Understanding Intelligence,Lots of private educational providers can produce better service, many academies can provide better direction; let us not forget the untapped reservoir of talent in the retiree population. Homeland Security’s most pressing futur
Hello everybody, welcome to HLSC 500 foundations of homeland security module eight. Issues in homeland security; Remember what I said module eight, so you’re at the end, the train is pulling into the station and you get ready to disembark, that’s the sad news, the good news is you’ll be leaving on a new train here soon into another Homeland Security class hopefully.
Hopefully you’ve enjoyed this class and learned a lot, but we have one more module to get through before you’ll be out of this class and one step closer to that graduate degree, so it’s been great working with you and again I hope you had a great week and let’s go ahead and get into module eight. Issues in Homeland Security, what we’re going to do here we shall talk about just some general things, some things I think you might find of interest and of good use.
As far as terrorism goes, the definitions of it will hopefully clarify in the long run but terrorism itself will never be over, and actually I don’t know if that first part is ever going to be true, in the United States alone there are over 100 definitions of terrorism. Even the federal government has a multitude of definitions, the FBI has their own definition, the Department of State has their own, as many other agencies.
I actually always have preferred the FBI definition the best and the Department of State’s definition second best. But what really matters is the legal definition which is really has to be found in the code, whether it’s a federal code or state code and most of the time it has to be federal code under USC. It may just mutate into other forms, revert to criminal forms or trans-mutate into some kind of political behavior and actually with terrorism, it can be two — it can be two parts of terrorism, one is the action arm or the military arm and the other’s a political arm.
In reality, those terrorist groups that have two arms, the political arm, the military arm actually have done the best over the years. The IRA is a good example of that, Hamas is actually a good example of that, ISIS probably not so much a good example but they too had a political arm and a military arm and in the past, the IRA has been able to garner some sympathy and support and some political power as Hamas, ISIS, not so much.
As far as disasters go, the worst future threats may very well not be man-made but a human factors environmental disasters. It could be environmental and that doesn’t have to be necessarily a purposeful looting of the earth it might be accidental as accidental discharge or a leak. Think about back to the tsunami that hit Japan several years back, that was basically a natural disaster, but it ended up having cascading effects.
Remember all hazards, the blame game will go on forever, it seems to be getting worse, lots of events like pandemics will test the limits of border security and quarantine enforcement, we’ve seen that in the last several years coming out of Africa, we dodged a bullet on that one, and sooner or later we’re not going to keep dodging these bullets when it comes to pandemics.
Okay, homeland security and practice will always be challenging, that’s just the nature of it and that’s probably one of the reasons why it’s such an interesting and important field of study. Many practices and procedures will probably become standardized, but there will always be a need for improvements and education and training, which are always at risk of becoming stale in need of newer pedagogy’s and platforms.
I’ll be honest with you — for another school where I’ve taught in the senior capstone class for years or seminar if you will, and several years ago I found myself having to delve into three areas much deeper than I already had. I have always been deep into terrorism but I found myself– I spent about two years studying deeply into Jihad. I felt like it was necessary that I had a really firm grasp of jihad.
The other area was cyber security where I’ve actually immersed myself in over the years, more recently in the last year or two, but it was necessary to catch myself up and then social media is a third area where I’ve had catching up. We don’t want to become stale, we don’t want to have stale books, we don’t want to have stale employees, we don’t want to have stale professors or still curriculum or policies. Absent some sort of security divide or gap, most communities will feel safer than before but perhaps none will ever reach the all-clear stage for an extended period which we’re not and anybody who thinks that probably isn’t paying attention.
Social satisfaction and quality of life will likely continue to remain fuzzy indicators that are hard to measure, because the truth is, homeland security does not exist in the vacuum, everything else is swirling about and going on while homeland security we’re doing our job and there’s many other things that impact that.
Okay, politicization and privatization; the heavy hand of the federal government is perhaps the most evident in the way of those who play ball and receive the most funds just so happens to be those who see no problem with a natural superiority, National Fire Academy, FEMA, FBI and training. I’m not being critical of those agencies they all do a great job but there’s a lot more out there and we need to be bringing everybody under the tent, it needs to be a big tent.
This is a form of educational purse strings control over the future directions of homeland security. Actually, we see the same thing with public and private education, I think that tide has turned a little bit right now but tides always turn in one direction or another. I’ve seen myself in the field that knowledge is power and people like to control power and maintain power and there’s always going to be that struggle for the funds, struggle for the attention, struggle for whatever it is that– resource that’s out there.
We need to just be aware of that and always just do the right thing regardless of who gets the credit. The processes of politicization have overpowered the processes of privatization and actually politicization is– honestly, it’s extremely worrisome to me how politicized everything is now. I feel sometimes like I’ve — I fallen asleep and falling down a rabbit hole and now I’m at the Mad Hatter’s party. Everything that seemed right is upside-down but it isn’t because God is still in control.
