I just came across this recent Sept 6th, 2005 memorandum to President Bush by Stephen Flynn, Senior Fellow for National Security Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.

For those who haven’t been following the serious issues concerning domestic security over the past few years, this PDF document (pages 5-9) gives a brief overview of the problems facing U.S. Sea Ports and the global transportation of shipping containers. If this document interests you, I can recommend Flynn’s book, “America the Vulnerable: How Our Government Is Failing to Protect Us from Terrorism“.

Some of Flynn’s best points, I believe, are related to recovery after a catastrophic event. This is where true costs sky-rocket. What might be a devastating local event can quickly turn into a devastating national event, in terms of cost to U.S. corporations (frozen/depleted inventory, for example) and every day citizens (think gasoline is expensive now?). The same cascading effect can apply to human lives, depending on the type of attack.

Furthermore, appropriately delegating responsibilities between the federal and state governments is hugely complex.

Anyway, there are many additional important issues here that I don’t have time to get into. My guess is Flynn would say the same thing about this short memorandum (at which point, his eyes would turn into dollar signs and he’d take the opportunity to plug his book, which goes into more detail).

PDF Document