM:WORLD). That's basically what we tried and succeeded in doing with Jimmy Carter (http://www.counterpunch.org/brzezinski.html) created Al Qaeda in the first place. (Or rather the mujahadeen that would later splinter and become Al Qaeda).

Now, are we really playing "offensive-defense" or "defensive offense"? And is whatever we're doing working? I suppose attacking the "terrorists" on their home turf is "offense" right? But they're making money off our very presence. They skim a cut off of major U.S. contracts (http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/11206/1162807-84.stm?cmpid=nationworld.xml). And even security forces themselves have been infiltrated (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704011904575538423731306064.html). We are in essense funding, arming and training our own enemy. What about here at home? Is the plan really working? We pat ourselves on the back and claim that it is. But that's only because Al Qaeda (if they really exist in the way we say they do) must be the most incompetent terrorist/insurgent operation ever to exist. Oh yeah, one lucky strike on 9/11. But ever since then their best plan has been explosives in underwear? Really? And if you noticed anything from the recent terrorist attack in Norway (non-Muslim by the way), it's that one well armed, well trained gunman kill many more people than a mega-bomb. The bomb, though it was similair to McVeigh's, only killed 7. (And McVeigh's bomb probably didn't kill that many either. It was the bombs inside the Murrah building that racked up the death toll.) So why is Al Qaeda supposedly obsessed with blowing things up? Someone debating with Ron Paul even remarked once that it's odd that Al Qaeda seems strangely focused on blowing up airplanes when they could do other things. And how is your strategy even being implemented? It's not like anyone has to guess. Trying to get on a plane and you have to go through ridiculous security. So why not try to get on a bus? Why not take a gun and do target practice at a summer camp like the Norway terrorist? Why not do a million other things that I know you can think of that don't have massive security (yet) guarding them?

No. If the "defense" you speak of does not exist. There is no "guessing". If you want to kill a lot of people, just do what every school shooter has done since Columbine. There are many poorly guarded victim disarmament zones around this country. You don't have to be James Bond or James Bond's nemesis to figure that out. Oh but if we the people were made to realize just how ridiculous this all is before our prison door was shut, we'd snap out of it and wake up.

[flightlesskiwi]

But that's only because Al Qaeda (if they really exist in the way we say they do) must be the most incompetent terrorist/insurgent operation ever to exist.

i often find myself pondering this idea...

and i do agree with you in the way of a single person taking out "soft" targets. i by no means believe those types of attacks haven't happened because of all the great "security" that's been added since 9/11. which leads me to back to pondering the above mentioned idea.

i know this is a tangent... but al-qaeda's seeming incompetence (in my view) has lead me into some pretty interesting convos with folks who say bombing al-qaeda in somalia and yemen (or anywhere deemed "al-qaeda-ed") is, by virtue of the war on al-qaeda (http://news.findlaw.com/wp/docs/terrorism/sjres23.es.html) is constitutional (btw, that "law" is disturbingly open ended).

if they are so splendidly organized and well trained foe, where are all the well-planned and executed attacks??

the response is usually something like: "the war on terror and homeland security measures have, in fact, made us safer."

jmdrake, you make some superb points. thanks.

[Pericles]

I'm going on the assumption that there are some goofs put there like the Ft. Hood guy, and a few very serious terrorist types that would like to pull of a spectacular attack.

The goofs are best dealt with like at Killeen, Somebody will notice something odd, or a well armed population should deal with an attack as it happens.

For the real deal terrorists, the US needs a 1st class intelligence agency, which the CIA is not. When a problem is eliminated, nobody should be the wiser as to who did it.

In any case, the citizens should not be inconvenienced bu the Kabuki theater performed by the TSA, FBI, and sundry others who have no real effect on security and only server to infringe the rights of the citizens of the country.

I doubt that we are really that far apart.