essay on homeland security

A Vision for Homeland Security in the Year 2025

Subscribe to governance weekly, darrell m. west darrell m. west senior fellow - center for technology innovation , douglas dillon chair in governmental studies.

June 26, 2012

Imagine a future in which unmanned drones attack critical infrastructure, endangering millions of people, or digital intruders disrupt the financial sector. Or natural disasters could upset food and medical distribution and supply chains around the world.

These are just a few of the risks facing the United States. As demonstrated by the devastation of natural events, such Fukishema in 2011, Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and the Indian Ocean earthquake/tsunami in 2004, and the continuing threats of terrorism and cyber intrusions, there are numerous threats with the potential to harm lives and damage our economy, society, and public order.

Together with the MITRE Corporation, we gathered a group of leading experts in November, 2011 to discuss a vision for homeland security in the year 2025. This gathering brought together individuals who were knowledgeable about homeland security from the public, private, and non-profit sectors to think about the country’s threats, challenges, and proposed remedies. Guests included leaders from organizations such as federal, state, and local government agencies, Congress, the private sector, non-government organizations, think tanks, and nonprofit organizations for a discussion with an interactive dialogue.

The goals for this event were to help shape strategic thinking for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), its critical stakeholders, and the nation. This paper summarizes key ideas that emerged from the day’s discussion, such as future threats, integration challenges and the resulting considerations for leaders across the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) as they work to make the United States safer. Key themes that emerged from this dialogue included the following points:

  • Understand homeland security as a diverse array of organizations, functions, capabilities, and priorities. • Raise awareness of a systems approach to homeland security. • Organize joint action across sectors and leverage private sector resources. • Develop real-time data analytics and decision-making tools. • Institutionalize future-thinking across the security agencies. • Educate senior officials and critical decision-making regarding state and local authority roles, processes, and procedures.

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Governance Studies

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The Journal of the NPS Center for Homeland Defense and Security

How to Learn About Homeland Security

By Christopher Bellavita

The article describes how one can begin to learn about homeland security. Starting with institutionally approved, rather than objectively-tested and validated, foundational knowledge may provide academic order, but the order is achieved at the cost of constraining prematurely what homeland security could become. The method presented in this essay starts with the subjective interests of a learner, and relies on the usefulness of intellectual conflict to transform the learner’s ideas. The article outlines several frameworks learners can use to structure their homeland security inquiry. The author argues claims about what constitutes foundational knowledge in homeland security frequently are based on socially- constructed agreement that masks the subjectivity needed to arrive at consensus. Rather than avoiding subjectivity in determining the roots and bounds of homeland security, we can encourage reflective practitioners to construct and share insights derived from their experience -based, research- informed understanding of homeland security.

Suggested Citation

Bellavita, Christopher. “How to Learn About Homeland Security.” Homeland Security Affairs 15, Article 5 (September, 2019). www.hsaj.org/articles/15395 .

Podcast: Christopher Bellavita on learning about Homeland Security

What This Article is About

“Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.” 1

The core question addressed in this essay is how to begin learning about homeland security. The primary audience is master’s degree participants at the Naval Postgraduate School’s Center for Homeland Defense and Security (CHDS). 2 The students are public-sector practitioners from federal, state, local, and other government agencies.

The approach I advocate in this essay embraces subjectivity and the requirement to present and defend subjective observations to other people. For experienced practitioners a foundational approach 3 to learning homeland security “fills a pail.” Starting from where you are, learning what you need to learn, and exposing your ideas to your colleagues can be a pathway to “lighting a fire.”

I support my argument by reviewing the factors involved in deciding what constitutes valid foundational knowledge about homeland security. Those factors make it difficult to achieve objective, evidence-based agreement about what counts as foundational knowledge. But the difficulty provides opportunities for learners to create, assert and defend their own ideas about what counts as homeland security knowledge.

After describing and linking subjectivity, andragogy (adult education), and questions and learning, I discuss the phenomenological context within which homeland security learning can occur. I describe the Cynefin framework and illustrate how it can be used to structure questions and inquiry about homeland security.

The final part of the essay outlines a matrix offering alternative ways to conduct homeland security inquiry. The matrix is constructed from three types of truth (correspondence, coherence, and pragmatic) and seven inquiring systems (induction, deduction, multiview, dialectic, unbounded, abduction, and detour and access).

The method described in this essay is based on my experiences teaching over 65 Introduction to Homeland Security graduate seminars since 2003. It is one answer to the question of how best to learn about homeland security.

Creating Homeland Security Knowledge

Figure 1 contains topics one is unlikely to find presented in a homeland security textbook (yet).

• Examining Female Genital Mutilation as an Act of Terrorism
• 21st Century Crime: How Malicious Artificial Intelligence Will Impact Homeland Security
• The Implications Of Nanotechnology For The Fire Service: Avoiding The Mistakes Of The Past
• Cyber Federalism: Defining Cyber’s Jurisdictional Boundaries
• Pyro-Terrorism in High-Rise Buildings
• The Arctic: A Wait and See Approach to Defending the Homeland
• The Intergenerational Transfer of Trauma and Implications for Syrian and Iraqi Refugees
• Crowdsourcing Threat Analysis; Applying a “Superforecasting” Methodology to Detection of Homegrown Violence
• Big Brother or Trusted Allies? How the Police Can Earn Community Support for Using Unmanned Aircraft
• Fake News, Conspiracy Theories, and Lies: An Information Laundering Model for Homeland Security
• Asserting Collective State Sovereignty to Strengthen the National Network of Fusion Centers
• Obsessive Compulsive Homeland Security: Insights from the Neurobiological Security Motivation System
• Measuring State Resilience: What Actually Makes A Difference?
• It Takes a Village: Integrating Firehouse Hubs to Encourage Cooperation among Police, Fire,and the Public
• Implementation of Active Cyber Defense Measures by Private Entities: The Need for anInternational Accord to Address Disputes
• Homeland Security from a Tribal Context
• Tusks, Traffickers and Terrorists: Is Wildlife Trafficking a Homeland Security Concern?
• The Maple Leaf and the Olive Branch: A Comparative Analysis of Refugee Policies in Canada and the United States and the Potential for Blended Reform
• Puerto Rico’s Homeland Security Readiness: Redesigning the Island’s Power Grid to Improve Its Resiliency and Efficiency
• Military Doctrine Relating to Homeland Security Does Not Adequately Guide Domestic Use of the National Guard
• Disaster Housing for High-Density Urban Environments
• Diversity in Homeland Security: Analyzing Environment, Not Numbers
• Social Media Screening of Homeland Security Job Applicants and the Implications on Free Speech Rights
• Disruptive Emergence in Disaster Response Systems
• Effectiveness of Blockchain Technology in the Customs Environment
• What the Homeland Security Enterprise Can Learn from The Stock Market
• Creating A Secure Border by First Agreeing What Secure Border Means
• Reacting to School Shootings by Engaging the Lost Time Interval
• Black American Social Status and Post 9/11 Unity
• Hi Tech, Low Tech, And No Tech Communication Strategies When the Power Goes Out
• Applying the National Infrastructure Protection Plan to State and Local Infrastructure Priorities
• The ESTA Program and Northern
• Border Security Loopholes
• The Role of Social, Personal and Perceived Isolation in the Radicalization Process
• Preventing Police Murders by Identifying Early Warning Indicators
• Information Sharing Within the Critical Infrastructure Community
• Creating A “State to Grass Roots” Strategic Communication Model for ESF 8
• Evaluating Adherence to The Intelligence Cycle Within the Homeland Security Intelligence Environment
• Modifying the Risk Formula for Homeland Security Grant Allocations By Incorporating Indirect and Spillover Consequences
• Establishing a 4th Phase Air Cargo Screening Strategy
• A Strategy for Preventing the Theft of Public Safety Vehicles
• Re-Visioning Border Security as A Complex Adaptive System
• Punching Above Their Weight: The Homeland Security Contributions of the U.S. Pacific Territories

Figure 1 : Selected CHDS Thesis Topics

Figure 1 contains titles of research conducted in the last four years by cohorts at the Center for Homeland Defense and Security. The authors are reflective homeland security practitioners. 4 They, like the alumni who preceded them, did not learn homeland security by relying on foundational ideas about homeland security. They learned by starting with the experiences, knowledge, and interests they brought to CHDS; by sharing those experiences with their colleagues; and by modifying and growing what they know about homeland security through interactions with courses, lectures, assignments, readings and challenges to their ideas. The knowledge they are creating helps to advance homeland security as both a practice and an academic discipline.

Three Approaches to Learning Homeland Security

In this section I describe three (not mutually exclusive) ways to begin learning about homeland security: 1) a foundations approach: start with the fundamental concepts of homeland security; 2) an objective approach: start with concepts whose validity can be objectively determined; and 3) a subjective approach: start with the ideas, questions and knowledge each learner brings to the educational activity.

If the homeland security discipline were firmly established, one could learn about homeland security by building on the discipline’s conceptual foundations. 5 Textbooks are one place to find candidates for a foundational approach to homeland security. 6 They codify homeland security into a series of categories, frequently a large number of categories. 7 Textbooks are constructed by experts who assert – based on experience and research — what one needs to know about homeland security. 8 Students who rely primarily on textbooks, according to Kuhn, tend to “accept theories on the authority of teacher and text, not because of evidence.” 9

Eighteen years after September 11 2001, homeland security is still not a discipline. 10 There is no national agreement about what homeland security is. 11 There is no broad consensus about what the core homeland security problems are. They seem to keep changing. Different language communities have settled – more or less – on working definitions of homeland security. 12 Where there is agreement within those communities, homeland security foundations look similar to ideas from other fields of study – like law enforcement, emergency management, and public administration. 13 The claims I have seen about homeland security foundations are supported largely by socially-constructed agreements about what constitutes foundational knowledge. 14 I consider those agreements to be based on a consensus that masks subjectivity. 15

I do not see a practicable way to avoid subjectivity. Consequently I think of subjectivity more as ground truth to be acknowledged rather than a problem to be solved. I believe socially- constructed agreements about foundations can be useful. In fact, my argument encourages socially- constructed foundations. However, I want to expand who gets to decide what the foundations are, and to encourage reflective practitioners to construct and share their own foundations. This essay describes how that can be accomplished.

In addition to a traditional foundational approach, 16 there are at least two other ways to learn homeland security. One way is to remove, as much as possible, the subjective element in deciding what a foundation is, and to replace subjectivity with objective referents. This would follow the practice of physical and material sciences (like physics, biology, chemistry, and engineering), and would base foundations on empirical knowledge — by which I mean knowledge that is repeatable, and whose validity is falsifiable and independent of the observer’s mental state. 17 As I will argue later in the discussion of the Cynefin framework, an objective approach to homeland security might help learning simple and complicated issues. 18 It is less helpful in learning about the complex issues that – in my opinion — constitute the bulk of the dynamic concerns facing homeland security practitioners.

Another strategy — the one advanced in this essay — is to approach learning about homeland security from the perspective of radical subjectivity. 19 This strategy adopts, makes explicit, and extends the subjectivity inherent in contemporary models of how to learn about homeland security. 20

Instead of subjectivity being an opaque tool reserved to those who possess institutional authority (such as people who publish textbooks or who develop homeland security curricula), I want to make subjectivity transparent, legitimize it for homeland security scholarship, and make it available to anyone who wants to learn about homeland security. 21

Subjectivity in this context does not mean considering as true whatever one wants to be true (e.g., that Obama is a Muslim or that the 9/11 attacks were an inside job). I use subjectivity to refer to a process that begins with individual interpretations and reflections of sense data 22 and extends through a transformational process of presenting and defending one’s observations about homeland security to other people. I use the term “radical” in a dictionary — not a political — sense, to mean “root.” I am looking for homeland security inquiry to start with the baseline of what each participant brings to the CHDS program.

“Start from where you are” is the phrase I use to describe the subjective approach to learning homeland security. I use “transformational dialectic” to describe a cyclical process of presenting and defending one’s observations to other people, and refining one’s ideas based on that process. 23

My belief — maybe stated more accurately as my hope — is that starting from where you are, and using the transformational dialectic will serve two purposes (in addition to keeping students motivated to learn).

1) It will enable individuals to learn about homeland security in a way that keeps homeland security knowledge alive and continuously evolving. This contrasts with a learning model based on collecting and remembering a series of facts and interpretations about homeland security. 24 My view is that a foundational approach to learning homeland security (as illustrated by textbooks) emphasizes learning at the lower levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy. 25 Starting from where you are encourages learning at all six levels. 26

2) It will help to expand, sustain, and grow understanding of homeland security as a social enterprise. For example, the research topics described in figure 1 – and research developed by subsequent cohorts at CHDS (and elsewhere) — will be added to the store of homeland-security knowledge. Many of those ideas may have a short life. Other ones may help to shape the future of homeland security.

A relevant aphorism is “Let a hundred flowers bloom. Let a hundred schools of thought contend.” 27 In my opinion, it is too early in the development of homeland security as a field of study to declare victory and say we know what it is. I recognize there are institutional, efficiency, and resource issues encouraging us to say what homeland security is, and then move on to whatever comes after that. 28 Foreclosing homeland security too quickly risks substituting a false sense of certainty for a missed opportunity to learn – and to influence — what homeland security could and should be.

Each of the participants at CHDS has the opportunity to make and defend claims about homeland security that can help shape the field. Because CHDS selects experienced practitioners with the demonstrated ability to do graduate-level work, I believe we would do a disservice to program participants if we first insisted they agree on the foundations of homeland security before they were allowed to develop their own perceptions about the discipline. My approach, instead, is to encourage them to start from where they are, share and defend those perceptions, and use a variety of tools (research, classwork, reading – even textbooks) to refine what they know and what they are learning.

Start from Where You Are by Asking Questions about Homeland Security

Starting from where you are means identifying what you want to learn about homeland security. If you don’t know what you want to learn, you can always start by asking, “what is homeland security?” That will lead you down a — thus far — endless path that touches international and domestic terrorism, emergency management, public health, critical infrastructure, privacy, cyber security, climate change, elections, human trafficking, artificial intelligence, child pornography, immigration, border security, the national debt, obesity, education, mass casualty events, biotechnology, and who knows what else. 29

People who come to CHDS have questions about homeland security. These questions emerge from professional and personal interests. Instead of discounting those experiences in favor of a “foundations of homeland security” approach, experience becomes an integral part of an andragogical learning process.

Andragogy – an adult learning philosophy – is based on five assumptions about the characteristics of mature learners: 30

• Self Directed — mature learners move from being dependent to being self-directed, from depending on others to determine what should be learned, to deciding for themselves what they learn, why they learn it, and how they learn it.
• Experience — Adults bring significant experiences to the learning enterprise, and use those experiences as learning resources.
• Readiness — Adults are ready to learn something when they perceive the need to learn it.
• Learning Orientation — Their learning focus is on solving problems or taking advantage of opportunities to advance the issues they care about.
• Motivation — Adults are motivated to learn more for internal than external reasons.

Starting with a question engages learners in each of the andragogical assumptions. 31

So what? If you want to learn about homeland security ask yourself why. Also ask what specifically you want to know about homeland security — not because your class assignment is to ask a question, but rather because you really want to know the answer. Pick something you care about.

A Working Definition of Learning 32

I recognize there are many definitions of learning. 33 For the purposes of this essay, I will define learning as transforming experience into knowledge. 34 I am using “knowledge” here to mean information that can be used to serve a purpose. 35

Elinor Ostrom suggests how frameworks can aid learning: 36

The purpose of a framework is to “identify the elements (and the relationships among these elements)…, to consider for analysis…, organize diagnostic and prescriptive inquiry…, [and] provide the most general set of variables that should be used to analyze all types of settings relevant for the framework.

There are two frameworks I find especially useful in analyzing how I learn something: one is Kolb’s learning cycle. 37 The other is Bloom’s Taxonomy of educational objectives in the cognitive domain. 38

Kolb’s cycle, shown below, 39 illustrates how learning can occur. The model is drawn as a cycle, but one can enter at any point. The learning model consists of 1) having an experience, 2) reflecting on that experience, 3) generalizing from a set of similar or related experiences, and 4) using the generalization to structure (either through behavior or interpretation) a new experience.

Figure 2: Kolb’s Learning Cycle

If one maps the learning cycle against Bloom’s Taxonomy, illustrated below 40 , one can see how the learning cycle moves through several taxonomic dimensions. I will illustrate that claim with a cyber-security example, first by identifying questions derived from each level of Bloom’s Taxonomy.

Figure 3: Bloom’s Taxonomy

Learning can focus on knowledge gained by gathering facts — for example, what were the dollar costs of cyber intrusion in 2018?

Learning can focus on demonstrating comprehension – e.g., where is a particular agency vulnerable to cyber intrusion?

Learning can focus on applying what one knows – e.g., what steps can an agency take to reduce its vulnerabilities to a cyber intrusion?

Learning can focus on analysis – for instance, how are the costs of intrusion calculated; how are vulnerabilities identified; what are the reasons leading one to believe steps taken to reduce vulnerabilities will be effective?