Lots of private educational providers can produce better service, many academies can provide better direction; let us not forget the untapped reservoir of talent in the retiree population. Homeland Security’s most pressing future need may be to devise a good human resource management system which keeps the field from becoming stale and burned-out and really it’s so interesting to me, I’ve looked at a lot of the homeland security and emergency management programs across the country when it comes to colleges whether a two-year or four-year, master’s level, doctorate whatever and it’s interesting to see that economy of the programs that are out there.
Before 9/11 there really weren’t any homeland security programs, there were a handful of emergency management programs and I’ve gone around and I’ve looked at the curriculum at different schools. Well, first thing I look at is to see where is the homeland security program housed, what department is it in that tells me a lot, same thing in criminal justice actually. If you show me where that program is housed, I can show you the slant or where it leans as far as what their priorities are.
Then I’ve seen some programs that really just didn’t cut the mustard and they were just thrown together, they just threw everything together really quickly and you wonder why this curriculum. I’m proud to say that liberty’s programs aren’t like that, it’s a very good program. Okay, I want to talk about chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear and explosive. Now, a lot of people would call that WMD, which is fine, it’s okay to use that. I think you need to pay attention to what audience you’re speaking to. When I speak to professionals, I want to talk about CBRNE. WMD is a broader more general term that I think the public is used to, but for professionals I like to use CBRNE because it’s more accurate. Well, and in other tactics weapons used by terrorists.
Now, remember a lot of these things can be used by criminals, they don’t have to be a terrorist and it can also be accidental. Let’s look — chemical weapons, easy to get but lack sufficient killing power, they don’t travel as well, they travel as far as the wind will take them normally or maybe attach to yourself and carry and their lifespan is not that long. Chemical weapons, not demeaning any of these, all of these can be deadly. Chemical weapons are scary and they can kill you but they’re not quite like some of the other ones we’re going to see.
Biological weapons, super dangerous, super deadly and they’re hard to get. Combined maximum destructiveness and easy availability, I don’t think a lot of these are that easy to get, some of them can be and this is one of the ones that are probably more naturally occurring. We see food outbreaks, food borne outbreaks all the time, we don’t know what it is but is usually just poor hygiene, poor sanitation.
This can travel, we may not even know, we’ve seen this with airplanes, with the borders and that sort of thing, radiological weapons are almost back to the first one, chemicals dangerous but they’ll contaminate the area for a long time but they don’t travel well as far as killing power. Nuclear weapons, great killing capacity but very hard to obtain.
If you look up NEST, nuclear Regulatory Commission has a team that can go around and they’ve actually been deployed at least once or more in the US.
They can go around in vans, they can carry suitcases and they can detect nuclear material in an area. If you’ve worked around nuclear power plants, you’ve dealt with this on drills and security and such.
Explosive weapons or explosives in general, that’s the bread and butter, always has been and probably always will be for terrorists. IEDs and vehicle-borne IEDs, Boston Marathon bombing, pipe bombs, you name it, explosives are here to stay. Cyber terrorism, potential is tremendous. I think we’ve probably seen more cyber warfare, we’ve seen cyber terrorism and we just don’t want to call it that, cyber espionage this has been a game-changer in every respect.
One area I would encourage you to study a lot and if you wanted to work on other degrees or advanced degrees or it would be very marketable. The more knowledge you have about cyber the better off you’re going to be. Then hostage-taking, good old standby, but they changed the game on 9/11, they took hostage taking in a different direction. It used to be on the airplanes if you cooperated, one person might be killed but they got from point A to point B and then it was over with but 9/11 changed that.
The picture on the left is Beslan school number one and you heard me mention this earlier. I don’t have as much time to spend here but this is a Chechen and jihadist terrorist attack and this is probably one of my biggest fears that would happen in the United States, it hasn’t happened but this is a game changer on how we look at active shooters, takes it to a whole new level. Quite frankly I don’t think we’re really prepared for.
Many years ago, after Beslan this happened when I was in the state police, we formed a small committee where we studied all this and made recommendations and the recommendations were beyond what we would normally consider for a school shooting. Basically, it becomes a military issue and I don’t mean a military issue of the army, I mean military issue for the police. They’re not there to negotiate, they’re there to kill people. Active shooter, active shooter on steroids, there’s a lot of good books out there on Beslan and you can read. I really suggest that you spend some time looking at this.
This something you might want to look at when we get to your final class for your cognate and homeland security because something might well consider even for this class maybe too late now because you’ve already been doing your work. A little bit more on CBRNE, there’s a Taliban or a Jihadist, Al-Qaeda using a Stinger missile over in Afghanistan, that was a big fear for a long time and I guess they’re probably still out there somewhere more.
