The Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) draft National Response Framework proposes much-needed improvements for disaster preparedness and response. As currently written, however, the framework also ignores--and is likely to subvert--key changes that Congress enacted in Post-Katrina Emergency Management Reform Act of 2006. Congress had compelling reasons to adopt those changes. The draft framework overlooks the concerns that helped shape the legislation Congress enacted, and would put the nation at risk to some of the same systemic failures that hobbled the Federal response to Katrina.

I will open my testimony by examining the framework's most glaring departure from the reforms Congress enacted in 2006: the proposal that disaster preparedness and response efforts be led by the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, rather than by the Administrator of the Federal Emergency Management System (FEMA). I will then briefly explain why I believe Congress made the correct decision in assigning that leadership responsibility and authority to the FEMA Administrator, and why the shift proposed by the draft framework would put the emergency management system at such risk. I will conclude by raising some additional issues that the Subcommittee may wish to consider as it reviews the draft framework, especially those involving the uncertainties that continue to surround response to catastrophic events.

Through efforts like the Nunn-Lugar program, the U.S. government and many of the Day After Workshop participants, including us, have long sought to prevent nuclear weapons and fissile materials from falling into new and threatening hands, especially terrorists. But we all know that these efforts have not reduced the probability to zero. It is also a common refrain among policy thinkers concerned with the growing nuclear threat--again, ourselves included--to frame the issue of prevention in terms of a provocative question, "On the day after a nuclear weapon goes off in a U.S. city, what will we wish we had done to prevent it?"

But our Preventive Defense "Day After Workshop" asked a different question: "What will we actually do on the day after prevention fails?" What will we want to do? How can we prepare now to be able to do it? We asked the distinguished participants in the Workshop to catapult themselves vividly and concretely into the aftermath of a nuclear detonation on a U.S. city. The needed actions by government and the public on the Day After will fall into two categories: actions to recover from the first detonation, and actions to prevent a second detonation. The Workshop addressed both types of action in as much detail, including technical detail, as possible. Topics included emergency response, evacuation and sheltering, immediate radiation effects, follow-on threats to the first nuclear weapon, attribution and retaliation, and the long process of cleanup--especially the uniquely difficult problem of fallout and residual radioactivity.

This paper analyzes what might be expected to happen if a 10-kiloton nuclear bomb exploded in a U.S. city; the example used for this analysis is San Francisco. The analysis draws from research projects the author has done in recent years for the Department of Homeland Security and other government organizations, including observing and providing critique on TOPOFF 2 (Top Officials), an exercise of federal, state, and local emergency response systems to terrorist attacks. The paper summarizes a number of talks the author has given to students and professionals working on security issues.

Recently, post-explosion nuclear forensics, or nuclear attribution, has gained a new spotlight within the scientific and policymaking community working on nuclear weapons. Academics are beginning to ask whether post-explosion forensics might create a replacement for an international nonproliferation regime or at least offer a fallback option to deter states and individuals from selling nuclear materials. This paper examines current attribution technology from unclassified literature and finds the technology to be well developed but not foolproof, such that nuclear attribution currently provides little deterrent value. If current capabilities were publicized more thoroughly, and if the post-explosion process of assessing the evidence were internationalized, states and intermediate actors might be deterred more effectively. This paper also discusses the development of a nuclear fingerprint database; while useful, its impact on deterrence would be minimal.

This article is based on the author's undergraduate honors thesis, completed during 2005-2006 in CISAC's Interschool Honors Program in International Security.

We have learned little from the cataclysms of September 11 and Hurricane Katrina. When it comes to catastrophe, America is living on borrowed time--and squandering it.

The truth is, acts of terror cannot always be prevented, and nature continues to show its fury in frighteningly unpredictable ways. Resiliency, argues Flynn, must now become our national motto. With chilling frankness and clarity, Flynn paints an all-too-real scenario of the threats we face within our own borders. A terrorist attack on a tanker carrying liquefied natural gas into Boston Harbor could kill thousands and leave millions more of New Englanders without power or heat. The destruction of a ship with a cargo of oil in Long Beach, California, could bring the West Coast economy to its knees and endanger the surrounding population. But even these alarmingly plausible terrorist scenarios pale in comparison to the potential destruction wrought by a major earthquake or hurricane.

Our growing exposure to man-made and natural perils is largely rooted in our own negligence, as we take for granted the infrastructure handed down to us by earlier generations. Once the envy of the world, this infrastructure is now crumbling. After decades of neglect, our public health system leaves us at the mercy of microbes that could kill millions in the next flu pandemic. Flash flooding could wipe out a fifty-year-old dam north of Phoenix, placing thousands of homes and lives at risk. The next San Francisco earthquake could destroy century-old levees, contaminating the freshwater supply that most of California relies on for survival.

It doesn't have to be this way. The Edge of Disaster tells us what we can do about it, as individuals and as a society. We can--and, Flynn argues, we must--construct a more resilient nation. With the wounds of recent national tragedies still unhealed, the time to act is now. By tackling head-on, eyes open the perils that lie before us, we can remain true to our most important and endearing national trait: our sense of optimism about the future and our conviction that we can change it for the better for ourselves--and our children.