Learning can focus on synthesizing knowledge – e.g., what can we learn about mitigating cyber vulnerabilities by exploring how other security vulnerabilities – in human and non-human environments 41 — have been reduced?

Learning can focus on evaluating knowledge – for example, what are the advantages and disadvantages of an offensive cyber-security strategy as opposed to a defensive strategy?

For a reflective practitioner, one’s learning about homeland security evolves at each level of Bloom’s Taxonomy through having experiences ( in the world of practice, research, readings, seminars, informal discussions etc.), reflecting on and generalizing from those experiences, and transforming those experiences into a different way of thinking, feeling or acting.

So what? Ask yourself what you mean by learning, and what indicators you use to confirm that you have learned something.

Homeland Security Exists in More than One Phenomenological Space 42

I find the Cynefin framework 43 useful in organizing and understanding homeland security “realities.” 44 It segments reality into ordered and unordered systems,and it describes the characteristics of four systems in a way that allows for description, analysis, and prescription. 45

Figure 4: Cynefin Framework

Applied to homeland security, Cynefin assumes 1) a homeland security issue can be framed according to cause-effect relationships embedded in the issue, and 2) the way the issue is framed affects how one approaches learning about it. 46

Some issues are simple 47 , meaning (in Cynefin terms) cause-effect relationships are clear and widely understood (for example, get caught trying to bring a weapon onto a plane and you will likely not fly that day). Other issues are complicated, meaning cause-effect links are presently unknown, but with some research they can become known (for example, how to improve an organization’s cyber-security practices to reduce the likelihood of a successful intrusion). Both simple and complicated issues can be positioned in what Cynefin terms the ordered space. Learning in these domains consists, prototypically, of memorization (for simple issues) and conducting research (for complicated issues).

Complex and chaotic issues reside in the unordered space. In the complex domain, cause and effect relationships are known after the fact, not before 48 (for example, the impact of Kirstjen Nielsen’s tenure as DHS Secretary on border security policy), and generally neither the causes nor the effects are repeatable in precisely the same way. In the chaotic domain, cause and effect have no discernible relationships (for example, the first 102 minutes after the 9/11/01 attack in New York). 49 Things just happen. 50

So what? Do you believe what happens in homeland security has a cause that can be known before the effect appears? If so, where does that belief come from, and what evidence can you cite to support that belief? What if you entertained the hypothesis that some causes can only be known after the fact? How would that change your approach to learning homeland security?

Each Phenomenological Space Has Different Rules About Cause and Effect, and Understanding Cause-Effect Relationships is Important if One Wants to Improve Homeland Security

To illustrate in more detail how the Cynefin framework can be applied to homeland security, consider this subject: “how to measure the effectiveness of homeland security program expenditures.” To make the topic more specific, I’ll say the program is intended to improve the capability of a jurisdiction to respond effectively to a Vehicle Borne Improvised Explosive Device (VBIED). Stated as a “cause-effect” relationship, the desired effect is “being prepared to respond to a VBIED;” having the required capabilities is the cause .

Approached as a simple issue, 51 measuring effectiveness means identifying the goals of the program (the desired elements of the capability, as outlined – for example – in grant documents), and then measuring whether the goals were achieved.

Treated as a complicated issue, it is not apparent what capabilities a jurisdiction needs to prepare for a VBIED response. 52 There may be some general recommendations from the Department of Homeland Security or the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, but the recommendations must be tailored to the jurisdiction’s context. Adapting the recommendations to a local jurisdiction requires answers to additional questions — e.g., what happens if the device is detonated in a particular location (such as a high school), what are the elements of an appropriate response, and so on. Research can provide answers to those questions, and in the process establish jurisdiction-specific performance metrics.

In summary: simple and complicated issues reside in the ordered domains of homeland security. Cause-effect relationships are known or can be known. Learning can occur before a device explodes.

From a complexity perspective, the jurisdiction will not know with certainty how prepared they are until they experience a VBIED. They may approximate knowing through a plan or an exercise, but the empirical truth about the relationship between grant expenditures and preparedness cannot be known until the jurisdiction experiences a detonation. Even then, the truth, revealed through after-action analyses, may be shaped by a social process that is as much concerned with political and legal concerns as it is with preparedness. 53

A detonation creates chaos . As happened with the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, prepositioned capabilities will be combined with improvised capabilities in ways not considered by security planners. 54 When preparedness is viewed from within the chaos space, it is difficult to separate unexpected response assets from the part preparedness-grant expenditures played in response. They are all combined. In principle, from this view, measuring the effectiveness of homeland security program expenditures can at best be approximated, and probably only in general terms.

In summary: complex and chaotic issues reside in the unordered homeland security domain. Any order that does emerge is after the fact. Cause-effect relationships are known retrospectively, not prospectively, and they will not be repeated. Learning can only happen after experience. 55

So what? For the issues you care about, for the questions you want answers to, for the parts of the homeland security enterprise you want to change, what assumptions are you making about cause- effect relationships, about why and how things happen the way they do? Does changing those assumptions offer alternative ways of thinking about your topics of interest?

How to Find Answers to Homeland Security Questions

Simple questions (in the Cynefin sense) are characterized by known and repeatable cause and effect relationships. For example, “how can a vacationing American citizen take her 12 year old son from the United States to Canada if the child does not have a passport?” Answering a simple question involves collecting data, placing the data in the appropriate category, and providing an answer based on the way the question has been asked and answered previously. There is an answer and a procedure to be followed for the vacationer’s simple question (simple for Customs and Border Protection, if not so for the parent. 56 )

Complicated questions come from systems whose constituent elements can be described completely. 57 The system may be characterized by unknown, but knowable cause-effect relationships. For example, “how is the electric grid vulnerable to an E2 electromagnetic pulse?” 58 or “what impact will new screening technology have on passenger flow rates at large primary hub airports?” Answering complicated questions requires conducting research: gathering data, analyzing data, and reaching conclusions that can be supported by the analysis.

Complex questions emerge from socio-technical systems whose constituent elements can neither be prospectively described nor understood by analyzing their components. 59 The questions are characterized by unrepeatable cause-effect relationships knowable only in retrospect. Examples of complex questions are “how can the public be engaged so they remain interested in homeland security?” or “how can the Department of Homeland Security’s organizational culture be changed?” One way to answer complex questions is to try a comparatively minor solution (i.e., probe) and, through continuous feedback (i.e., gather data), see if you are learning anything useful. If you are, do more; if you are not, try something else (i.e., respond to what the data say). 60

A chaotic question is not a single question. 61 It refers instead to a set of questions about an issue whose dimensions span the simple, complicated and complex domains. There is no agreement on what is a correct or useful question. Consider, for example, questions about immigration. Why is immigration a homeland security issue? How can the U.S. stop the unrestricted flow of illegal immigrants or refugees across the border? What are the ethical implications of removing young children from their parents, or returning families to countries where they may be killed? How can the families of American-born children of undocumented immigrants be preserved? Why do employers persist in hiring illegal aliens? What jobs do undocumented immigrants take away from citizens? How much money do illegal immigrants contribute to and take from the U.S. economy? What civil rights do undocumented immigrants have? Answering questions within a chaotic policy space like immigration involves taking action — start somewhere, anywhere. Just pick one question to answer and see where it goes (i.e., gather data about whether the inquiry is productive or not). Inquiry leads to other, more refined questions, and so on. Your goal — as a learner — is to move from the chaotic space to the complex, complicated or simple space. You get there by taking action and paying attention to where that takes you.

So what? The phenomenological space where you situate your homeland security questions will influence the approaches you use to answer those questions. What does your question look like if it is reframed within a different phenomenological space?

The Story So Far

Here I will summarize what I’ve argued up to this point and why. I will then describe where the argument is going next.

The core question addressed in this essay is how CHDS students can begin to learn about homeland security. I suggested there are at least three ways: a foundational approach, an objective approach, and a subjective approach. Learning about homeland security by starting with foundations may provide academic order, but the order is achieved at the risk of constraining too quickly what homeland security could become. I also believe what I called an objective approach to learning homeland security would ignore the dynamic strategic, policy and operational reality faced by many CHDS participants. The approach I advocate embraces subjectivity (start from where you are) and combines it with the requirement to present and defend subjective observations to others (the transformational dialectic), modifying ideas as needed.

A foundational or an objective approach to learning about homeland security may become appropriate as the field matures. 62 But I believe it is too soon to consider restricting the conversation about what constitutes homeland security. I suggest one way to “start from where you are” is to identify what you want to learn, what questions you have about homeland security. I connect that approach to the assumptions embedded in andragogy, an adult learning philosophy. I then describe how I use “learning” in this essay, and show the connection between asking questions about homeland security, Kolb’s learning cycle, and Bloom’s Taxonomy.

After linking subjectivity, andragogy, and questions and learning, I shift to discussing the phenomenological context within which learning will occur. I describe the Cynefin framework and illustrate how it can be used to frame questions and inquiry about homeland security.

The next part of the essay describes alternatives available for conducting inquiry into homeland security issues. The discussion is aimed at general inquiry frameworks (also known as inquiring systems), not at specific methods of inquiry, such as case studies, policy analysis, surveys, focus groups, experiments, and so on.

Using Inquiring Systems to Learn

C. West Churchman defined an inquiring system as “ a system of inter-related components for producing knowledge .” 63 Each inquiring system consists of inputs (how inquiry starts; the building blocks of knowledge within that system), an operator (the process used to transform inputs into outputs), outputs (knowledge produced by a particular mode of inquiry) and the guarantor (the criteria to be met to demonstrate the inputs and operator are correct, so a valid output will be produced).

For example, observations (i.e., data) provide the inputs for an inductive inquiry system. The operator (i.e., a process for handling data) examines the data to identify any hypotheses, patterns, or theories in the data. If any are discovered, they become the knowledge produced by the inquiring system. The guarantor in this case is the ability to use the hypotheses, patterns or theories to predict future outcomes. The inductive system focuses on data . 64

Here is a homeland security example of an inductive inquiring system. Assume video information is collected from a drug-interdiction operation showing individuals training inside an abandoned school. Based on papers, cell phone records, internet surveillance, and other data, analysts conclude the people are likely planning to attack a middle school in a Midwest American state. Part of the briefing to decision makers about the findings includes analysts describing how they reached their conclusions.

The system collected data, generated a hypothesis, reached a conclusion, and demonstrated the logic they used to reach that conclusion. That is how an inductive inquiring system operates. 65

In addition to the inductive system, there are at least six other inquiring systems that can be used by someone who wants to learn about homeland security: a deductive inquiry system, a multiview system, a dialectic system, an unbounded system, an abductive system, and an inquiring system based on detour and access.

A more comprehensive treatment of the inductive, deductive, dialectic, multiview, and unbounded systems can be found in works of Churchman, 66 Mitroff and Linstone, 67 and Mitroff and Pondy. 68 Information about the abduction and detour and access systems can be found in the works of Peirce, Fann, Josephson, Ramo, and Jullien. 69 I will sketch core elements of each approach. 70

Deduction – A Focus On Theory : Where the inductive inquiring system starts with data and produces a theory, the deductive approach to inquiry begins with a “theory” 71 and uses the elements of the theory to determine what constitutes data. For example, I know one researcher who used complexity theory to model border security. She shaped her perception of the border through the lens constructed from the conceptual categories of complex adaptive system theory. 72 Based on that deductive frame, the inquiring system defined what counts as data suitable to collect and analyze (for example, data about agents, rules, links, feedback, nodes), and excluded other data as noise (e.g., organizations, policies, people, and so on). The same inquiry process is employed with other deductive frameworks used within homeland security, such as the national incident management system, social identity theory, positioning theory, design theory, catastrophe theory, intelligence cycles, phases of emergency management, the DHS risk formula, the national preparedness framework, socio-techno theory, and comparative theory. Frameworks define what counts as data and what can be ignored.

Multiview – Focus On Stakeholders : Multiview inquiring systems start with the premise there is a distinction between experiencing reality (e.g., applying for and receiving a homeland security grant) and describing that experience. Each stakeholder concerned with a homeland security issue perceives the issue through a lens shaped by multiple experiences and processes. 73 For example, congressional districts, DHS, state and local homeland security agencies, budget officials, private sector organizations, vendors, and many other groups stand to gain or lose depending how grant resources are allocated. The perspectives of those stakeholders are important data for anyone who wants to learn how to improve, for instance, the risk formula used to justify awards. A multiview inquiring system incorporates elements of inductive and deductive systems; it differs from those systems by adding more than one stakeholder perspective to the inquiry.

Dialectic – Focus On Conflict : Conflict is the primary metaphor for the dialectic inquiring system. The “marketplace of ideas” is another descriptive image. The purpose of dialectic inquiry may not be to settle issues, but instead to illuminate differences in assumptions, interpretation of data, and conclusions between two or more positions about an issue. While the parties to the issue may not change their positions, dialectic inquiry benefits a third, neutral party 74 who believes truth rarely resides in one perspective, and who seeks to find a synthesis among positions. The homeland security enterprise is filled with conflict. 75 Elsewhere I argue homeland security evolves through conflict. 76 Mapping conflicts can be a useful way to learn comprehensively about homeland security.

Unbounded – Focus On Anything And Everything : The open system is the primary metaphor for the unbounded inquiry system. 77 It begins with the assumption that no discipline is superior to any other discipline. All inquiring systems are inter and mutually dependent on one another. Every inquiring system presupposes every other inquiring system. 78

Unbounded inquiry asserts that everything is connected to everything else, so it sets its sight on the big picture. It focuses on a problem “if and only if [the problem] is a member of the set of all other problems.” 79 Unbounded inquiry focuses on the “system of interacting problems, none of which can be formulated independently, let alone solved, independently of all other problems on which it impacts and which impact on it.” 80 Illustrative issues include leading in the homeland security enterprise, information sharing, homeland security resource allocation, measuring return on homeland security investments, climate change, immigration, and cyber security.

The unbounded inquiring system is claimed by its advocates to be an appropriate way to explore wicked problems , 81 because of its focus on the technological, environmental, and human dimensions of problems. The output from this perspective is thinking that is not constrained by the existing conceptual structures of disciplines and professions. The output is an active search for information that contradicts accepted beliefs. 82 Unbounded inquiry seeks answers to questions and solutions to problems “that [minimize] the costs of failure rather than [minimize] its likelihood; [and seeks] … a solution that sacrifices efficiency for resilience; … that trades avoidance of failure for the ability to survive and recover from failure.” 83

Abduction – Focus On Intuition : Abduction means guessing. 84 It is not a pull-something-out- of-your-rear guess, but rather an educated assessment based on experience and knowledge. Abduction is a type of intuition. Less is understood about the abductive inquiring system than the previous systems because only recently have intuitive perceptions and judgments been at least quasi-legitimized. 85

There are problems with abduction, as with all inquiring systems. 86 The line is fragile between accurate intuition and wishful thinking. In 2007, DHS Secretary Chertoff was criticized for telling the Chicago Tribune he had a gut feeling al Qaeda was going to attack the U.S. that summer:

Chertoff based his assessment on a personal hunch, admitting that there was not enough evidence of a pending attack to raise the nation’s threat level. Rather, Chertoff had studied terrorist patterns and some undisclosed intel to come up with his determination . 87

Behavioral economists, neuro-psychologists, decision theorists and others point out the cognitive barriers to thinking objectively and accurately. 88 Abduction is difficult.

But sometimes intuition and gut feelings work effectively as a mode of inquiry. In August 2001, something bothered Customs official Jose Melendez-Perez when Mohammed al-Kahtani tried to come into the country through Florida. Melendez-Perez did not allow the person assumed now to have been the 20th hijacker to enter. 89

On December 14, 1999, U.S. Customs inspector Diana Dean thought Ahmed Ressam was acting “hinky” as he tried to enter the U.S. from Canada. Responding to that hunch helped prevent the “Millennium Bomber” from attacking the Los Angeles Airport. 90

Experienced practitioners often rely on their “inner tuition.” 91 Abductive talent can be adapted to learn about homeland security. Go with your gut, but have it be an educated gut, a best guess; make it clear what your guess is; expose your ideas to others and look for confirming and opposing evidence.

Detour And Access – Beating Around The Bush : “One should not be too straightforward. Go and see the forest. The straight trees are cut down, the crooked ones are left standing.” Chanakya – Fourth Century, B.C.

The previous inquiring systems searched directly for actionable knowledge, for truth. Conceptually, they are rooted in western traditions of argumentation that emphasize “getting to the point.” The detour and access inquiring system aims to approach knowledge and truth indirectly. The system emerged from studies of how art, poetry, and philosophy were used in China to access and influence power. 92

I will not pretend to know as much about this inquiring system as I would like to know. For the purposes of this introduction, I’ll paraphrase material from a Francois Jullien text. 93

Detour and access focuses on both (not either/or) field and ground, object and context. It seeks oblique, indirect, and suggestive meaning to explore how shape-shifting techniques of detour provide access to subtler knowledge and meanings than can be obtained through the direct approaches that characterize most Western inquiry. Jullien argues indirect speech “yields a complex mode of indication, open to multiple perspectives and variations, infinitely adaptable to particular situations and contexts.” It is a mode of inquiry that has advantages and disadvantages in contexts where “absolute truth is absent.”

