Red Team by Micah Zenko

Author:Micah Zenko
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Basic Books
Published: 2015-09-01T17:52:44+00:00

Conclusion

From its earliest days under trailblazers like Stephen Sloan, red teaming within the homeland security field has struggled to convince others of its usefulness and necessity in preventing terrorist attacks and criminal breaches before they occur. The FAA red team was easily the most tragic case assessed for this book because it undertook realistic vulnerability probes of the security procedures in place at airports to protect planes and passengers from terrorists, like those responsible for the 1988 Lockerbie bombing—the motivating impulse for the red team itself—but saw its warnings go almost entirely unheeded. The impact of the FAA red team was weak because the FAA—constrained by its Congressional overseers—was itself weak. The FAA senior managers who received the red team’s reports were either unable or unwilling to use its shocking findings to sanction and pressure domestic airlines to make vital improvements. Unfortunately, they were engaged in red teaming without an ultimate purpose, which is the worst possible situation, rendering the red team and its targeted institution incapable of utilizing the findings.

The other red teams reviewed in this chapter were able to get better traction largely because they were mandated by Congress, demanded by a boss, or had fulfilled what was widely accepted as an urgent need. The MANPADS-vulnerability assessment occurred only because of a well-publicized threat to an Israeli airliner in 2002. This attempted shoot-down elevated the importance of protecting US airports, which was best done by internalizing the likely motivations, tactics, and techniques that it was believed terrorists would employ. The NYPD commissioner’s tabletop exercises occurred with the highest level of buy-in, given Ray Kelly’s belief that they were the best means to evaluate the contingency plans and decisions that his commanders would be forced to make in a real-life incident. The tabletop exercises have endured over the past decade because the template is flexible enough to red team the reactions to new, emerging terror threats, and also the response plans if something went wrong at an upcoming event. Similarly, IDART persists because of its historical focus on nuclear weapons and critical infrastructure systems, and because the unique body of expertise found at Sandia Labs has been repurposed to red team an array of threats facing government and industry. As in the private sector (institutions that are detailed in the next chapter), IDART has always struggled to justify its relevancy. And as the person who authorized IDART’s creation, Sam Varnado, stated, “Making a business case for why you need to do red teaming involves demonstrating the likely vulnerabilities, threats, and consequences of inaction.”103

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