Testimony before the Homeland Security Subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee on "Five- and Ten-Year Homeland Security Goals." In the afternoon session on 30 January 2007, the subcommittee heard from Brian Michael Jenkins, of RAND Corporation; Paul Stockton, of CISAC at Stanford University; James Carafano, of the Heritage Foundation; and Randall Yim, former director of the Homeland Security Institute.

Congress and the Administration have made great progress in securing the Nation since 9/11. Major challenges remain, however, both for responding to the flaws revealed by Hurricane Katrina and--at least as important--anticipating and preparing for the threats to come. We cannot meet those challenges by following the path we are on today.

Four changes will get us on a better path. First, we need to rethink the meaning of homeland security and the priorities within it. Second, we need to recast the division of labor in homeland security, and go much further to capitalize on the advantages that states and localities have over the federal government in securing the Nation. Third, we should build deeper integration within the Department of Homeland Security--through means I will propose today that would produce benefits far beyond the Department. Finally, we need to consider more comprehensive ways to bring risk-based analysis to bear on homeland security decisions, and thereby gain the greatest possible impact from the resources you invest in this constrained fiscal environment.

How has the threat of catastrophic terrorism reshaped the strategic environment? This chapter argues that in fact the threat is not dramatically new; what is new is the salience of this threat to the public in some states, particularly the United States. However, the secretive nature of counter-terrorism actions necessarily means that the public is ill-informed about the potential efficacy of government's activities and so cannot assess if their rhetoric matches their actions. Thus public statements can easily be tailored to what decision-makers think the public wants to hear, rather than to what decision-makers genuinely believe. We consequently rely on an examination of how the United States budgets and exercises for the war on terrorism to illuminate what American decision-makers believe to be the links between domestic counter-terror operations and strategy. Along the way we look at the tools states have to prepare for counter-terrorism, and the challenges of doing so.We find strong evidence that the United States remains strategically focused on relationships between states, and argue this is probably an appropriate focus.

The second edition of this successful textbook has been completely revised and updated in light of 9/11. In the aftermath of the attacks, there has been an increased need to address issues of war and peace, particularly terrorism, irregular warfare, the spread of weapons of mass destruction and the revolution in military affairs.

The new edition contains a mature set of reflections on the role of military power in the contemporary world. It analyzes recent conflicts from Afghanistan to the Iraq War and looks at the ongoing debates about the lessons that can be learned from these wars. Particular attention is given to the debates about whether there has been a revolution in military affairs given the phenomenal pace of innovation in electronics and computer systems.

We develop a mathematical model to find the optimal inspection strategy for detecting a nuclear weapon (or nuclear material to make a weapon) from being smuggled into the United States in a shipping container, subject to constraints of port congestion and an overall budget. We consider an 11-layer security system consisting of shipper certification, container seals, and a targeting software system, followed by passive (neutron and gamma), active (gamma radiography), and manual testing at overseas and domestic ports. Currently implemented policies achieve a low detection probability, and improved security requires passive and active testing of trusted containers and manually opening containers that cannot be penetrated by radiography. The annual cost of achieving a high detection probability of a plutonium weapon using existing equipment in traditional ways is roughly several billion dollars if testing is done domestically, and is approximately five times higher if testing is performed overseas. Our results suggest that employing high-energy x-ray radiography and elongating the passive neutron tests at overseas ports may provide significant cost savings, and several developing technologies, radiation sensors inside containers and tamper-resistant electronic seals, should be pursued aggressively. Further effort is critically needed to develop a practical neutron interrogation scheme that reliably detects moderately shielded, highly enriched uranium.

We investigate the impact on effective terrorism response of the viability degradation of biological weapons agents in the environment. We briefly review the scientific understanding and modeling of agent environmental viability degradation. In general, agent susceptibility to viability loss is greatest for vegetative bacteria, intermediate for viruses, and least for bacterial spores. Survival is greatest in soil and progressively decreases in the following environments: textiles, water, hard surfaces, and air. There is little detailed understanding of loss mechanisms. We analyze the time behavior and sensitivity of four mathematical models that are used to represent environmental viability degradation (the exponential, probability, and first- and second-order catastrophic decay models). The models behave similarly at short times (<30 min for our example case) but diverge to significantly different values at intermediate to long times. Hence, for a release event in which the majority of atmospheric exposure or deposition occurs over very short times, the current response models likely provide a good representation of the hazard. For longer time phenomena, including decontamina tion, the current model capabilities are likely insufficient. Finally, we implement each model in a simple numerical integration of anthrax dispersion, viability degradation, and dose response. Decay models spanning the current knowledge of airborne degradation result in vastly different predicted hazard areas. This confounds attempts to determine necessary medical and decontamination measures. Hence, the current level of understanding and representation of environmental viability degradation in response models is inadequate to inform appropriate emergency response measures.