The strategy underlying the 2013 National Preparedness Report may be an illustrative example 94 of the detour and access inquiring system. Congress insists DHS document the “progress the Nation has made in building, sustaining, and delivering the 31 core capabilities outlined in the National Preparedness Goal across all five mission areas identified in Presidential Policy Directive 8 (PPD-8): Prevention, Protection, Mitigation, Response, and Recovery.” 95 The way I read the Preparedness report, the authors are telling Congress there is no single way to measure national or state progress. 96 I think the 2013 report can be further read to suggest, indirectly and obliquely, the authors believe it may never be possible to measure accurately national preparedness. The authors of the 2013 Report do not, and probably cannot, come out and say that directly. They must detour around that conclusion if they are to retain access to policymakers. 97

So what? This section argued there are at least seven approaches to structuring inquiry. Each approach is a tool that can be used by people who want to learn about homeland security. Induction : what data do you want to know? Deduction : what theories can you use? Multiview : what are the data and theories employed by stakeholders with an interest in an issue? Dialectic : for any particular homeland security issue you care about, what are the arguments, and the pros and cons for the various positions? Unbounded : what are the meta-issues and problems (with their attendant data, theories, stakeholders and arguments) that transcend and overlap specific homeland security topics and questions? Abduction : what does your experience and intuition tell you about what you are trying to learn? Detour and access : how can you approach learning about a homeland security issue by attending both to the object of your inquiry and to its surrounding context?

And Then There is Truth

How will you know when you have learned what you want to know about homeland security? Once you have applied the various inquiring systems to the homeland security questions you care about, how will you know when you have learned the truth?

In the example I used earlier about VBIED preparedness, is one view about VBIED preparedness more correct than another? What is the true perspective?

Arguments can be constructed to support — more or less convincingly — each of the four claims 98 about how to measure VBIED preparedness. The “truth” of those claims can be assessed against different criteria.

Asked in a more general way, what is the truth about homeland security (pick your specific issue), and how can we know it?

I have written elsewhere about the role of truth in homeland security. 99 I described three kinds of truth: correspondence, coherence and pragmatic.

Correspondence truth means there is a one-to-one relationship between the phenomenon being investigated and the language used to describe that phenomenon. Truth corresponds to the thing being described. If I want to learn how to create an interoperable radio system for first responders, there are comparatively easy ways to know the truth about whether I’ve accomplished that goal or not. For this example, the reality of radio communication will correspond to the language used to describe whether I have succeeded: e.g., I can either talk with someone from another agency or I cannot. Correspondence truth seems to work best (within limits) in the world of material reality. It is a truth that cannot easily be talked around or wished away.

Coherence truth is a dominant mode of social truth. It refers to agreements about the world (knowledge) that are internally consistent, within a particular community. 100 For example, beliefs about what disciplines should be represented in a fusion center are guided by this mode of truth. Richard Rorty offers an aphorism that illustrates coherence truth, and captures its socially- constructed nature: “Truth is what your colleagues let you get away with.” 101

Pragmatic truth is about getting the job done. What the “job” is depends on the situation. For learning, pragmatic truth is when you know enough about your initial question to build on this new knowledge. 102

Here is an example using all three types of truth.

What is homeland security? From the perspective of correspondence truth, the answer would depend on the relationship between what people say they are doing when they are doing homeland security work (language) and how they behave (reality). From a coherence view, the answer depends on what language community one is in. The answers can be (and almost always are) different if one is talking, for example, to emergency managers, firefighters, DHS leaders, professors, travelers going through an airport, counterterrorism officials, or children who fear they will be deported. From a pragmatic truth perspective, homeland security is whatever it has to be for me to obtain the resources I need to prevent, respond, recover from and mitigate the threats faced by my community of interest.

So what? The definition of learning used in this paper is “transforming experience into knowledge.” How do you know when you have approached the truth of what you learned? This section offers three checks: does what you know correspond to reality as you understand it? Does what you know cohere with what other people you respect believe they know? Does what you know help you accomplish your homeland security mission?

The Homeland Security Inquiry Matrix

The advantage of a foundational approach is that it is a comparatively easy way to impose conceptual order on the study of homeland security. As a student, you read and remember the claims of others, and look to find a link between what you’ve learned and the practical responsibilities and interests you have in the homeland security enterprise.

The much more messy and ambiguous start-from-where-you-are approach is filled with uncertainty and — if you enjoy learning — adventure.

The tools for the adventure include subjectivity, andragogy, questions, trial and error learning, a phenomenological approach to homeland security represented by the Cynefin framework, multiple inquiring systems, and several ways to determine the truth of what you have learned. To those tools, add the experiences you had before you started your academic study of homeland security, the ideas you are exposed to in classes, in readings, in exercises, in writing assignments, and in discussions.

These tools lead me to postulate a homeland security inquiry matrix (illustrated below). The rows describe the inquiring systems: inductive, deductive, multiview, dialectic, unbounded, abduction, detour and access. The columns hold the types of truth: correspondence, coherence, and pragmatic.

Figure 5: Homeland Security Matrix

Now consider what you want to learn about homeland security, the questions you have. Conceptually, each cell in the matrix could stimulate ideas about how to learn what you want to learn, and how to know when you’ve learned it.

The core question addressed in this essay is how CHDS students – and maybe other interested people – can begin to learn about homeland security. Learning about homeland security by starting with institutionally approved, rather than objectively tested and validated, foundations may provide academic order, but the order is achieved at the risk of constraining too quickly what homeland security could become. An alternative approach embraces subjectivity (start from where you are) and combines it with the requirement to present and defend subjective observations to others (the transformational dialectic).

I do not believe we can yet eliminate or avoid subjectivity in determining the roots and bounds of homeland security. I want to expand who gets to decide what the foundations of homeland security are, and to encourage reflective practitioners to construct and share insights derived from their own foundations.

A version of the uncertainty principle asserts one cannot measure both the position and the movement of a physical system. 103 Metaphorically, I believe the same is true when it comes to learning about homeland security. People learning about homeland security can emphasize where our proto-discipline used to be and is today, or they can focus more on the opposing pole to help create where it could go. The approach outlined in this essay points to a method of keeping homeland-security knowledge alive and continuously evolving. It is one answer to the question of how best to learn about homeland security.

So what? “Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.” In my view, for experienced practitioners a foundation approach to homeland security “fills a pail.” That may be enough for some educational purposes. Starting from where you are, learning what you need to learn, and exposing your ideas to your colleagues might light a fire that could help shape the future of homeland security.

About the Author

Christopher Bellavita teaches in the Center for Homeland Defense and Security master’s degree program at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. He serves as the executive editor of Homeland Security Affairs. He received his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley. He may be reached at [email protected] .

Acknowledgement: The author would like to thank the five reviewers whose comments, critiques, and suggestions greatly improved this manuscript.

1. The proverb is frequently attributed to Yeats. I have not found any evidence Yeats actually wrote those words. According to http://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/03/28/mind-fire/ , Plutarch is more likely the originator: “For the mind does not require filling like a bottle, but rather, like wood, it only requires kindling to create in it an impulse to think independently and an ardent desire for the truth.”

2. One reviewer suggested I broaden my audience to include other graduate and maybe undergraduate programs. I have no evidence the approach I’m suggesting would work anywhere but CHDS. However, I believe the approach could be useful to other people who are looking for a way to start learning about homeland security.

3. I use “foundational approach” to mean assertions about what constitutes the basic concepts and ideas in homeland security. I discuss this term more fully later in the essay.

4. Donald A. Schon, The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think In Action , 1st ed. (New York: Basic Books, 1984).

5. For an analysis of what is required for a discipline to be “firmly established,” see the disciplinary matrix discussion in Thomas S. Kuhn and Ian Hacking, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , 4th ed. (Chicago; London: The University of Chicago Press, 2012),181-186.

6. Kuhn, in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (p 143), claims that having textbooks is one of the indicators a field of study is becoming a discipline.

7. For representative examples, see CW Productions LTD, Homeland Security: Safeguarding the U.S. from Domestic Catastrophic Destruction , eds. Richard White, Tina Bynum, and Stan Supinski (BookBaby, 2016); Clarence Augustus Martin, Understanding Homeland Security , 1st edition (Los Angeles: SAGE Publications, Inc, 2014);Willard M. Oliver, Nancy E. Marion, and Joshua B. Hill, Introduction To Homeland Security: Policy, Organization, and Administration , (Sudbury: Jones & Bartlett Learning, 2014); Jane A Bullock, George D Haddow, and Damon P Coppola, Introduction to Homeland Security (Boston, MA: Butterworth- Heinemann, 2012); Charles P Nemeth, Homeland Security: An Introduction to Principles and Practice (Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, 2013); Larry K Gaines and Victor E Kappeler, Homeland Security (Boston: Prentice Hall, 2012); Mark Sauter and James Jay Carafano, Homeland Security: A Complete Guide (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2012); Jane Bullock, George Haddow, and Damon P. Coppola, Homeland Security: The Essentials , 1st edition (Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann, 2012).

8. One aspect of this approach is illustrated in a 2018 paper by Ramsey and Renda-Tenali. They describe 8 “knowledge domains [for undergraduate degree programs in homeland security] … that collectively define the intellectual scope of the discipline” (p 7 & 8). The domains – according to the consensus judgment of nine subject matter experts — are intelligence, emergency management, law and policy, critical infrastructure, strategic planning and decision making, terrorism, human and environmental security, [and] risk analysis and [risk] management. James D. Ramsay and Irmak Renda-Tanali, “Development of Competency-Based Education Standards for Homeland Security Academic Programs,” Journal of Homeland Security and Emergency Management 15, no. 3 (September 8, 2018), https://doi.org/10.1515/jhsem-2018-0016 . In 2006 a colleague and I made a preliminary, but not as comprehensive, effort to construct homeland security knowledge domains: Christopher Bellavita and Ellen Gordon, “Changing Homeland Security: Teaching the Core,” Homeland Security Affairs 2, Article 1 (April 2006), https://www.hsaj.org/articles/172 .

9. Kuhn, Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 80.

10. An academic discipline minimally requires: a set of problems to work on; a body of knowledge to apply to those problems; scientifically legitimate research about the problems; textbooks that aggregate the core knowledge of the discipline; and programs to educate students at the undergraduate and graduate levels, including developing PhD programs to advance knowledge in the field. See Christopher Bellavita, “Changing Homeland Security: In 2010, Was Homeland Security Useful?” Homeland Security Affairs 7, Article 1 (February 2011), https://www.hsaj.org/articles/52 . For an argument that homeland security is becoming a discipline, see Michael D. Falkow, “Does Homeland Security Constitute An Emerging Academic Discipline?” 2013, http://calhoun.nps.edu/public/handle/10945/32817 . For another perspective, see William V.Pelfrey and William D. Kelley, “Homeland Security Education: A Way Forward,” Homeland Security Affairs 9, Article 3 (February 2013), https://www.hsaj.org/?article=9.1.3 .

11. Shawn Reese, April 3, 2012, “Defining Homeland Security: Analysis and Congressional Considerations (R42462),” Congressional Research Service. One can also note the national homeland security agenda in 2001 differed significantly from the 2018 focus on catastrophic climate events, immigration, cybersecurity, and biotechnology, among other topics. For a comprehensive, although conventional, outline of contemporary homeland security issues, see William Painter, “Selected Homeland Security Issues in the 115th Congress,” Congressional Research Service, May 11, 2017.

12. Christopher Bellavita, “Changing Homeland Security: What is Homeland Security?” Homeland Security Affairs 4, Article 1 (June 2008), http://www.hsaj.org/?article=4.2.1

13. This is a preliminary conclusion. I am still testing the claim by examining widely-adopted homeland security textbooks and reading lists.

14. For an exemplar of this approach, see the thoughtful work by Robert McCreight, “A Pathway Forward in Homeland Security Education: An Option Worth Considering and the Challenge Ahead,” Journal of Homeland Security and Emergency Management 11, no. 1 (January 21, 2014), doi:10.1515/jhsem-2013-0099. For others, see the textbooks identified in note #7, and the recent contribution by Ramsay and Irmak Renda-Tanali, “Development of Competency-Based Education Standards for Homeland Security Academic Programs.”

15. Christopher Bellavita, “Waiting For Homeland Security Theory,” Homeland Security Affairs 8, Article 15 (August 2012) https://www.hsaj.org/?article=8.1.15 7-8.

16. For an extended discussion of a discipline’s foundations, see the disciplinary matrix section in Thomas S. Kuhn and Ian Hacking, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 4th ed., 181-186.

17. Here are some textbook examples of foundational knowledge in physics and engineering. They illustrate how foundational homeland security knowledge might (one day) be packaged: Saeed Moaveni, Engineering Fundamentals: An Introduction to Engineering , 5th edition, ( Boston: Cengage Learning, 2015); David Halliday, Robert Resnick, and Jearl Walker, Fundamentals of Physics Extended , 9th edition, (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2010): and the more contemporary Foundations of Physics: An International Journal Devoted to the Conceptual Bases and Fundamental Theories of Modern Physics , https://link.springer.com/journal/volumesAndIssues/10701 ).

18. As discussed later, the Cynefin framework uses “simple” and “complicated” to mean phenomena characterized by known or prospectively knowable cause-effect relationships.

19. See Habermas’ postmodernist critique: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/postmodernism/ : “Habermas seeks to rehabilitate modern reason as a system of procedural rules for achieving consensus and agreement among communicating subjects.” Offering “procedural rules” is what I’m trying to do with both the emphasis on subjectivity and the transformational dialectic.

20. One reviewer of a previous draft suggested I might never be convinced textbooks could be superior to the approach I advocate. I think textbooks can be useful in certain educational contexts. I do not object to using textbooks as a part of one’s learning tools. I am arguing against CHDS students and other experienced practitioners using textbooks to begin their learning. I would welcome an experiment testing the scope, depth and utility of alternative ways to learn homeland security in a classroom – graduate or undergraduate.

21. One reviewer recommended I “briefly address [the] stigma associated with subjectivity.” I believe consciously embracing subjectivity enables the collective learning described in this essay. I recognize, however, other people hold the position that subjectivity in inquiry is to be avoided. Someone interested in this topic might start with Subjectivism, Sage Encyclopedia of Qualitative Research Methods , (Thousand Oaks: Sage, 2008) available at http://www.sonic.net/~cr2/subjectivism.htm ; the discussion of subjectivity in Steinar Kvale, “Ten Standard Objections to Qualitative Research Interviews,” Journal of Phenomenological Psychology 25, no. 2 (January 1, 1994): 147–173, doi:10.1163/156916294X00016; or Paul Diesing, “Subjectivity and Objectivity in The Social Sciences,” Philosophy of the Social Sciences 2 (1):147-165 (1972). The citations in note 22 discuss aspects of subjectivity related to “stigma.”

22. Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion (New York: Pantheon, 2012), 55, 97-99; See also, Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow , 1st ed. (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011); Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge (New York: Anchor, 1967); Carl Ratner, “Subjectivity and Objectivity in Qualitative Methodology,” Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum: Qualitative Social Research 3, no. 3 (September 30, 2002), http://www.qualitative-research.net/index.php/fqs/article/view/829 . See http://www.qualitative-research.net/index.php/fqs/article/view/822/1784 for a summary review of the topic.

23. Orion F. White, Jr. and Cynthia J. McSwain, “Transformational Theory and Organizational Analysis,” In Beyond Method: Strategies for Social Research , ed. Gareth Morgan, 292–305. (Thousand Oaks:Sage Publications, Inc, 1983). The process, as I interpret it, is cyclical in the sense used by Graff and his colleagues in describing the continuous conversation of scholarship (in Gerald Graff, Cathy Birkenstein, and Russel Durst, They Say / I Say: The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing , 3rd ed. (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2014): 3-4.) White and McSwain use transformational largely from a psychological perspective. That idea goes beyond what I want to do in this paper. On the utility of continuing the transformation process, see also Aumann’s agreement theorem: “A … 1976 theorem of Aumann asserts that honest, rational Bayesian agents with common priors will never agree to disagree” on their opinions about any topic. Scott Aaronson, (2005), “The Complexity of Agreement,” Proceedings of ACM STOC : 634–643, doi:10.1145/1060590.1060686. ISBN 1-58113-960-8. Retrieved 2010-08-09.

24. I have heard it argued that “starting from where you are” risks missing something important. In my experience (and neglecting for now how “important” is determined), if the information missed is important, the student will eventually learn it.

