Terror, Security, and Money: Balancing the Risks, Benefits, and Costs of Homeland Security - Hardcover

Mueller, John; Stewart, Mark

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0199795754 ISBN 13: 9780199795758

Publisher: OUP USA, 2011

Synopsis

In the years following 9/11, the United States spent billions and billons on powerful surveillance and security systems and created a massive new government agency, the Department of Homeland Security. John Mueller, one of America's most trenchant critics of America's drive for enhanced security at all costs, has argued that while these measures have largely been unnecessary, the public succumbed to an alarmist media and a shrewd governmental scare campaign and came to support these measures. The price, Mueller has contended, has been a massive misallocation of resources. In previous books, Mueller focused on why national security threats are 'overblown,' but in Terrorism, Security, and Money, he teams up with Mark Stewart, a civil engineering professor and recognized authority on risk assessment for the built infrastructure, to put forth a more rational and cost-effective approach to managing domestic security. Instead of offering a critical account of the situation we're in, Mueller and Stewart instead focus on providing solutions based on the risk assessment science. After cataloguing the mistakes that the US has made (and continues to make), like spending wildly on ill-considered plans to mitigate unlikely threats, they offer tools-based probabilistic risk assessment that have the potential to redirect our efforts toward a more productive--and far more cost-effective--course.

About this title

About the Author

John Mueller is Woody Hayes Chair of National Security Studies, and Professor of Political Science at Ohio State University. He is the author of Atomic Obsession (OUP 2009).

Mark Stewart is Professor of Civil Engineering and Director of the Centre for Infrastructure Performance and Reliability at the University of Newcastle in Australia.

Edition details

• Publisher: OUP USA
• Publication date: 2011
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0199795754
• ISBN 13: 9780199795758
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 280