National Security: Post 3

Chapters 3 and 4 of Natural Security by Sagarin and Taylor focus on how biological processes in the human body have evolved to be highly effective against threats that are often difficult to directly recognize. It is noted early in the reading that there is no way to fully eliminate all threats to a population, which I think is vital to incorporate into the reading because people often think that there is a perfect solution to all the problems facing the military, when in reality it is impossible to be fully prepared for an unsuspected danger if we don’t yet know what the potential threat could be. This feeds directly into our class discussions about how all organisms are constantly evolving because each ensuing generation has the potential to encounter new problems that older generations were not exposed to. Now the question comes to how have organisms been able to constantly evolve to meet the challenges of new, unforeseen problems.

Sagarin and Taylor point to the organization of our own immune system for the answer. The organization of the immune system is decentralized, which means that an immune response is not formed by a hierarchy, but rather individual groups of molecules work in conjunction to solve the problems caused by various pathogens. Essentially when the immune system encounters a problem, groups find problems and fix them at a local level rather than looking toward a central decision making entity to solve the problem for them. The argument for these chapters is that to have an effective National Security, individual groups need to be able to specialize at solving their security problems at a local level, because decisions can be made more accurately and quickly, which is vital for the always changing threats.