25. Bloom’s taxonomy is discussed later in this essay. Benjamin Samuel Bloom, Taxonomy of Educational Objectives: The Classification of Educational Goals Handbook I, Handbook I, (New York; New York; London: McKay ; Longman, 1956). Two of the text books I reviewed to support the claim about levels (Jane A Bullock, George D Haddow, and Damon P Coppola, Introduction to Homeland Security and Mark Sauter and James Jay Carafano, Homeland Security: A Complete Guide ) started each chapter with the lower-level Bloom’s Taxonomy description of “what you will learn.” Compare this approach to learning to that espoused in Wiliam V. Pelfrey and William D. Kelley, “Homeland Security Education: A Way Forward.” Homeland Security Affairs 9, Article 3 (February 2013) https://www.hsaj.org/?article=9.1.3 .

26. Knowing what the four failures were that led to the 9/11/01 attack is a different kind of learning than understanding, for example, what the Commission meant by failure of imagination, or whether the Commission got it its critique correct. National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States, The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States , 1st ed (New York: Norton, 2004). Philip Shenon, The Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation (New York: Twelve, 2009). I suspect how professors use textbooks can encourage learning at all six levels. I would welcome seeing evidence about how and with what results this is done.

27. “Letting a hundred flowers blossom and a hundred schools of thought contend is the policy for promoting progress in the … sciences…. [I]t is harmful to the growth of … science if administrative measures are used to impose one particular … school of thought and to ban another. Questions of right and wrong in … science should be settled through free discussion in … scientific circles and through practical work in these fields. They should not be settled in an over-simple manner.” Mao Tse-tung, “On the Correct Handling of Contradictions among the People,” in The Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung , Vol. V (Peking, China: Foreign Language Press, 1957), http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-5/mswv5_58.htm . Mao was talking about handling contradictions in a socialist society, but his point has relevance for homeland security — unlike Mao’s suggestion in the same commentary about what to do with people who disagree with mainstream ideas: “What should our policy be towards non-Marxist ideas?” he asked. “As far as unmistakable counter-revolutionaries and saboteurs of the socialist cause are concerned, the matter is easy, we simply deprive them of their freedom of speech.” [This citation taken from Christopher Bellavita and Ellen Gordon. “Changing Homeland Security: Teaching the Core.” https://www.hsaj.org/articles/172 .] A colleague pointed out Mao’s “deprivation rule” can be used when the good guys are doing the depriving: “Twitter shuts down 125,000 Isis-linked accounts,” http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/125000-isis-linked-accounts-suspended-by-twitter-a6857371.html .

28. I am using the word “us” to mean people who care about homeland security education.

29. Barry Buzan, Ole Wver, and Jaap De Wilde, Security: A New Framework for Analysis ,( Boulder, Colo: Lynne Rienner, 1997) describes a related definitional debate in the broader security studies field. The “narrow” view of security studies gives primacy to “the military element and the state in the conceptualization of security.” The “wide” view aims “to extend security … thinking into the non-traditional sectors (economic, societal, environmental).” The comparative framework they offer can be applied, with modifications, to homeland security. The narrow view of homeland security emphasizes terrorism and catastrophes. A wider view expands thinking into other domains that affect the nation’s safety and security. For an example of a wider view of homeland security see Wayne Porter and Mark Mykleby, A National Strategic Narrative (Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, August 2011).

30. M.S. Knowles, et al., Andragogy in Action , (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1984); See also M.K. Smith, (2002) “Malcolm Knowles, Informal Adult Education, Self-direction and Andragogy,” The Encyclopedia Of Informal Education , www.infed.org/ thinkers/et-knowl.htm; http://infed.org/mobi/malcolm-knowles-informal-adult-education-self-direction-and-andragogy/ . “Mature learners” typically is interpreted to mean adults. I do not know why this approach could not also be extended into other age groups. Colleagues who teach elsewhere tell me it would likely not work with undergraduates.

31. To illustrate this claim, consider the questions that could be generated from an andragogical perspective about a cyber- security threat to critical infrastructure: 1) what do you want to learn, why, and how? 2) what do you already know about the topic?, 3) what need do you have to learn about it?, 4) what problems are addressed through the questions you ask about it? and 5) is there something personal that drives you to want to know?

32. A reviewer of an earlier draft asked about the purpose of the text box insets. Lyndon Johnson was once briefed about the Middle East by several professors. After the briefing he is alleged to have said “Therefore, what?” ( https://goo.gl/qwSA4Y ) This essay is written primarily for graduate students (although it may also be useful to some undergraduates). In my experience with practitioners, they can take just so much conceptualizing before they want to know “so what?” What I aim to do with the text insets is to break the stream of theoretical language, and operationalize the ideas in the priorsection(s) by suggesting to the readers how they can use the information.

33. For examples, see http://www.learning-theories.com/ and http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Learning_Theories/Adult_Learning_Theories .

34. David A Kolb, Experiential Learning: Experience as the Source of Learning and Development , 2nd Edition (Pearson Education, New Jersey. 2015), 49. Kolb’s phrase is “Learning is the process whereby knowledge is created through the transformation of experience.”

35. In Bloom’s taxonomy (Taxonomy of Educational Objectives: The Classification of Educational Goals), “knowledge” is demonstrated by recalling facts. I am using “knowledge” to mean beliefs that bear an appropriate connection (whether causal, coherent, or practical) to the subject of inquiry, a connection that depends on the “mode of truth” (discussed later in the essay). See Ted Honderich, The Oxford Companion to Philosophy (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 285 (facts), 478-479 (knowledge), 873 (social construction), 874 (social facts).

36. Elinor Ostrom, “A General Framework for Analyzing the Sustainability of Social–ecological Systems,” Science 325, no. 5939 (2009): 420. See the discussion of the deductive inquiry system, below, for more on frameworks.

37. Kolb, Experiential Learning , 51.

38. Benjamin Samuel Bloom, Taxonomy of Educational Objectives .

39. Graphic from http://aahalearning.blogspot.com/2013_10_01_archive.html (accessed August 2019) .

40. Graphic from https://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/time/learning_goals.html (accessed August 2019). The revised version of Bloom’s Taxonomy moves evaluation to the penultimate position at the top of the pyramid, and moves synthesis to the top, rebranding it as creativity.

41. Raphael D Sagarin and Terence Taylor, eds., Natural Security: A Darwinian Approach to a Dangerous World (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008).

42. For the purposes of this paper, I’m using phenomenology to mean “making sense of a situation in a way that allows one to be effective in achieving a desired goal” (suggested by David Snowden). A more precise discussion of the term can be found in Dermot Moran, Introduction to Phenomenology (London; New York: Routledge, 2000): 37-41: “Explanations are not to be imposed before the phenomena have been understood from within.”

43. D Snowden and M Boone, “A Leader’s Framework for Decision Making,” Harvard Business Review, November 2007; C Kurtz and D Snowden, “The New Dynamics of Strategy: Sense-making in a Complex and Complicated World,” IBM Systems Journal 42, no. 3 (2003).

44. I put “realities” in quotes to suggest, while skipping over it in this paper, it would be useful to discuss material and socially- constructed reality in homeland security.

45. Snowden and Boone provide an example of using the framework in a public safety context in “A Leader’s Framework for Decision Making,” 1,8.

46. The graphic comes from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynefin_framework#/media/File:Cynefin_framework,_ February_2011_(2).jpeg. There are numerous graphical variations of the Cynefin framework. The history of the model’s development can be found here: http://old.cognitive-edge.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/The-Origins-of-Cynefin-Cognitive-Edge.pdf .

47. Since 2014, David Snowden, the developer of Cynefin, changed the word “simple” to “obvious” in the model. In this essay I use simple.

48. Weick calls this retrospective sensemaking (see, for example, Karl E Weick, Making Sense of the Organization (Malden, Mass. Blackwell, 2009). For a very readable introduction to the complexity literature see (the first half of) Melanie Mitchell, Complexity: A Guided Tour (Oxford University Press, USA, 2009); and John H. Miller and Scott E. Page, Complex Adaptive Systems: An Introduction to Computational Models of Social Life (Princeton University Press, 2007); For a pragmatically philosophical introduction, see Paul Cilliers, Complexity and Postmodernism: Understanding Complex Systems , 1st ed. (Routledge, 1998).

49. https://dotsub.com/view/22a4f971-77cd-4863-8aa3-c2170f93db01 (accessed August 10, 2019). Jim Dwyer and Kevin Flynn, 102 Minutes: The Untold Story of the Fight to Survive Inside the Twin Towers (New York: Times Books, 2006).

50. Gedeon Naudet, James Hanlon, and Jules Naudet, 2010. 9/11. Paramount . One specific example of chaos as described in the text can be viewed (starting at the 46 minute mark, through 51) at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXYCdfoz0wQ (accessed August 10, 2019). A reviewer suggested another useful illustration of the chaotic frame in Terri M. Adams, and Larry D. Stewart, “Chaos Theory and Organizational Crisis: A Theoretical Analysis of the Challenges Faced by the New Orleans Police Department During Hurricane Katrina,” Public Organization Review 15, no. 3 (September 2015): 415–31. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11115-014-0284-9 .

51. Simple in Cynefin terms.

52. Although there are many ideas; see for example, Prepare for a Vehicle-Borne Improvised Explosive Device (VBIED)/Suicide Vehicle Borne IED (SVIED)/Person-Borne IED (PBIED) (05-2-3092), p 2-324 – 2-325, https://rdl.train.army.mil/catalog/go/100.ATSC/9AE04EFF-0143-4FEF-AE38-5BA288A54EE1-1304110136444 .

53. Jeffrey Kaliner, “When Will We Ever Learn? The After Action Review, Lessons Learned and the Next Steps in Training and Educating the Homeland Security Enterprise for the 21st Century,” 2013, http://calhoun.nps.edu/public/handle/10945/34683 .

54. See,for example, STATEMENT OF RICHARD SERINO, DEPUTY ADMINISTRATOR, FEDERAL EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AGENCY, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY, BEFORE THE COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS, U.S. SENATE WASHINGTON, D.C., “LESSONS LEARNED FROM THE BOSTON MARATHON BOMBINGS: PREPARING FOR AND RESPONDING TO THE ATTACK” [sic for the caps]. Submitted By Federal Emergency Management Agency, 500 C Street, S.W. Washington, D.C. 20472 JULY 10, 2013. 2 (viz “They weren’t the only responders.”) http://www.fema.gov/media-library-data/20130726-1923-25045-1176/lessons_learned_from_the_boston_marathon_bombings_preparing_for_and_responding_to_the_attack.pdf .

55. This reflects an idea frequently attributed to Lao Tzu, “If you tell me, I will listen. If you show me, I will see. But if you let me experience, I will learn.”

56. https://web.archive.org/web/20131127015315/http://www.hlswatch.com/2013/08/13/crossing-over-into-canada/ (accessed August 10, 2019).

57. Cilliars, Complexity and Postmodernism , viii.

58. “Report of the Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Attack,” Volume 1: Executive Report, 2004, 6; Also, https://www.ferc.gov/industries/electric/indus-act/reliability/cybersecurity/ferc_executive_summary.pdf .

59. Cilliars, Complexity and Postmodernism , viii-ix; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociotechnical_system .

60. This is Tim Harford’s theme in Adapt: Why Success Always Starts with Failure (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011). A TED talk of the book’s core idea can be seen at http://www.ted.com/talks/tim_harford.html . Note that the distinction between complicated and complex is not easily apparent. In my view, these are the two domains that stimulate homeland security evolution. Complicated and complex are primarily the domains of wicked problems (see note #81). Action in the chaotic domain can trigger punctuated evolution (equilibrium) in a system.

61. For the purposes of this presentation, the chaotic inquiry frame is equivalent to the disordered space in the Cynefin framework, the space of not knowing what quadrant you are in.

62. Elsewhere I suggested three tests for determining when the field has matured enough to justify a foundational approach: does a “homeland security perspective” help solve any of the field’s enduring problems? Are the ideas derived from that perspective superior to the approaches championed by other disciplines in the homeland security enterprise? What are the notable achievements – either practical or conceptual – derived from a “homeland security perspective?” Christopher Bellavita, “Changing Homeland Security: In 2010, Was Homeland Security Useful?”

63. Ian I Mitroff, The Unbounded Mind: Breaking the Chains of Traditional Business Thinking (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993) 29, citing C. West Churchman, The Design of Inquiring Systems: Basic Concepts of Systems and Organization (New York: Basic Books, 1971).

64. For an extended discussion of the role of induction in social science, see Barney G. Glaser and Anselm L Strauss, The Discovery of Grounded Theory ; Strategies for Qualitative Research, Observations (Chicago: Aldine Pub. Co, 1967). For an excellent example of the inductive inquiry system applied to a homeland security system, see the Naval Postgraduate School/Center for Homeland Defense and Security K-12 School Shooting Database at https://www.chds.us/ssdb/ .

65. Ian I Mitroff, The Unbounded Mind: Breaking the Chains of Traditional Business Thinking , 31. Induction is also the primary way I learned this method of teaching homeland security.

66. C. West Churchman, The Design of Inquiring Systems .

67. Ian I Mitroff, The Unbounded Mind .

68. Ian I. Mitroff and Louis R. Pondy, “On the Organization of Inquiry: A Comparison of Some Radically Different Approaches to Policy Analysis,” Public Administration Review 34, no. 5 (September 1, 1974): 471–479, doi:10.2307/975094.

69. Charles S. Peirce, Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1931): 136-143; K. T. Fann, Peirce’s Theory of Abduction (Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands, 1970); John R Josephson and Susan G Josephson, Abductive Inference: Computation, Philosophy, Technology (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996); Joshua Cooper Ramo, The Age of the Unthinkable: Why the New Global Order Constantly Surprises Us and What to Do About It , 1st ed. (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2009); Francois Jullien, Detour and Access: Strategies of Meaning in China and Greece , trans. Sophie Hawkes (MIT Press, 2004); François Jullien, The Book of Beginnings , Translated by Jody Gladding, Translation edition, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016).

70. A thorough presentation of these inquiring systems should include comparisons among the seven, and a description of the problems associated with each one.

71. For a brief discussion about the many uses of the word “theory,” see citation number 9 in Christopher Bellavita, “Waiting For Homeland Security Theory.” In the current essay, I am using theory to refer to a generalization, hypothesis, pattern or any framework that helps discriminate between signal and noise.

72. I do not believe there is a “single” theory of complex adaptive systems. I’m using the single construction in the example for illustration purposes.

73. For another statement of this system, see the discussion of motivated reasoning in Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion (New York: Pantheon, 2012), 98.

74. For example, a person who wants to learn about homeland security.

75. As of August 2019, homeland security policy conflicts can be seen within the following topic areas: refugee policy, border security, Immigration and Customs (ICE) detention and removal procedures, election security, cyber attacks, wildfires, drought, flooding, climate change, child immigrants, visa overstays, social media abuses, pandemic threats, encryption, white nationalism, biotechnology, radicalization, mass casualty criminal events, loss of confidence in government institutions, foreign threats, automation, health care spending, the national debt, domestic political divisions, trust between police and communities, and domestic use of drones.

76. I make this argument in Christopher Bellavita, “Homeland Security in the United States: Lessons from the American Experience,” in Homeland Security Organization in Defence Against Terrorism , ed. J Charvat (Amsterdam: IOS Press, 2012), 36.

77. For an introductory discussion about open systems and national defense and security, see Wayne Porter and Mark Mykleby, A National Strategic Narrative (Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, August 2011). A comprehensive review of the evolution of systems theory ideas can be found at Alex J. Ryan, “What Is a Systems Approach?” arXiv Preprint arXiv:0809.1698 (2008), http://arxiv.org/abs/0809.1698 .

78. Mitroff, The Unbounded Mind : 91-92.

79. Mitroff, citing Churchman, 109.

80. Ibid., 139, citing Russell Ackoff, Redesigning the Future , (New York, John Wiley, 1974).

81. H Rittel and M Webber, “Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning,” Policy Sciences 4 (1973): 155–169.

82. Mitroff, The Unbounded Mind , 127.

83. Ibid., 116.

84. Robert Burch, “Charles Sanders Peirce,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2013 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2013/entries/peirce/ .

85. For discussions to support this legitimization claim, see Timothy D. Wilson, Strangers to Ourselves: Discovering the Adaptive Unconscious , New Ed. (Belknap Press, 2004); Gary Klein, Sources of Power: How People Make Decisions , Reprint (The MIT Press, 1999); Malcolm Gladwell, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking (New York, N.Y.: Back Bay Books, 2007).

86. A discussion of problems goes beyond what I want to do with this essay. That analysis can be found in C. West Churchman, The Design of Inquiring Systems , and Ian I Mitroff, The Unbounded Mind . For one illustrative example of the analysis, see John Vickers, “The Problem of Induction”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2013 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2013/entries/induction-problem/ .

87. “Chertoff’s Gut: Al-Qaeda Could Strike This Summer,” Wired.com, Threat Level, accessed October 28, 2013, http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2007/07/chertoffs-gut-a .

88. Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow , 1st ed. ; John S. Hammond, Ralph L. Keeney, and Howard Raiffa, “The Hidden Traps in Decision Making,” Harvard Business Review 76, no. 5 (1998): 47–58; Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion , (New York:Pantheon, 2012).

