Emerging Threats and Security Planning: How Should We Decide What Hypothetical Threats to Worry About?

Abstract

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Assessing the terrorist threat to the food supply: food defence, threat assessments, and the problem of vulnerability

“…As Garthoff notes in an article on intelligence estimates, "it would be foolish to base our judgements only on what they say, and not also on what they do" [Garthoff, (1978), p.26]. It is here where the balance between capability and intentions comes into play as intentions themselves may in fact be limited by an opponent's resources, perception of risk, experience, and so on (Jackson and Frelinger, 2009;Schneier, 2006;Stech and Hoffman, 1982). The importance of focusing on intentions and capability is borne out by a study on success and failure in terrorist operations which found, not entirely surprisingly, that when there is a mismatch between intention and capability there is a higher likelihood of failure (Jackson and Frelinger, 2009).…”

“…This type of thinking may be a common element after cases of strategic surprise (Betts, 2007). As such, perceived 'failures of imagination' seen as a causal factor in the failure to stop the 9/11 attacks from occurring meant that food defence and other 'exotic' terrorist threats became far more salient (Jackson and Frelinger, 2009).…”

“…The mere existence of the food supply chain along with the identification of perceived vulnerabilities that could be exploited by a hypothetical attacker with hypothetical capabilities does not mean in practice that a real-life attacker will even view the food supply chain as a preferable mode of attack (Jackson and Frelinger, 2009). In starting from a perception of vulnerability, one's analysis is directed towards finding the manner in which an actor with malevolent intentions would exploit such vulnerability; this only serves to focus on the novel features of a threat (Jackson and Frelinger, 2009), rather than whether an adversary would actually want or be able to take advantage of the perceived vulnerabilities.…”

“…In starting from a perception of vulnerability, one's analysis is directed towards finding the manner in which an actor with malevolent intentions would exploit such vulnerability; this only serves to focus on the novel features of a threat (Jackson and Frelinger, 2009), rather than whether an adversary would actually want or be able to take advantage of the perceived vulnerabilities.…”

“…Allowing perceptions of vulnerability to frame a threat -what can be called a vulnerability-driven approach (Jackson and Frelinger, 2009) -can have important implications in how accurately a threat is perceived and so also in how limited resources are allocated. Previous research on threat perception highlights that a heightened sense of vulnerability can in fact increase the perception of threat, regardless of whether such a threat is at risk of occurring (Cohen, 1979;Jervis, 1976;Rousseau, 2006).…”