As I look across our security landscape I’m struck by the sheer complexity of the environment, from the number of threat vectors to the variety of threat actors.
Nation state cyber threats to critical infrastructure. Southwest border immigration. Ukraine-Russia. Israel-Gaza. Tik Tok. Transnational criminal organizations. Reemergence of foreign terrorist organizations. Domestic terrorism and violence in our communities. Increasingly frequent, deadly natural disasters. Supply chain fragility and inter-dependency.
Each of these alone is significant – together they have the potential to overwhelm the capacity of the systems and processes we have in place as well as the capacity of leadership to manage them, and coordinate across, as they jump from issue to issue.
And then there’s the risk of any of these together creating cascading disruptions.
Over my years in government as a senior leader, I participated in a series of exercises where we modeled just such cascading failures so we could determine the limits of our contingencies. I also led interagency responses to threats as they were occurring – and led interagency processes after those events that took stock of what we learned, in order to update and improve our processes, policy, and capacity.
Each time, I walked away from these sessions grateful to my interagency, international, state and local, and industry partners. For their willingness to plan for the complex. To learn about each other’s capabilities and legal authorities rather than relying on assumptions. To understand that when multiple organizations are making changes concurrently, failure to coordinate can make things worse, not better. And for establishing defined points of coordination and ongoing collaboration, so that you wouldn’t be meeting for the first time on that really bad day.
To quote President Eisenhower, “Plans are worthless, but planning is everything.” No threat plays out exactly like you exercised or how you planned. But the objectives you develop, the understanding of capabilities and capacity, the relationships you built – those are what will get you through even the most complex threat environment.