89. Stewart A. Baker, Skating on Stilts: Why We Aren’t Stopping Tomorrow’s Terrorism , 1st ed. (Hoover Institution Press, 2010), Relevant excerpts at http://www.newsmax.com/RonaldKessler/hijacker911terrorismObama/2010/09/27/id/371659 .

90. Hal Bernton et al., “The Terrorist Within, Chapter 12: The Crossing,” The Seattle Times, July 2, 2002, available at http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=20020702&slug=12ressam02 . The article also illustrates what can happen when someone ignores her intuition.

91. Kline, Sources of Power , describes how experienced public safety professionals use intuition.

92. Francois Jullien, Detour and Access: Strategies of Meaning in China and Greece , trans. Sophie Hawkes (MIT Press, 2004). This system continues to be used in China: “Chinese Communist party authorities, fearing a threat to their legitimacy, forbid open discussion of the so-called “June 4th incident” [Tiananmen Square Anniversary] in the country’s media and on its internet. Yet internet users have reacted by using ever-more oblique references to commemorate the tragedy, treating censors to an elaborate game of cat-and-mouse,” ( http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/04/tiananmen-square-online-search-censored . For additional information on problems with “detour and access” as an inquiry method, see the discussion in Ralph Weber, (2014). “What about The Billeter-Jullien Debate? And What Was It About?” Philosophy East and West , 64(1):228-237.

93. Ibid. The direct quotations, according to my notes, are from Chapters 1 and 2 in Detour and Access . Since I no longer have access to the book, I have been unable to locate the page numbers.

94. U.S. Department of Homeland Security, National Preparedness Report, March 30, 2013, http://www.fema.gov/media-library/assets/documents/32509?id=7465 ; a similar argument can be made for the 2014 and subsequent National Preparedness Reports, https://www.fema.gov/media-library/assets/documents/97590 , (2015) https://www.fema.gov/media-library/assets/documents/106292 , (2016) https://www.fema.gov/media-library/collections/523 , and (2017) https://www.fema.gov/media-library/assets/document/134253 .

95. http://www.fema.gov/media-library-data/20130726-1916-25045-2140/2013_npr_fact_sheet.pdf.

96. For examples, see the data discussion on page ii, and the description of the methodology on pages 2-3: “The NPR reflects approximately 1,400 sources and 3,200 measures and metrics that contribute to analysis of the core capabilities and related targets identified in the Goal.” (2); “These trends in national preparedness will be increasingly evident in future reports, as the NPR development process continues to mature and incorporates additional input from across the whole community.” (ii).

97. The conclusion in this sentence is based on my reading of the report; there is nothing in the report that makes this assertion. DHS has been trying for close to two decades to measure preparedness. Perhaps it is the quest, not the people on the quest, that is the barrier. See also the discussion of measurement in the April 12, 2016 congressional testimony “FEMA: Assessing Progress, Performance, and Preparedness” at http://www.hsgac.senate.gov/hearings/fema-assessing-progress-performance-and-preparedness .

98. The claims were framed earlier in this paper as simple, complicated, complex and chaotic.

99. Christopher Bellavita, “Changing Homeland Security: What Is Homeland Security?”.

100. This theme is developed in Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality ; See also Paul Thagard, Coherence in Thought and Action, Life and Mind (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2000).

101. Rorty is quoted in W. Desmond, Art, Origins, Otherness: Between Philosophy and Art (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2003), 280.

102. “Build” could be learning something more, or helping to improve homeland security.

103. Jan Hilgevoord and Jos Uffink, “The Uncertainty Principle,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta, Winter 2016, Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, 2016, https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2016/entries/qt-uncertainty/ ; Robert P. Crease and Alfred Scharff Goldhaber, The Quantum Moment: How Planck, Bohr, Einstein, and Heisenberg Taught Us to Love Uncertainty , 1st edition, (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2014), 23-26.

Copyright © 2019 by the author(s). Homeland Security Affairs is an academic journal available free of charge to individuals and institutions. Because the purpose of this publication is the widest possible dissemination of knowledge, copies of this journal and the articles contained herein may be printed or downloaded and redistributed for personal, research or educational purposes free of charge and without permission. Any commercial use of Homeland Security Affairs or the articles published herein is expressly prohibited without the written consent of the copyright holder. The copyright of all articles published in Homeland Security Affairs rests with the author(s) of the article. Homeland Security Affairs is the online journal of the Naval Postgraduate School Center for Homeland Defense and Security (CHDS).

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98 Homeland Security Essay Topics

🏆 best essay topics on homeland security, ✍️ homeland security essay topics for college, 👍 good homeland security research topics & essay examples, 📌 easy homeland security essay topics, 🌶️ hot homeland security ideas to write about.

• Leadership Issues in the Department of Homeland Security
• Homeland Security: Physical Security Incident Case Study
• Conceptualization of Homeland Security
• Interactions of Local Police and Homeland Security Officials
• Homeland Security Efforts to Counter Terrorism
• Homeland Security and Emergency Management Education
• Homeland Security Efforts: Counter-Terrorism and Threats
• Terrorism and Homeland Security Terrorism is an act of political violence aimed to incite terror and panic into the target population and further a specific political goal.
• Preventing Potential Attacks and Counter Terrorism The objective of this paper is to develop recommendations for a mayor to solve the issues of homeland security efforts to combat terrorism.
• Homeland Security in New York City The homeland security measures are crucial for New York City, and its citizens receive the government’s reports about efforts to ensure the society that they are safe.
• Department of Homeland Security: Main Functions The most useful law associated with homeland security is the Homeland Security Act of 2002. It established the primary mission of the newly created Department of Homeland Security.
• Research Proposal on Homeland Security in the US The Department of Homeland Security consists of 22 different agencies, which are found to ensure that people are safeguarded.
• Strategic Planning in the Homeland Security Organization Strategic planning helps organizations plan for the future. The Homeland Security organization employs strategic planning, which enhances its competitiveness.
• Analysis Homeland Security Act of 2002 The paper assesses and critically analyses the Homeland Security Act passed by the United States federal Congress in 2002.
• Homeland Security: Organizational Change Influential people play an important role in the decision process, as the business community can be affected by situations where their country of interest might get sanctions.
• Online Disinformation and Homeland Security Examples incorporate the spread of cyber-rumors by social media bots during French elections within the Macron Leaks attack or the partisan messages during Brexit in the UK.
• United States Homeland Security Strategies Modern society currently faces many dangers such as crime and terrorism. Security of the citizens is of the utmost importance for the United States government.
• Job Rotations in the Department of Homeland Security The directive to rotate jobs within security-oriented organizations can only achieve substantial results once the right people are identified for the right jobs.
• The Department of Homeland Security The idea of creating a new department was to do “the most extensive reorganization of the Federal Government since the 1940s by creating a new department of Homeland Security”.
• “Homeland Security” of Rod Propst The article to be analyzed is “How to Protect Ourselves From a Terrorist-Induced Nuclear Incident at a Commercial Site in the United States” by Rod Propst.
• Homeland Security, Race and Crime in the US Homeland security has become a significant part of the American republic security sector especially in this age of industrialization.
• Homeland Security: The Role of the US Military Increased military involvement in homeland security better prepares the country for multiple disasters as it expands its capacity.
• Department of Homeland Security: The Biggest Challenge DHS faces many challenges. The biggest challenge which it seems to be dealing with since it was created is the issue concerning the broader DHS environment.
• Homeland Security and Change The original homeland security organization was characterized by uncoordinated responses amongst its respective agencies and cooperation was a difficult aspect to achieve.
• Homeland Security-Protecting Critical Infrastructures Post 11th September 2001 attacks on the twin towers of World Trade Center; the FBI has faced a brunt of a lot of criticism from the public and media alike.
• Homeland Security and Critical Thinking Skills The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how a lack of critical thinking skills on a governmental scale could cause long-term issues and threats to homeland security.
• Varieties of Homeland Security Article Critique This paper shows that “Varieties of Homeland Security” contains an alternative perspective on HS definitions and uncovers certain issues in the ability of state-level agencies to define HS.
• Homeland Security Concepts in the United States Risk management (RM) is a complex activity that has been undertaken by the US government structures for the tasks related to homeland defense (HD) and homeland security (HS).
• Critical Thinking for Homeland Security The skill of critical thinking is helpful in all areas of people’s lives. It is vital to understand what factors contribute to the development of one’s critical thinking.
• The United States’ Homeland Security Strategies This paper will provide an overview of homeland security strategies, their economic, social, and legal implications, as well as how they relate to Saint Leo’s core values.
• US Political Surveillance and Homeland Security This paper identifies the primary law enforcement agency responsible for political surveillance in the investigation of terrorism in the United States.
• US Homeland Security Structures and Technologies In the wake of cyber threats to the U.S. security and economy, there have been efforts to develop structures, which can shield the nation from these challenges.
• Homeland Security in Agriculture and Health Sectors Lack of attention to the security and protection of the agricultural sector in the U.S. economy can create a serious threat to the health and safety of the population.
• US Homeland Security Strategies and Structures According to the US Homeland Security Council, homeland security should be regarded as a legitimate discipline that helps train professionals who will work in the area.
• US Gun Laws and Homeland Security Strategies The government of the USA has developed a range of gun policies that are meant to ensure the security of its population.
• Homeland Security and Terrorist Attack Prevention This paper focuses on the real nature of terrorism and the governmental structures responsible for reducing the threat of potential terrorist attacks.
• Terrorism and Homeland Security The article is important since it provides information on the functionality of Homeland Security, which is an essential department in terms of maintenance of security.
• Dallas County Homeland Security: Methodology The researcher will obtain an array of qualitative data related to the policy-making process in Dallas County and the efficiency of the existing homeland security strategies.
• Homeland Security Concerns and Responsible Governance The highest priority that enabled the formation of the Homeland Security was the fight against terrorism. It still continues to improve the fight.
• Department of Homeland Security: Bureaucratic Structure The objective of this paper is to communicate the views of an analysis regarding the effectiveness of the bureaucratic structure in the DHS.
• US Homeland Security: Strategies and Expenses The paper analyzes two articles on US national defense: Homeland Security: Building a National Strategy by Ruth David and Avoiding the Bear Trap by Mark Lefcowits.
• US Homeland Security Issues The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has the responsibility of ensuring that all Americans remain safe while in the American soil.
• Homeland Security Website: Communication Process This piece of work will critically look at the Homeland Security website where different aspects of communication will be evaluated through answering of the questions.
• Homeland Security: Fast Response to Disasters and Terrorism Department of Homeland Security sets counter terrorism as the main priority before the adoption of all hazards approaching disaster management.
• Homeland Security of the US Transportation System This paper will set out to analyze how the transport system in the country has adjusted to meet the Homeland security demands that became apparent after the 9/11 attacks.
• Homeland Security – Immigration Policy This paper will explore immigration policy as entailed in homeland security. It will also examine its contents as well as the changes it has undergone since its conception.
• Comparing Homeland Security Research Products As for the methods used for the research, the NYPD report is based on a clear qualitative case study analysis, which looks more solid than the methodology used by the DHS.
• Dallas County Homeland Security and Emergency Management The major question that will be answered in the proposal can be formulated as “Why did the tragedy with shooting policemen take place in Dallas in 2016?
• Managing Fear: The Politics of Homeland Security
• Homeland Security Agencies: Federal, State, and Local Levels
• Challenges to Federalism: Homeland Security and Disaster Response
• A Capacity for Mitigation as the Next Frontier in Homeland Security
• Homeland Security After Hurricane Katrina: Where Do We Go From Here?
• Public-Private Partnerships in Homeland Security: Opportunities & Challenges
• Defining the Role of the Environmental Health Profession in Homeland Security
• Managing Homeland Security: Deployment, Vigilance, and Persistence
• Homeland Security: An Aristotelian Approach to Professional Development
• International Organizations, Transatlantic Cooperation, and the ‘Globalization’ of Homeland Security
• Misuse of Immigration Policies in the Name of Homeland Security
• Homeland Security Through the Lens of Critical Infrastructure and Key Asset Protection
• Community Policing as the Primary Prevention Strategy for Homeland Security at the Local Law Enforcement Level
• Crisis Bureaucracy: Homeland Security and the Political Design of Legal Mandates
• Qualitative Risk Ranking Systems in Assessing Homeland Security Threats
• The Homeland Security Dilemma: Imagination, Failure, and the Escalating Costs of Perfecting Security
• Dispersed Federalism as a New Regional Governance for Homeland Security
• A Costly Price of Homeland Security for Ensuring the Country’s Safety
• Homeland Security and Information Sharing: Federal Policy Considerations
• Domestic Intelligence Agencies and Their Implications for Homeland Security
• USA Patriot Act: Protecting National Security or Violating Civil Liberties?
• Color Bind: Lessons From the Failed Homeland Security Advisory System
• Armed Forces in Homeland Security: European vs. American Practices
• Homeland Security: Advancing Intelligence-Led Policing in Confronting Jihadi-Salafism
• Emergency Management and Homeland Security: Exploring the Relationship
• Balancing the Risks, Benefits, and Costs of Homeland Security
• The Department of Homeland Security and Why It Needs Stronger Safeguards Against Bias
• How Homeland Security Can Benefit From Crowd-Sourced Applications
• Recent Developments in the US Homeland Security Policies and Their Implications for the Management of Extreme Events
• Imperfect Federalism: The Intergovernmental Partnership for Homeland Security
• Homeland Security Management: A Critical Review of Civil Protection Mechanism in Korea
• Strengths and Weaknesses of a Distributed Homeland Security
• Applying Cost Management and Life-Cycle Cost Theory to Homeland Security National Priorities
• Emergency Medical Services as a Vital Partner in Homeland Security
• Public Service Motivation and Willingness to Collaborate: An Examination in the Context of Homeland Security
• The Importance of Dedicated Investment in Academic Homeland Security Research and Inquiry
• Homeland Insecurity: Thinking About CBRN Terrorism
• Towards a Unified Homeland Security Strategy: An Asset Vulnerability Model
• Homeland Security in Real-Time: The Power of the Public and Mobile Technology
• A Social Infrastructure for Hometown Security: Advancing the Homeland Security Paradigm
• Homeland Security: Protecting America’s Roads and Transit Against Terrorism
• China’s Quest for Intangible Property and Its Implications for Homeland Security
• Environmental Security and Climate Change: A Link to Homeland Security
• The Department of Homeland Security as the Pinnacle of Bureaucratic Dysfunction
• How Public Perception of Homeland Security Has Evolved
• Intelligence and Security Informatics for Homeland Security
• Technology Strategies for Homeland Security: Adaptation & Co-Evolution of Offense and Defense
• E-Government: Overview and Issues for Homeland Security Interests
• An Overview of Risk Modeling Methods and Approaches for Homeland Security
• Homeland Security Culture: Enhancing Values While Fostering Resilience

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These essay examples and topics on Homeland Security were carefully selected by the StudyCorgi editorial team. They meet our highest standards in terms of grammar, punctuation, style, and fact accuracy. Please ensure you properly reference the materials if you’re using them to write your assignment.

This essay topic collection was updated on January 8, 2024 .

Home — Essay Samples — Government & Politics — Homeland Security

Essays on Homeland Security

The importance of writing an essay on homeland security.

Writing an essay on homeland security is crucial for several reasons. Firstly, it allows individuals to gain a deeper understanding of the various aspects of homeland security, including the policies, strategies, and technologies that are put in place to protect a nation from threats. Secondly, it provides an opportunity for individuals to critically analyze and evaluate the effectiveness of current homeland security measures and propose new ideas for improvement. Lastly, writing about homeland security helps to raise awareness and educate others about the importance of safeguarding a nation's security.

Writing Tips for an Essay on Homeland Security

When writing an essay on homeland security, it is important to conduct thorough research on the topic. This may involve reviewing government reports, academic journals, and reputable news sources to gather information and data. Additionally, it is crucial to clearly define the scope of the essay and establish a well-structured outline to ensure that all key points are addressed.

Furthermore, it is essential to use critical thinking and analytical skills to evaluate the effectiveness of current homeland security measures and propose potential solutions or improvements. This may involve considering various perspectives and potential implications of different strategies.

Additionally, it is important to use clear and concise language to effectively communicate ideas and arguments. Avoiding jargon and technical language can help ensure that the essay is accessible to a wide audience. Finally, it is crucial to properly cite all sources and references used in the essay to maintain academic integrity and avoid plagiarism.

The events of September 11, 2001, marked a turning point in the history of homeland security in the United States. This essay will explore the evolution of homeland security in the United States, from the immediate aftermath of 9/11 to present day. It will examine the changes in policies, strategies, and technologies that have been implemented to prevent and respond to threats to the homeland.

Intelligence plays a critical role in homeland security, providing policymakers and law enforcement agencies with the information they need to detect and prevent threats to the homeland. This essay will explore the various types of intelligence used in homeland security, including human intelligence, signals intelligence, and open-source intelligence. It will also examine the challenges and ethical considerations associated with gathering and analyzing intelligence in the context of homeland security.

