ABSTRACT
As the public becomes more educated on terrorism and what this nation has to do to be prepared to defend itself against terrorism, the public will be less inclined to ask what government is doing to protect us. They will arrive at the conclusion that everyone, including them, has a role in contributing to preparedness. Then there will be an expectation-from a wider audience than just the Department of Homeland Security-that companies, organizations, and government agencies responsible for critical infrastructure are taking proactive measures to ensure preparedness and protect the infrastructure from attacks. The world is not large anymore, and U.S. interests are geographically dispersed throughout the world, so our people, businesses, and government can still be attacked almost anywhere. It would seem, then, that now is the time to relook at how we practice security and what we are building in the way of preparedness and deterrence. Deterrence can work when the stage of imminent threats is not already at our door. If threats are imminent and warning messages have been issued, it may be too late to launch a deterrence campaign. The
threat is in motion, and now the targets, whoever “they” may be, are at somewhat of a disadvantage. They must grasp how they are going to be attacked, and then react to it as quickly as possible and hope that the detection component of their preparedness program will be reliable as quickly as possible. When you need this kind of reliability, you have to put more dependence on “human factors”; technology, as advanced as it is, does not do a good job of being intuitive, curious, and investigative.