Explosives, we have suicide bombers, are not new, suicide bomber increases chances that the device will have maximum impact, IEDs or improvised explosive devices I’m sure almost all you know that, that’s a stinger device. A dirty bomb that’s usually radiological or chemical and the thing about that is the explosion itself will actually kill off some of the chemical or radiological effects.
Some people call that weapon of mass disruption instead of the weapon of mass destruction when it comes to a dirty bomb. A hostage-taking has been used for years, hostage taking is different than a barricade, barricade you have all the time in the world, they don’t have anybody there to deal with. Hostage situation a little bit different, the reasons they’ll do that or to kill or to trade and barter. There was a terrorist who once said he would rather kill one person in front of a camera than a hundred in a desert alone because it’s really for maximum impact.
Let’s talk about cyber terrorism for a minute, computers enable terrorists to stay connected, plan and share information, may be used to hack into any number of systems such as banking and Healthcare Institute, cyber bomb planted through Trojan horses, no system can be totally secured. Cyber incidents can easily and likely cross regional or national boundaries of widespread impact and of course the hacking is the biggie now. High tech specialist should be used to constantly enhance and monitor security procedures.
I’ve heard security professionals in a cyber field say that terrorists aren’t really up to speed on this and that some of them aren’t but terrorists have strange bedfellows and I would not take this lightly. I really do believe this is more of a foreign country cyber warfare issue, more so then cyber terrorism but it is there. Cyber anything is just massive what we should deal with and how it’s being treated.
This is a really interesting slide to me, the slide on the right shows that terrorism does work sometimes, this is Madrid, Spain 2004 right before their elections and first they thought the Basque B-A-S-Q-U-E separatist’s terrorist did this but they didn’t, this was Al Qaeda and they wanted the Spanish troops out of Middle East. They did this bombing and another bombing and said, “If you don’t get your troops out of the Middle East,” that they’ll continue to do this.
There were two people running for election, one’s platform was to get the troops out of the Middle East, the other was to keep them there. Well guess who won? The person wanted to pull the troops out of Middle East and that’s what they did. Unfortunately, in this case terrorism worked. I want to show you this just to give you an idea how CBRNE can work, compared to conventional explosives the following amount of each agent will be needed for the same number of deaths within a square mile.
Square mile this is what it would take to kill everybody 705,000 pounds of fragmentation cluster bomb material, 7,000 pounds of mustard gas, 1700 pounds of nerve gas. Remember, this is to kill everybody in a square mile, 11 pounds of material and crude nuclear fission weapons, three ounces of botulinal toxin type A or half an ounce Anthrax spores.
We’d go from 705,000 pounds of bomb to half an ounce of anthrax spores, just to put in perspective how different CBRNEs can work and what it takes to make them work. Closing it up, in the US alone 17 to 50 potential attacks, terrorist attacks have been disrupted since 9/11. Of course, this video was created in 2017 in very late spring, just to give you an idea. Actually, there’s been many more terrorist attacks, there’s been 60 Plus almost pushing 70 now since 9/11 on US soil. When I say attacks, I mean potential and carried out, a good number or were carried out, some we probably didn’t classify correctly so it’s probably even higher than that.
We’re not safe and we’re never going to be safe, earthquakes, heat waves, floods, volcanoes, super typhoons, tsunamis, blizzards, landslides and droughts killed at least a quarter million people in 2010. Deadliest year more than a generation that’s why it’s about all hazards. The earth is a dangerous place, more people were killed worldwide by natural disasters this year than in 2010 than have been killed in terrorism attacks in the past four years, that doesn’t mean to diminish terrorism.
Like I said earlier on in the modules any given day you’re more likely to be killed by all of these things when you include diseases and criminal acts and car accidents or industrial accidents. You’re much more likely to get killed or hurt by all of those things. We need to remember it’s about all hazards. To wrap it up, there is no limit to the good you can do if you don’t care who gets the credit. I believe we were all put on earth to do good and I hope you do good, I hope good is done to you. Significant problems cannot be solved with the same level of thinking that created them.
First one was by George Marshall, this was Albert Einstein, Albert Einstein was just amazing, Albert Einstein was a scientist who firmly believed there had to be a God because there was just too many scientists that said otherwise. In Psalms 27:5, “In time of trouble He shall set me upon a rock,” and I think that’s a good way to end the course. He’s there with you, He’s there with us, He always will be. If you have any questions let your instructor know. Thank you for your attention. We’re so glad you picked Liberty University, we’re so glad you picked this class and this cognate, we wish you the very best. May God bless you, may God bless your family, your friends, your co-workers now and forever and may you go out there and do great work and do great things. In Jesus name. Amen. Bye and we’ll see you in the next class. God bless.
