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Friday, February 14, 2025

2025 Homeland Security Threat Forecast: Leading Complexity

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. 

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Patricia Cogswell
Patricia Cogswell
Former Deputy Administrator of the Transportation Security Administration Patty Cogswell joined Guidehouse in September 2020 as a senior strategic advisor, working in the areas of innovation, organization and mission transformation and redesign across the national security sector. She became a partner at Guidehouse in 2022. Ms. Cogswell is a homeland and national security executive with 25 years of experience;13 years as a senior executive. She has led programs at the White House, Department of Homeland Security, and Department of Justice, in transportation, intelligence, policy, border security, screening, and information sharing initiatives. She possesses substantive expertise in: aviation, maritime, and surface transportation security, US government and foreign partner screening and vetting programs, counter terrorism, transnational organized crime, intelligence, information sharing and associated technology architectures, and immigration and border processes. She has led multiple organizations through strategy, policy, technology execution, and operations in support of national security missions, as well as how to construct and implement both business and technical architectures. She led complex initiatives across the federal government and with international partners. She negotiated international agreements. Prior to her arrival, she served in a number of roles within the Department of Homeland Security, including as the Deputy Administrator of the Transportation Security Administration, Assistant Director for Intelligence at the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Acting Undersecretary within the Office of Intelligence and Analysis, Acting Assistant Secretary for Policy Integration and Implementation, and Deputy Assistant Secretary for Screening Coordination. She previously served at the National Security Council as Acting Deputy Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, and as Special Assistant to the President for Transborder Security. During her time in government, Ms. Cogswell received the DHS Outstanding Service Medal, the DHS Secretary’s Award, and the DHS Thought Leadership Award. Ms. Cogswell received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Mathematics from the University of Pennsylvania with a minor in Economics and a Juris Doctor degree from the College of William and Mary, Marshall-Wythe School of Law.

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