While reading part one of National Security by
Sagarin and Taylor, I thought that the way that the book shaped itself from interdisciplinary
discussion is interesting in itself. It
struck me as odd that the norm among academics is to refrain from discussion
among peers in different fields of study. I feel that a topic as complex as
national security should be discussed between varieties of people because the
diversity of ideas is important for combating risks that could potentially come
from anywhere.
The book continues with the famous, and notorious, 9/11
example about the airports having relaxed security leading up to the fateful
day. Taylor, however, points to the repetitious, and synonymous security
tactics, rather than the relaxed attitude of the airport, as the problem
allowing the attacks. This led into our class discussions because Taylor argued
that organisms have developed a vast array of different mechanisms to combat
the same challenges because they work from what they have. By increasing the
diversity in the way they combat a disease, for instance, they are able to
protect themselves from the disease evolving to wipe out life as a whole.
In order to combat the ability of terrorists to expose the
repetitious procedures that our security constantly follows, I would argue that
our military and other security systems adopt multiple procedures and implement
them randomly on a day to day basis. That way, infiltrating a system would be
much more difficult because an invader would have to prepare for a multitude of
different tactics to circumvent the procedures and would have no way of knowing
which procedures were being used before actually going through the security
process. This would be detrimental for organized crime, which relies on precise
tactics and plans to obtain what they want.
I completely agree with your idea for improving the way in which we combat the terrorist attacks, but part of me wonders if doing that would only allow them to eventually build a hypothetical "immunity" to the new system? Although I guess we would then just have to adapt and evolve a new way of checking for things. It also makes me curious as to what lengths the government will go to technologically with these ideas. Obviously the biological world has it figured out, but we need a better way at recognizing things before they can get too bad.
ReplyDeleteI agree with your statement in how it's odd that different disciplines are not being integrated, but I think in a subjects as important as this, they usually are.
ReplyDeleteAlso, your point of using many different tactics to combat terrorists made me think of how in the future getting around security might be easier for terrorists when they think of other ways to circumvent security procedures. I think it would be somewhat difficult to get a full-proof method of security procedures if technology is advancing so rapidly.