Introduction

For the past year I have been thinking that the industry around critical infrastructure protection (CIP) is too focused on traditional threat and risk assessments. Not enough thought is given to the role that politics and public policy (and by extension, economics) play in protection. (Economics is just politics by another means.)

The financial meltdown on Wall Street exemplifies our vulnerability to politics and public policy. I won't pretend to understand the economics. From my illiterate perspective, governments have printed too much money; it's concentrated in too few hands; thus trillions of dollars are sloshing around the globe looking for a return on investment; and governments and the financial community have worked together to meet the demand by creating arcane investment opportunities that are just pyramid schemes. It's like musical chairs until the music stops. Finally the system collapsed under pressure from the White House, Wall Street and Capitol Hill. Bin Laden could not have done better.

Instead I hope to focus on critical infrastructures like electricity and water, and examine how vulnerable they are to short-sighted politics and public policy.