Improving strategic risk management at the Department of Homeland Security

Abstract

America awoke on September 12, 2001, to a world in which our vulnerabilities to previously unimaginable acts of violence now seemed limitless. Al Qaeda had laid bare that our massive infrastructures, our globalized, interconnected economy, and the openness of our society could easily be exploited to cause massive harm to persons, property and our national psyche. In the weeks and months following the attacks, it seemed that only the limits of one’s imagination could confine the number of scenarios in which terrorists could inflict death and destruction on the United States.