In an increasingly digital world, cybersecurity has become a critical component of homeland security. This essay will explore the impact of cybersecurity on homeland security, examining the threats posed by cyberattacks and the measures taken to protect the nation's critical infrastructure and sensitive information. It will also consider the role of the private sector in cybersecurity and the challenges of international cooperation in addressing cyber threats.

Immigration has long been a contentious issue in the United States, and it has become increasingly intertwined with homeland security in the post-9/11 era. This essay will explore the intersection of immigration and homeland security, examining the policies and practices that have been implemented to secure the nation's borders and address the challenges posed by immigration. It will also consider the impact of immigration enforcement on civil liberties and human rights.

Emergency management is a critical component of homeland security, encompassing the planning, coordination, and response to natural and man-made disasters. This essay will explore the role of emergency management in homeland security, examining the agencies and organizations responsible for disaster response and recovery. It will also consider the challenges of preparing for and responding to complex, large-scale emergencies, such as hurricanes, terrorist attacks, and pandemics.

Homeland security policies often raise complex ethical questions, including issues of privacy, civil liberties, and the use of force. This essay will explore the ethical considerations of homeland security policies, examining the trade-offs between security and individual rights. It will also consider the role of public opinion and democratic accountability in shaping homeland security policies and practices.

Globalization has created new opportunities and challenges for homeland security, as threats to the homeland can originate from anywhere in the world. This essay will explore the impact of globalization on homeland security, examining the interconnected nature of transnational threats such as terrorism, organized crime, and pandemics. It will also consider the role of international cooperation and diplomacy in addressing global security challenges.

Technology has revolutionized the field of homeland security, providing new tools and capabilities for detecting, preventing, and responding to threats. This essay will explore the role of technology in homeland security, examining the use of surveillance, biometrics, artificial intelligence, and other advanced technologies. It will also consider the ethical and legal implications of technology in homeland security, including issues of privacy and data security.

Climate change poses significant challenges to homeland security, as rising sea levels, extreme weather events, and resource scarcity can destabilize societies and create new vulnerabilities. This essay will explore the impact of climate change on homeland security, examining the ways in which environmental changes can exacerbate existing security threats. It will also consider the role of homeland security agencies in preparing for and responding to climate-related disasters.

The field of homeland security is constantly evolving in response to new threats, technologies, and geopolitical dynamics. This essay will explore the future of homeland security, considering the potential challenges and opportunities that lie ahead. It will also consider the implications of emerging trends, such as artificial intelligence, biotechnology, and geopolitical shifts, for the practice of homeland security.

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Vision of Security: Liberalists's Faith in Humanity Or Realistss' Military Methods

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10 Types of Homeland Security Careers Worth Considering

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) works to improve and strengthen national security through a range of different efforts. It was established when more than 20 distinct federal agencies integrated into one unified department — agencies related to customs, border patrol, immigration enforcement, antiterrorism, cybersecurity, emergency disaster relief and more.

Each department plays an integral role contributing to the vital mission of the DHS: to secure the nation from the many threats it faces.

With so many critical agencies and departments operating under the DHS umbrella, there are multiple unique career paths you could pursue. If you’re passionate about the prospect of using your knowledge and skills to aid in national security efforts, you might consider one of the following homeland security careers.

10 Types of Homeland Security Jobs

Each department within the DHS offers up its own variety of possible career paths . Employees of Homeland Security help accomplish an assortment of important tasks, such as securing national borders, airports, seaports and waterways; researching and developing the latest security technologies; responding to natural disasters or terrorist assaults; and analyzing intelligence reports.   Among the 22 distinct sectors of the DHS, many of the most common homeland security careers fall into these ten component agencies:

1. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) leads strategic efforts to strengthen the security and resilience of the nation’s cyber ecosystem. Employees within this sector of the DHS work to detect and mitigate any evolving threats to our critical infrastructure.    There are a handful of different career opportunities within the CISA: 

• Cybersecurity/IT jobs , such as cyber instructional curriculum developers, cyber policy and strategy planners, and IT program auditors.
• Emergency communications jobs , such as telecommunications managers and specialists, program analysts, telecommunications project managers, and electrical engineers.
• Infrastructure security jobs , such as chemical security inspectors, chemical engineers, facility operations specialists, critical infrastructure specialists, and business support coordinators.
• National risk management jobs , such as security and risk analysts, as well as specialists in supply chain security, election security and 5G.

There are also CISA career opportunities related to stakeholder engagement, integrated operations and mission support.

Learn more about certificate and degree programs related to these jobs:

• Master of Science in Cybersecurity
• Graduate Certificate in Cybersecurity
• Master of Science in Information Systems
• Certificate in Computer Information Systems
• Bachelor of Science in Computer Information Systems

2. Citizenship and Immigration Services

As the federal agency that administers immigration benefits for the country, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) aims to help uphold America’s promise as a nation of welcome and possibility with fairness, integrity and respect for all it serves.    By assisting people around the globe who seek to immigrate to the U.S. in hopes of gaining family connection, humanitarian protection, and/or employment and business opportunities, the daily work of USCIS employees impacts millions of lives.    Consider the following career paths within USCIS:

• Analysis jobs , such as immigration services analysts, operations research analysts and statisticians.
• Financial, contracting and accounting jobs , such as accountants, business operations specialists, contract specialists, economists and financial program/cost analysts.
• Fraud detection, intelligence and security jobs , such as immigration analysts, immigration officers, intelligence research specialists, investigative specialists and security specialists.
• Immigration benefits jobs , such as adjudications officers, appeals officers, asylum officers, refugee officers and congressional liaison specialists.
• Legal jobs , such as general attorneys, government information specialists, FOIA/PA assistants and paralegal specialists. 

There are additional USCIS career opportunities for IT specialists, human resources professionals, and program and project managers.

• Graduate Certificate in Applied Analytics
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3. Customs and Border Protection

The U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency is one of the world’s largest law enforcement organizations. It operates with the goal of facilitating lawful international travel and trade, while focusing on counter terrorism and transnational crime.

CBP takes a comprehensive approach to border management and control, combining customs, immigration, border security and agricultural protection into one coordinated effort. The organization is made up of multiple different departments, each of which offers its own suite of career possibilities:

• Air and Marine Operations agents safeguard the country and our communities from terrorist attacks and unlawful movement of drugs, contraband and people. Specific job roles include pilots, mariners and surveillance operators.
• U.S. Border Patrol agents work to reduce the likelihood that dangerous people and capabilities reach the U.S. through the ports of entry.
• Office of Field Operations agents secure the border and prevent drug smuggling while enforcing immigration laws, protecting agriculture and ensuring trade compliance.
• Office of Trade professionals help facilitate legitimate trade and enforce U.S. laws to protect the American economy, as well as consumer health. Specific job roles include attorney advisors, auditors and economists.
• Office of Professional Responsibility professionals assist in investigating allegations of employee misconduct and criminal activity with the goal of maintaining public trust and accountability of the CBP workforce. Specific job roles include criminal investigators, investigative analysts and mission support specialists.

There are also a number of behind-the-scenes CBP career opportunities for IT specialists, budget analysts, engineers, international relations specialists and more.

• Undergraduate Certificate in Emergency Management
• Bachelor of Science in Emergency Management
• Graduate Certificate in Emergency Management
• Bachelor of Science in Security and Strategic Intelligence
• Master of Science in Strategic Intelligence
• Post-Bachelor Certificate in Strategic Intelligence

4. Emergency Management Agency

Employees in the Emergency Management sector of the DHS comprise a team of leaders who support people and communities by providing critical assistance before, during and after disasters. These dedicated emergency management professionals work collaboratively to share experiences and resources to better equip the U.S. to respond to and recover from the nation’s greatest moments of crisis.

There are fifteen different sectors of federal emergency management work, with a range of distinct career possibilities in each. Those departments include: 

• Transportation
• Communications
• Public works and engineering
• Firefighting
• Information and planning
• Mass care (emergency assistance, temporary housing, and human services)
• Public health and medical services
• Search and rescue
• Oil and hazardous material response
• Agriculture and natural resources
• Public safety and security
• Cross-sector business and infrastructure
• External affairs

Because of the range of responsibilities covered by this sector of the DHS, the expertise maintained by emergency management professionals is vast. Individuals may work in collaboration with professionals in other fields to help support the country’s critical infrastructure and protect key resources. For that reason, those in emergency management may be trained in the following areas: 

• Critical manufacturing
• Defense industrial base
• Financial services
• Food and agriculture
• Health care and public health
• Information technology
• Nuclear reactors, materials and waste
• Transportation systems
• Water and wastewater systems

In addition to permanent full-time positions, there are many emergency management roles open to contractors, with both public and private sector opportunities.

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5. Federal Law Enforcement Training Center

The core purpose of the Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers (FLETC) is to prepare the community agents and officers who are charged with safeguarding America’s people, property and institutions. The organization provides career-long training to law enforcement professionals so that they’re able to fulfill their federal responsibilities safely and proficiently.

The FLETC is committed to a collaborative, comprehensive and responsible approach to administering this critical training. As such, there is an assortment of instructor roles throughout the department in specialty areas like:

• Behavioral Sciences
• Computer and Financial Investigations
• Counter Terrorism
• Driver Training
• Enforcement Operations
• Forensics and Investigative Technologies
• Marine Training
• Physical Techniques

Additionally, the FLETC seeks out skilled professionals to fill specialist roles in training admissions, contract compliance and human resources.

Learn more about degree programs related to these jobs:

• Bachelor of Arts in Leadership and Organizational Behavior

6. Immigration and Customs Enforcement

Those who work for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) commit to the mission of protecting America from cross-border crime and illegal immigration in an effort to preserve national security and public safety. The agency focuses on legal, safe immigration enforcement, terrorism prevention and combating transnational criminal threats.

There are numerous career opportunities for law enforcement agents within ICE, but you can also consider the following opportunities:

• Enforcement and Removal Operations jobs , such as deportation officers, detention officers and ICE Health Service Corps professionals.
• Homeland Security Investigations jobs , such as criminal analysts, criminal investigators, seized property specialists and technical enforcement officers.
• Management and Administration jobs , such as management and program analysts and mission support specialists.
• Office of the Principal Legal Advisor jobs , such as attorneys, legal assistants and mail and file clerks.
• Office of Professional Responsibility jobs , such as inspections and compliance specialists.

ICE also employs professionals in management and administrative positions, including mission support specialists and program analysts.

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7. Transportation Security Administration

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) was created to protect the nation’s transportation systems, ensuring freedom of movement for people and commerce. The agency originated as a response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks in an effort to prevent similar threats from impacting America in the future.

Transportation security officers (TSOs) serve as the backbone of the TSA, representing the public face of the agency to millions of travelers daily. These officials are responsible for providing security and protection to travelers across all transportation sectors in a manner that is both courteous and professional. Additionally, TSOs may be tasked with securing high-profile events, important figures and/or anything that includes or impacts U.S. transportation systems.

There are also career opportunities within the TSA related to mission support and Federal Air Marshal services.

8. U.S. Coast Guard

Most people are familiar with the U.S. Coast Guard as being one of America’s six armed forces; however, they may not know that it is the only branch that operates within the DHS. From search and rescue to law enforcement and coastal defense, Coast Guard missions are vital to national security and global humanitarian initiatives.

There are multiple career paths within this branch of the DHS, including the following:

• Enlisted members gain experience in hands-on focus areas like aviation maintenance, cyber missions, maritime enforcement and marine science.
• Officers fill leadership roles in areas like aviation, afloat operations, response, prevention and cyber operations.
• Reservists train to activate for the Coast Guard’s most pressing needs while still pursuing their own goals in civilian life.

There are also a number of civilian careers that support the U.S. Coast Guard, including professional occupations like accounting, law and civil engineering. Additional administrative opportunities include roles like intelligence analysts, criminal investigators and security specialists. And there is a range of trade positions, such as aircraft mechanics, electricians, welders and materials handlers.

9. U.S. Secret Service

The U.S. Secret Service operates with an integrated mission of protection and financial investigations to ensure the safety and security of its protectees, key locations and events of national significance. Additionally, the agency works to safeguard the integrity of the nation’s currency and investigate crimes against the U.S. financial system.

The organization is comprised of the following types of officials:

• Special agents focus on protecting top U.S. and visiting foreign officials, while also investigating financial crimes.
• Uniformed division officers protect facilities and venues secured for Secret Service protectees.
• Technical law enforcement agents support special agents and uniformed division officers in their duties.
• Civil service professionals support the overall protective and investigative missions, with roles like criminal research specialists, attorney advisors, financial management analysts and public affairs specialists.

10. Federal Protective Service

As an organization, the Federal Protective Service (FPS) works to ensure safe and secure environments for federal workers in approximately 9,500 facilities nationwide. The agency is the premier provider of security and law enforcement services at U.S. government facilities, playing an important role in the protection of the nation’s critical infrastructure.

Federal Protective Service inspectors maintain a range of duties to accomplish this goal. They conduct security assessments and design security countermeasures to mitigate risks at federal facilities, and they provide visible law enforcement presence at such locations — at times overseeing contract security teams.

FPS inspectors may also lead special operations, such as explosive detection k-9 initiatives. And they are, at times, involved with criminal investigations regarding threats to federal employees.

With a presence in every state and territory, FPS professionals make it their mission to prevent, protect, respond to and recover from acts of terrorism and other hazards threatening the federal government’s essential services.

Pursue Your Ideal Homeland Security Career

There are numerous homeland security careers you could pursue within the Department, and each operates according to the same overarching mission: to preserve the safety and prosperity of America and its people. If you can envision yourself dedicating your career to this pursuit, you might thrive in one of the many DHS careers listed above.

There is a wide variety of certificate and degree paths you could pursue in your quest to become qualified for one of these jobs. But if you’re unsure of the particular sector of homeland security in which you’d like to work, you can begin to build the foundation of knowledge and skills you’ll need by studying security and strategic intelligence.

At Saint Louis University (SLU), students study trends in intelligence-gathering surrounding critical topics like terrorism, homeland security and cybercrime while learning the industry best practices and critical thinking skills needed to be effective.

Learn more about the possibilities by visiting one of SLU’s dynamic program offerings:

• Undergraduate Certificate in Security and Strategic Intelligence
• Graduate Certificate in Strategic Intelligence

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Homeland Security essay

The policy framework of Homeland Security involves to a great extent a strong foundation in federalism and the activities related to the intergovernmental relations. During the periods after the tragic events of September 11, 2001, the government of the United States introduced one of the largest reorganization activities ever since the enactment of National Security Act of 1947. The creation of the Department of Homeland Security integrated twenty-two separate organizations.

The Department has been entrusted with the responsibility of preventing, protecting against, responding to and recovering from the terrorist activities in the United States. Besides, the development of a national preparedness system has been regarded as another field of action of the Department of Homeland Security. The security of the American soil, following the terrible events of September 11, 2001, has been proved to be at stake, and not immune from the evil or cold blooded enemies capable of perpetrating mass murder and terror.

Irrespective of the fact that the threat to America is posed from the Al-Qaeda however, it is not confined to the terrorist activities or to suicide hijackings of commercial aircrafts. The threat has become visible to have a broader spectrum, especially, when on October 4, it is found that a life-threatening biological agent anthrax-is being distributed through the US mail.

In view of this, securing of American homeland has become a challenge of monumental scale and complexity and felt the necessity of bringing out the first ever National Strategy for Homeland Security, with a view to mobilizing and organizing the Nation to secure the US homeland from terrorist activities. This mission warranted a coordinated and concentrated effort from the entire society ranging from federal government to state and local governments, the private sectors as well the American citizens. The National Strategy for Homeland Security will assist our Nation for the work in several modes.

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It entails direction to the federal government departments and agencies that have a role in homeland security. (The National Strategy for Homeland Security) Ever since the incidence of 9/11, Americans in every generation has experienced the anxiety that there is possibility of being attacked in their homes. The appropriate balance of security; economic growth; cooperation among federal, state, and local government; and protection of civil liberties have increasingly been recognized to be the safeguards in initiating an attack on terrorism.

(Sauter; Carafano, 2005) To the military Homeland Security and Homeland Defense are two different and separate ideas. The homeland security to them implies the prevention and defense against aggression targeted at US territory, sovereignty, domestic population and infrastructure along with management of the consequences of such aggression and other domestic emergencies. (Keeter, 2004) Homeland Security is defined to be a focused national effort to dissuade terrorist attacks within the territory of United States along with reduction of vulnerability of America to terrorism and minimization of the damage and recovery from attacks that do occur.

The approach to homeland security relied upon the formula of shared responsibility and collaborative effort with the Congress, State and local government. The National Strategy for Homeland Security has its applicability not to just the Department of Homeland Security, but also to the Nation as a whole. The Homeland security is visualized to be an increasingly complex mission. It is associated with efforts both at home and abroad.

