- Change for America on Science and Tech Policy: Part 1
- Taking a Short Break
- Transition Team Deploys Its First Public Web 2.0 Tools
- Victory for Stem Cells in Michigan
- White Open Spaces
- Historical Election Maps and Open Mapping Research
- Scary Regulatory Maneuvers in Bush’s Last Days
- FDA Did Not Finish Its Homework On BPA
- Digital Freedom of Expression and Human Rights
- Traumatic Brain Injury and Helmet Design
- Gates Foundation Funds Research, Venture Capital Style
- A Brief History of Lead Regulation
Peacocks and Security
What can fiddler crabs and peacocks teach us about defeating Al Qaeda? Plenty, argues Raphael Sagarin, associate director for Ocean and Coastal Policy at the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University, and editor of the new book, Natural Security: A Darwinian Approach to a Dangerous World. He explained the connections at an event hosted by the American Association for the Advancement of Science Center for Science, Technology and Security Policy yesterday.
Ellen Laipson, President and CEO of the Henry L Stimson Center, opened by laying out the current state of affairs in international security. Asian countries, especially China and India, are rising powers on the global stage. Nuclear technology leakage to non-state actors, chemical and biological threats, climate change, failing or weak states, and environmental disasters are just a few of the current and future global threats. Addressing them will take an integrative and inclusive approach, she told the audience, calling experts from health, environmental, and security fields to join forces in developing new paradigms for security issues.
Dr. Sagarin then explained how biological evolution on a uncertain and dangerous planet has operated as a 3.6-billion-year test period for security and defense mechanisms that both do and don’t work. Looking at the “solutions” provided by nature could teach humans how to deal with their own security issues, he argues. He suggests events such as the 9/11 attacks where not the effect of a “failure of imagination,”as the 9/11 Commission Report found, but are rather a “failure of adaptation.”
What are examples of natural security? Sagarin notes how the Cold War arms race between superpowers Russia and the U.S. was similar to male fiddler crabs waving large and relatively useless claws while competing with other male crabs for female attention. None of the male crabs actually use the claw in battle with competitors, and analogously, superpowers working with similar assumptions and resources nonetheless continued their competitive escalation.
He then explained that male peacocks use a great deal of energy and resources to grow beautiful manes of feathers which serve no purpose other than for wooing females. According to Sagarin, when male peacocks fully extend these feathers, they expose themselves to danger; a behavior that could have only developed in predator-free habitats. Recent news reports have found lax security at sensitive chemical plants because companies, he argues, behave much like peacocks, spending resources in research and development rather than on security because they developed during a period of relaxed security concerns.
Sagarin believes that studying evolutionary adaptations like the immune system and biomimicry, as well as evolutionary models in network science, could yield novel and effective security approaches. He sees four broad but interlocking themes in nature-inspired security:
- Structures that are highly centralized do not respond efficiently to the environment. For this, he cited the Department of Homeland Security and its failure to responded quickly to Hurricane Katrina.
- Most organisms increase uncertainty for adversaries while reducing uncertainties for themselves. Announcing security protocols at the airport runs counter to this principle, as it makes it easier for individuals with criminal intent to know what behaviors to avoid, he pointed out.
- Organisms live in a world of inherent risk. Instead of trying to eliminate all risk, he suggested, it is better to understand the nature of risk and apply resources accordingly.
- Natural systems are always changing, so security situations should be constantly reevaluated. Understanding what stage a system is in allows an administer to allocate the right tools appropriately.
Sagarin emphasized that security requires collaboration across a variety of disciplines and must involve both experts and non-experts to help develop new paradigms and perspectives to solve the problems of the future. To further this collaboration, he has started a website for individuals to offer their own perspectives and ideas.
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