Making the Nation Safer: The Role of Science and Technology in Countering Terrorism.

National Research Council Division on Engineering and Physical Sciences; $38.00 (pre-paid) plus $4.50 shipping first copy from National Academy Press, 2101 Constitution Ave., NW, Washington D.C. 20418 http://www.nap.edu

The United States should take advantage of its scientific and

engineering strengths to detect, thwart and respond to terrorist attacks more effectively, says this report from the National Research Council's Committee on Science and Technology for Countering Terrorism. The report identifies actions, including deployment of available technologies, that can be taken immediately, and it points to the urgent need to initiate R&D in critical areas.

It calls for establishing an independent homeland security institute to help the government make crucial technical decisions and devise strategies that can be put into practice successfully.

"The scientific and engineering community is aware that it can make a critical contribution to protecting the nation from catastrophic terrorism," said Lewis M. Branscomb, co-chair of the committee that wrote the report, and emeritus professor, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass. "Our report gives the government a blueprint for using current technologies and creating new capabilities to reduce the likelihood of terrorist attacks and the severity of their consequences."

The report emphasizes that certain actions can be taken now to make the United States safer--protect and control nuclear weapons and material, produce sufficient supplies of vaccines and antibodies, secure shipping containers and power grids, and improve ventilation systems and emergency communications. Dozens of specific recommendations are offered on R&D activities that can lead to technologies with the potential for lessening vulnerabilities to terrorism. For example, advances in biology and medicine can make it possible to produce drugs to fight pathogens for which there are no current treatments. New approaches to making electric-power grids intelligent and adaptive can make them much less vulnerable to attack, allowing power to be preserved for critical services such as communication and transportation. New computer programs for data-mining and information fusion can make it much easier to "connect the dots" among apparently unrelated fragments of intelligence information and to comb the sensor reading to allow rapid detection of toxic agents and other threats.

"These opportunities will go unrealized unless the government is able to establish and execute a coherent strategy for taking advantage of the nation's scientific and technical capabilities," added co-chair Richard D. Klausner, executive director of global health, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. "The federal agencies with science and engineering expertise are not necessarily the same as the agencies responsible for deploying systems to protect the nation, and they all must work together to discover and implement the best counterterrorism technologies."

To help determine priorities and create an effective technical strategy, the committee called on the Office of Homeland Security to establish a new Homeland Security Institute composed of experts who can analyze vulnerabilities in critical infrastructures and evaluate the effectiveness of systems deployed to reduce them. This should include "red teaming" exercises where institute personnel play the role of terrorists to discover weaknesses in U.S. defenses. The institute should be a not-for-profit, contractor-operated organization staffed with people experienced in analyzing complex systems and responding quickly to requests for advice from senior government officials.

Furthermore, the new Department of Homeland Security, as proposed by President Bush, will need an undersecretary for technology to coordinate science and technology programs with the department and to keep it connected to research-oriented agencies such as the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, Department of Energy, and Department of Defense, as well as the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. The Homeland Security Institute proposed by the committee should support the undersecretary for technology once the new department is established.