It warrants a range of government and private sector capabilities and it necessitated coordinated and concentrated effort from many actors those are not alternatively necessitated to function collaboratively and for whom security is not always a primary mission. The strategy focused on three objectives such as prevention of terrorist attacks within the United States, reduction of America’s vulnerability to terrorism and minimizes the damage and recovers from attacks that do occur.

The war against terrorism is based on the same core American strengths and characteristics such as innovation, determination and commitment to the democratic tenets of freedom and equality that guided to its victory in World War II and the Cold War. (The National Strategy for Homeland Security) The national strategy for Homeland Security is concentrated on generating immediate outcomes. Therefore, the first principle behind the strategy is to take responsibility and accountability. The creation of the Department of Homeland Security is to clarify the lines of responsibility for homeland security in the executive branch.

The second principle is to mobilize the entire society. It acknowledges the crucial role of all concerned in securing the homeland. The third principle is the management of risk and allocation of resources rationally. Seeking opportunity out of adversity is the fourth principle. Fifthly, the strategy of Homeland Security is based on fostering flexibility. Sixthly, it relies upon measurement of preparedness. It warrants accountability from every government body responsible for homeland security initiatives. The eighth principle is sustaining efforts over the long term.

Finally it relies upon constrain government spending. It impels for the government reorganization, legal reforms, essential regulation, incentives, cost sharing arrangements with state and local governments, cooperative arrangements with the private sector and the organized involvement of citizens. (The National Strategy for Homeland Security) The National Strategy for Homeland Security emphasizes on the principle that intelligence and information analysis are inseparable but acts as an integral component of our National effort to safeguard against and reduce the vulnerability to terrorism.

The strategy identifies four interrelated but separate categories of intelligence and information analysis. Firstly, it involves tactical threat analysis that implies actionable intelligence felt crucial for prevention of the acts of terrorism. In time analysis and dissemination of information relating to terrorists and their current and potential activities permit the government to take immediate and near-term action to disrupt and dissuade terrorist acts and to entail useful warning to specific targets.

Secondly, it is essential to have a strategic analysis of the enemy. The intelligence agencies involved are required to have clear comprehension of the organizations that may entail terrorist attacks. The information relating to identification, financial and political sources of support, motivation, goals current and future capabilities and vulnerabilities of such organizations go a long way in helping the agency preventing and preempting future attacks. (Intelligence and Warning)

The evaluation of vulnerability magnitude is taken to be an integral part of the intelligence. This facilitates the planners to pose the outcomes of the possible terrorist attacks against particular facilities or different sectors of the economy or government. The next step in the intelligence sector is to map out the terrorist threats and capabilities against a particular facility and sector-wise vulnerabilities. It also emphasizes upon the tactical preventive action. Analysis is required to be turned into action that dissuades terrorists from carrying out their plots.

The United States has at its disposal numerous tools that permit for the disruption of terrorist acts in the United States and the detention of the terrorist themselves. It also lays stress on warning and protective action. The importance of defensive action in reduction of the potential effectiveness of an attack by prompting relevant sectors to implement security and incident management plans. Additionally, defensive action functions as a restraint to terrorists focusing on the potential effectiveness of their plans.

Warnings educate the citizens to take appropriate actions to meet the threat, inclusive of up-gradation and effectiveness of their plans. (Intelligence and Warning) The nation necessitates a Homeland Security Advisory System to entail a comprehensive and effective mode of dissemination of information with regard to the vulnerability of terrorist acts to Federal, State and local authorities and to the American people. Such a system would entail warnings in the form of a set of graduated ‘Threat Conditions’ that would indicate the risk of the terrorist threat in a graduated manner.

This facilitates initiation of measures of the Federal Departments following different set of standards at different conditions. The Homeland Security Advisory system indicates about five Threat Conditions to be recognized by a description and the corresponding color. The green color signifies low risk; the blue color signifies guarded; the yellow color signifies elevated risk, while the orange and red indicates high and severe risk of terrorist activities. (Homeland Security Presidential Directive-3) Assignment of threat conditions involves integration of various considerations.

Such integration is based upon the qualitative assessment rather than quantitative assessment. Irrespective of concentrated efforts there is not surety that at any given Threat Condition, a terrorist attack will not occur. The most significant factor is the quality of the threat information itself. The assessment of threat information is generally made on the basis of the degree of credibility of the threat information, the degree of corroboration of the threat information, the degree of the threat specific or imminent and the potential outcome of the threat.

(Homeland Security Presidential Directive-3) Protection of critical infrastructure and key assets is considered to be a formidable challenge. Such protection necessitates more than just resources. The federal government can adopt a broad range of measures to assist the state, local and private sector entities to better safeguard the assets and infrastructure they regulate. (Protecting Critical Infrastructures and Key Assets)

Ever since the attacks of September 11, 2001, the federal government has enhanced the homeland security missions of many departments and agencies that multiplied the allocation of federal funds devoted to homeland security, enacted new legislation to generate a new department and strengthen transportation security and law enforcement activities, leveraged relationships with state and local governments and the private sector and initiated to establish a structure for planning the national strategy and the transition necessitated for executing the new Department of Homeland Security.

(United States General Accounting office, 2002) The attack on terrorism has made the physical security for federal facilities vulnerable. The Interagency Security Committee is setup with the responsibility of coordinating federal agencies protection efforts generating developing standards and overseeing implementation. It has been recommended that the Department of Homeland Security should instruct the Interagency Security Committee to devise an action plan that identifies resource needs, goals and time frames for meeting its responsibilities and proposes strategies for addressing the challenges that it confronts.(United States Government Accountability office, 2004)

Homeland Security Presidential Directive-3. Office of the press secretary. Retrieved 14 February, 2007 from http://www. whitehouse. gov/news/releases/2002/03/print/20020312-5. html Intelligence and Warning. Retrieved 14 February, 2007 from http://www. whitehouse. gov/homeland/book/sect3. pdf Keeter, Hunter. (2004) The U. S. Homeland Security Forces. Gareth Stevens. Protecting Critical Infrastructures and Key Assets. Retrieved 14 February, 2007 from http://www. whitehouse. gov/homeland/book/sect3-3. pdf

The National Strategy for Homeland Security. Retrieved 14 February, 2007 from http://www. whitehouse. gov/homeland/book/sect2. pdf United States General Accounting office. (December, 2002) Homeland Security: Management Challenges facing Federal Leadership. DIANE. United States Government Accountability office. (November, 2004) Further Action Needed to Coordinate Federal Agencies’ Facility Protection Effort and promote Key practices. DIANE. Sauter, Mark A; Carafano, James Jay. (2005) Homeland Security: A Complete Guide to Understanding, Preventing, and Surviving Terrorism. McGraw-Hill Professional.

Homeland Security Strategies Essay

An overview of the subject.

The terrorist attack on the United States in September 11 th 2001 called for the image of a secure homeland for nations all over the world. Several plans were put into place to outline different visions and missions in the Department’s Quadrennial Homeland Security Review. The latter has established a uniform security framework all over the world.

The amount of tax generated from both local and international sources has been used to cater for security need of the American public. The department has also been able to perform its functions due to regular cooperation from the federal, state and local governments.

The homeland security enterprise has made significant progress in ensuring the security of the American people from terrorism and other threats. Therefore, with regards to the economic, social and legal aspects, the homeland security enterprise works hand in hand with the Department of Homeland Security in order to come up with an integrated strategic framework.

Security has been improved tremendously by the department of homeland security. For instance, myriads of strategies such as monitoring the cyberspace, protecting the territorial borders and strengthening the current laws on immigration have yielded positive results.

In addition, there is comprehensive coordination in ensuring resilience to disasters, providing essential support to National and Economic Security and finally working through different goals and objectives to ascertain a mature and strengthened initiative (Bush, 2009).

First of all, in order to effectively prevent terrorist attacks, the enterprise has set up objectives by understanding the possible threats, stopping and disrupting any form of operations and protecting potential targets against the capabilities of being attacked. This is given a strong support from the neighboring communities who participate fully to stop malicious attacks and violence.

Secondly, once the potential culprits including the terrorists have been identified, the movement of these materials is controlled and the malicious actors are stopped from acquisition or use of these chemicals and materials within the United States (Friel, 2002). Moreover, the key sectors participate fully to reduce the State’s vulnerability against disruption.

The homeland security enterprise ensures security by preventing terrorist attacks which is reinforced by preventing the illegal acquisition, importation or use of chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear materials within the United States.

Security is also enhanced by reducing threats and vulnerability of critical infrastructures and essential leadership. This has been proved effective with the cooperation from the international partners across the federal, state and local governments (U.S. House Committee on Government Reform, 2004).

It is also interesting to note that the movement of people and goods in the process of carrying out trading activities has indeed exposed the country into several threats. It is against this backdrop that the department of homeland security has put up strategies that govern legalized movement of people and goods. This strategy has proved to be effective.

Besides, organized groups that have been conducting illegal trade have been done away with in the recent past. This is done hand in hand by disrupting illicit pathways that are used by the organizations of the terrorists and criminals as well.

The need to reinforce the current immigration laws has been one of the top agendas for the department of homeland security. This strategy ensures and promotes lawful immigration. Furthermore, it is emphasizes the need of identifying and doing away with criminal aliens who threaten public safety and target the employers who frequently and intentionally break the law (Department of Homeland Security, 2012).

In order to enhance the effectiveness of the aforementioned strategies, the department communicates with the public on the services offered and the procedures to be followed in order to create a user friendly system that ensures impartial and prompt decisions.

This strategy also facilitates the integration of foreigners into the American society which eventually promotes positive relationships. This helps in minimizing frauds, abuse, exploitation and prosecution of unauthorized foreign nationals.

Besides, there is need to create a safe and secure cyber ecosystem. This is done by ensuring that malicious actors are not in a position to extensively exploit the cyber space. It is also important to create awareness on the possible challenges that may be encountered as a result of modern knowledge and technological innovations.

The cyber networks can be protected against all kinds of threats if professionalism is improved when delivering services to clients. On the other hand, the department ensures that all levels and segments of the society are engaged in improving their levels of preparedness. This is done at the individual, family and community level to strengthen the core capabilities and ensure an effective response to catastrophes (Brook & Cynthia, 2007).

It is also worthy to mention that the United States government ensures that there is adequate revenue obtained from general taxation so that the working environments as well as the intellectual property rights are safeguarded.

The import and export controls are also enforced to support the marine environment and also conduct and support other law enforcement activities. The homeland security provides specialized national defense capabilities by providing ready forces to support defense missions and post conflict reconstruction and stabilization.

Bush, G. (2009). National Strategy for Homeland Security: Homeland Security Council . New York: Morgan James Pub.

Brook, D.A. & Cynthia L. K. (2007). Civil Service Reform as National Security: The Homeland Security Act of 2002. Public Administration Review 67(3): 399-407.

Department of Homeland Security (2012). Department of Homeland Security Strategic plan: Fiscal Years 2012-2016 . Web.

Friel, B. (2002). Homeland Security Leaders Win Broad Power Over Civil Service Rules. Web.

U.S. House Committee on Government Reform (2004). Decision Time: A New Human Resources Management System at the Department of Homeland Security . Washington, DC: Government Printing Office.

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IvyPanda. (2024, February 5). Homeland Security Strategies. https://ivypanda.com/essays/homeland-security-strategies/

"Homeland Security Strategies." IvyPanda , 5 Feb. 2024, ivypanda.com/essays/homeland-security-strategies/.

IvyPanda . (2024) 'Homeland Security Strategies'. 5 February.

IvyPanda . 2024. "Homeland Security Strategies." February 5, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/homeland-security-strategies/.

1. IvyPanda . "Homeland Security Strategies." February 5, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/homeland-security-strategies/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Homeland Security Strategies." February 5, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/homeland-security-strategies/.

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HERO Child-Rescue Corps Program

HSI HERO Child-Rescue Corps

The HERO Program is managed by the HSI Cyber Crimes Center and is an annual, federally funded program.

The HERO Program mission is to combat the growing problem of child exploitation by recruiting, training, and equipping wounded, ill, or injured veterans to become computer forensic analysts (CFAs). Although positions are not guaranteed, the goal at the end of the internship is to hire successful interns as full-time CFAs with HSI to assist Special Agents in accomplishing the mission of HSI.

HERO Program Legal Authority:

The HERO Act, signed into law by President Obama on May 29, 2015, formalized and endorsed the HERO Corps program within ICE, administered by ICE HSI's Cyber Crimes Center. Congress strengthened the HERO Program through passage of the Abolish Human Trafficking Act of 2017, which improved the HERO program by making the HERO program a DHS agency-wide program, ensuring that the program is open to all branches of service members and providing pay for HERO Program Interns.

The HERO Corps Program entails:

• 13 weeks of paid HSI introductory and forensic training, leading to certifications in CompTIA A+ and other forensic tools
• 9 month paid internship in computer forensics labs at HSI offices throughout the U.S.

Application Requirements:

• Must be a U.S. Citizen
• VA/DOD Disability Rating or Statement of Service
• Proof of Honorable Discharge (DD214)
• Provide all requested supporting documents to include essay addressing specific topics
• Pass Criminal History and Background Investigation (provided by HSI)
• Pass Drug Test Screening
• Obtain and maintain Top Secret Clearance
• Must attend all virtual and in-person interviews
• Must attend all 13 weeks of training
• Willing to relocate at own expense to selected office location

Program Training:

• 13 weeks of paid introductory and computer forensic training in Fairfax, VA, leading to certifications in CompTIA A+, and other forensic software programs
• 9 months of paid practical experience assisting HSI Special Agents with criminal cases and prosecutions at various HSI domestic office locations
• GS 5/7 pay during the entire internship. Lodging and per diem provided during the first 13 weeks of training only

Program Benefits:

• Paid internship at the GS-5 or GS-7 grade level
• Paid Annual Leave, Sick Leave, and Holidays
• Federal Health, Dental, and Vision Insurance
• Successful graduates of the HERO Program receive consideration for permanent full-time employment with ICE/HSI as a Computer Forensic Analyst
• There are no guarantees that at the conclusion of the internship an offer of permanent, full-time employment will be made by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Offers are contingent upon acceptable work performance, availability of funds, and operational needs.

How to Apply

The job announcement for the FY 2024 HERO Program is now closed. The job announcement for the FY 2025 HERO Program will open in late 2024.

Sign up to receive HERO Corps updates

FY 2024 HERO Program Key Dates

• December 4, 2023: Announcement Opens
• December 18, 2023: Announcement Closes
• Mid January 2024: Virtual Interviews
• Late February 2024: In-Person Interviews
• June 17, 2024: Training Starts
• September 13, 2024: Completion of introductory training, report to field office

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Is this an operator or special agent position.

No. This is a support role.

80% of work time is in a lab processing electronic and mobile devices. 

Will I have arrest authority?

No. This position does not have arrest authority.

Will I participate in law enforcement actions?

Yes. In a limited capacity after the scene is secure in order to process electronic devices.

Will I carry a firearm?

No. You will not be issued a firearm and you cannot carry a personal firearm while on duty or in a federal facility.

Will I be exposed to child sexual assault material?

Yes. This position is in direct support of child exploitation investigations and the duties include locating, identifying, and preserving child sexual assault material for criminal prosecution.

Will this position allow me to transition to become a special agent?

No. This position is clearly defined and is not a gateway to a special agent position.

Will I be issued a government car?

No. You must drive your own car to work. A pool car may be available for duty hours response. 

Does the Government pay for my relocation to my new duty location?

No. Unlike the military, all new federal employees pay for their own relocation expenses.

Is a college degree, law enforcement experience, or technical/computer experience required to apply?

No, college degree, law enforcement experience or technical/computer experience are not required to apply to this position.

What locations are available in the HERO Program this year?

Locations will be listed in the announcement. Please apply only to positions you are willing to move to and work at.

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New Group Joins the Political Fight Over Disinformation Online

The group intends to fight what its leader, Nina Jankowicz, and others have described as a coordinated campaign by conservatives and their allies to undermine researchers who study disinformation.

By Steven Lee Myers and Jim Rutenberg

Two years ago, Nina Jankowicz briefly led an agency at the Department of Homeland Security created to fight disinformation — the establishment of which provoked a political and legal battle over the government’s role in policing lies and other harmful content online that continues to reverberate.

Now she has re-entered the fray with a new nonprofit organization intended to fight what she and others have described as a coordinated campaign by conservatives and others to undermine researchers, like her, who study the sources of disinformation.

Already a lightning rod for critics of her work on the subject, Ms. Jankowicz inaugurated the organization with a letter accusing three Republican committee chairmen in the House of Representatives of abusing their subpoena powers to silence think tanks and universities that expose the sources of disinformation.

“These tactics echo the dark days of McCarthyism, but with a frightening 21st-century twist,” she wrote in the letter on Monday with the organization’s co-founder Carlos Álvarez-Aranyos, a public-relations consultant who in 2020 was involved in efforts to defend the integrity of the American voting system.

The inception of the group, the American Sunlight Project, reflects how divisive the issue of identifying and combating disinformation has become as the 2024 presidential election approaches. It also represents a tacit admission that the informal networks formed at major universities and research organizations to address the explosion of disinformation online have failed to mount a substantial defense against a campaign, waged largely on the right, depicting their work as part of an effort to silence conservatives.

