AGE OF DANGER

A detailed examination of the flawed U.S. national security apparatus, which costs more than $1 trillion per year to operate.

Hoehn, research director at the RAND Corporation, and Shanker, the director of the Project for Media and National Security, bring great expertise to their subject, knowledge they bolster with further wisdom from a small army of Beltway experts and former officials. Despite massive expenditures, the last few presidential administrations have often been stunned by events at home and abroad. The authors divide the system into “the warning machine,” aimed at identifying emerging threats, and “the action machine,” tasked with dealing with those threats. Much of the problem is that these two parts have different mindsets, and debate often degenerates into interagency conflict. A related issue is that the national security agencies were initially designed for the Cold War environment, and they have been slow to adapt to a nonbipolar world. After 9/11, the pendulum swung toward terrorism. As that threat receded, China emerged as the central security concern. Hoehn and Shanker identify a parade of new-generation threats, from cyberwarfare to climate change to biological attacks on the food supply. But therein lies the problem: There are so many things to worry about that information overload is a systemic danger. The authors are clearly aware of the many pitfalls involved, and they propose the creation of a series of standing joint task forces to work across agencies. It’s a worthy idea but one that could lead to deeper layers of bureaucracy. Nevertheless, the authors’ forceful message about the necessity of meaningful action is significant. “If recent decades have taught us anything,” they write, “it is that the seemingly urgent has a way of displacing the quietly important. The immediate overshadows the pending. Not always, but often enough.”

An instructive deep dive into a system that requires vast improvement efforts.