Taking place in the courts, in conservative media and on the Republican-led House Judiciary Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, the campaign has largely succeeded in eviscerating efforts to monitor disinformation, especially around the integrity of the American election system.

Many of the nation’s most prominent researchers, facing lawsuits, subpoenas and physical threats, have pulled back.

“More and more researchers were getting swept up by this, and their institutions weren’t either allowing them to respond or responding in a way that really just was not rising to meet the moment,” Ms. Jankowicz said in an interview. “And the problem with that, obviously, is that if we don’t push back on these campaigns, then that’s the prevailing narrative.”

That narrative is prevailing at a time when social media companies have abandoned or cut back efforts to enforce their own policies against certain types of content.

Many experts have warned that the problem of false or misleading content is only going to increase with the advent of artificial intelligence.

“Disinformation will remain an issue as long as the strategic gains of engaging in it, promoting it and profiting from it outweigh consequences for spreading it,” Common Cause, the nonpartisan public interest group, wrote in a report published last week that warned of a new wave of disinformation around this year’s vote.

Ms. Jankowicz said her group would run advertisements about the broad threats and effects of disinformation and produce investigative reports on the backgrounds and financing of groups conducting disinformation campaigns — including those targeting the researchers.

She has joined with two veteran political strategists: Mr. Álvarez-Aranyos, formerly a communications strategist for Protect Democracy, a nonpartisan group that seeks to counter domestic authoritarian threats, and Eddie Vale, formerly of American Bridge, a liberal group devoted to gathering opposition research into Republicans.

The organization’s advisory board includes Katie Harbath, a former Facebook executive who was previously a top digital strategist for Senate Republicans; Ineke Mushovic, a founder of the Movement Advancement Project , a think tank that tracks threats to democracy and gay, lesbian and transgender issues; and Benjamin Wittes, a national security legal expert at the Brookings Institution and editor in chief of Lawfare .

“We need to be a little bit more aggressive about how we think about defending the research community,” Mr. Wittes said in an interview, portraying the attacks against it as part of “a coordinated assault on those who have sought to counter disinformation and election interference.”

In the letter to congressional Republicans, Ms. Jankowicz noted the appearance of a fake robocall in President Biden’s voice discouraging voters in New Hampshire from voting in the state’s primary and artificially generated images of former President Donald J. Trump with Black supporters, as well as renewed efforts by China and Russia to spread disinformation to American audiences.

The American Sunlight Project has been established as a nonprofit under the section of the Internal Revenue Code that allows it greater leeway to lobby than tax-exempt charities known as 501(c)(3)s. It also does not have to disclose its donors, which Ms. Jankowicz declined to do, though she said the project had initial commitments of $1 million in donations.

The budget pales in comparison with those behind the counteroffensive like America First Legal, the Trump-aligned group that, with a war chest in the tens of millions of dollars, has sued researchers at Stanford and the University of Washington over their collaboration with government officials to combat misinformation about voting and Covid-19.

The Supreme Court is expected to rule soon in a federal lawsuit filed by the attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana accusing government agencies of using the researchers as proxies to pressure social media platforms to take down or restrict the reach of accounts.

The idea for the American Sunlight Project grew out of Ms. Jankowicz’s experience in 2022 when she was appointed executive director of a newly created Disinformation Governance Board at the Department of Homeland Security.

From the instant the board became public, it faced fierce criticism portraying it as an Orwellian Ministry of Truth that would censor dissenting voices in violation of the First Amendment, though in reality it had only an advisory role and no enforcement authority.

Ms. Jankowicz, an expert on Russian disinformation who once served as an adviser to Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, stepped down shortly after her appointment. Even then, she faced such a torrent of personal threats online that she hired a security consultant. The board was suspended and then, after a short review, abolished.

“I think we’re existing in an information environment where it is very easy to weaponize information and to make it seem sinister,” Mr. Álvarez-Aranyos said. “And I think we’re looking for transparency. I mean, this is sunlight in the very literal sense.”

Ms. Jankowicz said that she was aware that her involvement with the new group would draw out her critics, but that she was well positioned to lead it because she had already “gone through the worst of it.”

Steven Lee Myers covers misinformation and disinformation from San Francisco. Since joining The Times in 1989, he has reported from around the world, including Moscow, Baghdad, Beijing and Seoul. More about Steven Lee Myers

Jim Rutenberg is a writer at large for The Times and The New York Times Magazine and writes most often about media and politics. More about Jim Rutenberg

Homeland Security investigative agency seeks rebrand, without ICE

The investigative arm of the Department of Homeland Security is launching a new effort this week to distance itself from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, its parent agency, because officials say the contentious politics of immigration enforcement have undercut its efforts to combat transnational crime.

Homeland Security Investigations will remain a branch of ICE but will debut its own website next week – scrubbed of ICE insignia — and give employees new email addresses. The rebranding effort will prominently feature HSI’s own badge and emphasize its affiliation with the Department of Homeland Security, instead of ICE.

The makeover partly aims to appease senior HSI agents who have sought a breakaway because so many major U.S. cities have adopted policies limiting cooperation with ICE. It would take an act of Congress to make HSI a fully independent agency within DHS, however, so the relaunch amounts to a compromise.

HSI officials say the ICE stigma follows them whenever they attempt to work with police departments and public officials in jurisdictions with sanctuary policies shielding their immigrant populations from deportation. HSI investigators say they have been kicked off joint narcotics investigations, heckled at campus career fairs and shunned by crime victims worried they’ll be arrested and deported.

HSI’s new “independent branding” will allow its agents “to work without the undue toxicity that in some places comes with the ICE moniker,” Patrick J. Lechleitner, ICE’s acting director, said in an interview.

“They’ll still be part of ICE, just like the Marines are part of the Department of the Navy,” Lechleitner said.

Several of the country’s largest cities have enacted sanctuary policies that prohibit or limit their police departments and city officials from cooperating with ICE, including New York City, Los Angeles and Chicago. The list grew longer during the Trump administration, when ICE officers ramped up arrests and deportations.

Trump, who promised to deport millions of immigrants but fell short of that goal during his presidency, has pledged to restore that approach if he returns to the White House after the November election.

Democratic officials have adamantly opposed ICE operations that sweep up immigrants living in the United States illegally without regard to their criminal histories. Sanctuary policies that shun ICE have been a blow to HSI, which has 6,000 agents, 93 offices abroad and a broad mandate to investigate transnational crimes, including terrorism, drug smuggling, human trafficking and money laundering.

Since its creation by the Department of Homeland Security in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, HSI has struggled to distinguish itself from the better-known branch of ICE, Enforcement and Removal Operations, which has a narrower focus on immigration detention and deportations.

“We needed to give HSI space to operate and do the criminal investigations, as much as possible unaffected by the political turmoil that’s involved with civil immigration,” Lechleitner said.

“We try to the best ability within the entire agency to be apolitical,” he said. “We’re not a political organization. We’re a law enforcement, national security, public safety agency. However, it was affecting HSI’s ability to conduct operations and investigations.”

Lechleitner was among 19 senior HSI officials, or Special Agents in Charge, who wrote a protest letter in 2018 to then-DHS Sec. Kirstjen Nielsen urging a breakup of ICE. The agency was facing a political backlash over its expansion of immigration arrests, including calls from some Democrats to “Abolish ICE.” Lechleitner was in charge of HSI’s Washington field office at the time.

“The perception of HSI’s investigative independence is unnecessarily impacted by the political nature of ERO’s civil immigration enforcement,” the agents told Nielsen.

The special agents said making HSI independent would “allow employees to develop a strong agency pride.”

The letter was akin to a bureaucratic bombshell inside DHS. But senior Trump officials described the proposal to break up ICE as “a nonstarter” and were critical of the HSI agents who signed the letter.

In December 2021, senior HSI agents sent an internal report to DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas urging him to let them become a standalone agency divorced from ICE. The report cited 77 instances in which the agency’s affiliation with ICE has hurt relations with state and local law enforcement, colleges and universities, and community groups, making it difficult to recruit new agents and build trust with victims of crime.

The push for HSI independence has been simmering since then. Mayorkas, who said one of his goals is to improve ICE’s reputation, has issued new enforcement guidelines for ICE that prioritize immigrants who are recent arrivals or pose a security threat. He has directed officers to take a hands-off approach to immigrants who may be living and working in the United States illegally if they don’t commit crimes. Worksite raids to round up illegally employed workers have ceased.

While HSI generally does not participate in immigration arrests and deportations, its agents are deployed along the U.S.-Mexico border and work closely with U.S. Customs and Border Protection to investigate smuggling activity and human trafficking cases.

ICE officials acknowledge the HSI rebranding effort could be reversed by a different administration, since it is a policy directive, rather than a formal reorganization. It will have no effect on ICE’s $8.5 billion annual budget, they said.

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GAO Confirms Biden Administration Spends Border Security Funds on Environmental Agenda

Washington, D.C.  - In November of 2023, House Budget Committee Chairman Arrington (R-TX) and Oversight Task Force Chair Congressman Bergman (R-MI)  sent a letter  to the Government Accountability Office ( GAO ) seeking clarity on whether the Biden Administration violated the  Impoundment Control Act of 1974  by  blocking the use of funds intended to continue construction and secure the border wall . On April 22, 2024, GAO issued its response.

Background - From the Report :

• Congress appropriated funds to the Department of Homeland Security for a barrier system or fencing  for fiscal years 2018 through 2021 .  
• On January 20, 2021 , the President issued a “ proclamation ” effectively  pausing border barrier construction and obligations to the extent permitted by law.
• The proclamation  ended the prior Administration’s emergency declaration , stating the new policy that “ no more American taxpayer dollars be diverted to construct a border wall .” 
• Among other things, the Proclamation further directed the Secretaries of Homeland Security and Defense to work with other officials and develop a plan for  redirecting  border wall funds.

Thus, GAO, in coordination with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), authored a report entitled “Border Barrier Construction and Obligations” for DHS to seek factual information and its legal views on this matter. 

In light of this, Chairman Arrington and Representative Bergman’s  letter  to GAO asked if the Biden Administration violated the  law by blocking the use of funds intended to continue the construction of border barriers.

Key Takeaways From GAO's Response:

• GAO determined  that DHS has  not  intentionally blocked funding for the border wall. Therefore, they did not technically break the law. 
• GAO’s decision did, however, note that  DHS has yet to obligate over $660 million  and has spent the majority of the funding on  environmental planning and other non-barrier construction . DHS continues to play political games that stall contractors and prevent barriers from being built, effectively finding a way to dodge the law. 
• Congress appropriated nearly  $1.4 billion  in Fiscal Year 2020 specifically “ for the construction of [a] barrier system along the southwest border ,” but according to Texas’ Southern District, the “bulk” or “vast majority of the Government’s FY 2020 and 2021 obligations are not allocated to new wall construction.” 
• The Biden Administration has violated the purpose of the law  by diverting that funding away from directly constructing border barriers to focus on environmental policies. 
• The General Land Office of the  State of Texas  and the Attorney General of the  State of Missouri  have both filed lawsuits against the Biden Administration, alleging that  DHS is not properly following the intent of the law  by spending taxpayer dollars on activities other than border wall construction. 

The Purpose of Physical Barriers:

The $1.4 billion  appropriated by Congress was intended for the construction of a barrier system. It is well known that physical barriers are an effective deterrence that stop or dramatically reduce illegal crossings at our southwest border. In 2020, when barriers were being built,  DHS reported  that: 

• In the  Yuma  Sector, “Illegal entries in areas with  new border wall system plummeted over 87% in FY 20 compared to FY 19 .”
• In the  Rio Grande Valley  Sector, “ CBP has seen 79% decrease in apprehensions in this area (Zone 1) since the completion of the border wall system .”
• In the  El Paso  Sector, “ apprehensions have decreased by 60% and 81% respectively when comparing the last half of fiscal year FY 20 to the first half of FY 20 .” 

As per DHS, these massive reductions in illegal immigration are due  solely to the construction of physical barriers . The barriers force migrants to go to ports of entry where they can be processed by Customs and Border Protection agents, avoid dangerous cartels, and have the potential to enter the U.S. legally.

The Bottom Line:

While the GAO report may show that the Biden Administration has not  explicitly  broken the law, it does show that DHS and the White House are circumventing the law to shirk executive responsibility and accountability. 

The lack of enforcement and operation control at our southwest border under the Biden Administration is simply a dereliction of duty. The fact of the matter is that  American taxpayer dollars to secure the border are going unspent or wasted on frivolous environmental planning and remediation . 

More from the House Budget Committee on the Border:

Click  HERE  for our “Biden’s Border Blunder: The Cost of Catch and Release”

Click  HERE  for our “Cost of.. Biden’s Weak National Security Policies”

Click  HERE  for our “Cost of… Biden’s Border Crisis.”

Click  HERE  to read “The Costly Border Crisis.”

Click  HERE  to read “Biden’s Border Crisis Enters Third Year”

Click  HERE  to read “Newsom Extends Free Healthcare to 700,000 Illegal Immigrants Despite Record Budget Deficit

The Committee has unrelentingly pursued answers from the Department of Homeland Security: 

Click  HERE  for our  first  letter to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. 

Click  HERE  for our  second  letter to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. 

Click  HERE  to read an overview of what Chairman Arrington requests in these letters. 

House Republicans are tirelessly working to " Reverse the Curse”  of the Democrat agenda, from open border policies to their ambivalence toward the debt crisis. The Budget Committee is fighting for brighter days ahead for all Americans. Click  HERE  for our FY24-33 Budget Resolution.

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HERO Child-Rescue Corps

A paid federal internship that recruits and trains veterans as computer forensic analysts to combat child exploitation.

We are looking for wounded, ill or injured veterans and transitioning service members who are looking to serve their country. Join us for a second chance to be a hero.

Applications for the fiscal year 2025 class will be announced in late 2024.

The Human Exploitation Rescue Operation (HERO) Child-Rescue Corps Program is a paid federal internship that annually recruits, trains and equips wounded, ill or injured (VA/DoD Disability rating) veterans and transitioning service members to become computer forensic analysts (CFAs) to combat child exploitation and rescue of child sexual victims.

HERO interns directly support HSI special agents in the:

• rescue of child sexual victims
• prosecution of sexual predators
• prevention of child sexual abuse

Interns and HERO CFAs are exposed to child sexual abuse and exploitation material.

The training program consists of:

• 13 weeks of paid HSI introductory and forensic training, leading to certifications in CompTIA A+ and other forensic tools
• 9 month paid internship in computer forensics labs at HSI offices throughout the U.S.

You will receive GS 5/7 pay during the entire internship. Lodging and per diem provided during the first 13 weeks of training only.

After successfully completing the program, HSI hires interns as full-time CFAs to assist special agents. Full-time, permanent employment is not guaranteed at the end of the internship. Offers are dependent on acceptable work performance, availability of funds and operational needs.

This program does not allow you to transition to become a special agent and you must pay for your own relocation expenses.

Most of the work of a HERO CFA is performed in a lab processing electronic and mobile devices to locate, identify and preserve child sexual assault material for criminal prosecution.

• You may be expected to participate in law enforcement actions in a limited capacity after the scene is secure to forensically process electronic devices.
• This is a support position. You will not have arrest authority.
• You are not issued firearms and may not carry a personal firearm while on duty or in a federal facility.
• You will not be issued a government car. You must arrange your own transportation to and from work; however, a pool car may be available for duty hours response.

Eligibility

• Must be a U.S. citizen
• VA/DOD disability rating or statement of service
• Proof of honorable discharge (DD214)
• Provide all requested supporting documents to include essay addressing specific topics
• Pass criminal history and background investigation (provided by HSI)
• Pass drug test screening
• Obtain and maintain Top Secret clearance
• Must attend all virtual and in-person interviews
• Must attend all 13 weeks of training
• Willing to relocate at own expense to selected office location

Program Benefits

• Paid internship at the GS-5 or GS-7 grade level
• Paid annual leave, sick leave, and holidays
• Federal health, dental, and vision insurance
• Successful graduates of the HERO Program receive consideration for permanent full-time employment with HSI as a Computer Forensic Analyst
• December 4, 2023: Announcement opens
• December 18, 2023: Announcement closes
• Mid-January 2024: Virtual interviews
• Late February 2024: In-person interviews
• June 17, 2024: Training starts
• September 13, 2024: Completion of introductory training, report to field office

HERO Program Legal Authority

The “ Human Exploitation Rescue Operations Act of 2025 ” (or HERO Act of 2015), signed into law by President Obama on May 29, 2015 ( Public Law 114-22 ), formalized and endorsed the HERO Corps program. The program is administered by the Cyber Crimes Center (C3).

Congress strengthened the HERO Program through passage of the “ Abolish Human Trafficking Act of 2017 ” ( Public Law 115-392 ), which made it a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) wide program that is open to all branches of service members and providing pay for HERO Program interns.

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