Sunday, August 17, 2003

Aviation Vulnerability. General Aviation is the part of aviation that you, the average citizen, don't really know about.  Little planes, and little airports, all over the country.  There are tens of thousands of them.  In rural communities they're extremely important -- they're the fastest way to get around, to handle medical emergencies, and for personal transportation they're pretty hard to beat. General Aviation has been under a real assault for the last ten years or so...rising costs of insurance and the value of land have been shuttering airports all over the place.  Our President carries a roving no-fly zone with him everywhere he goes, which throws areas all over the country into an aviation chaos, every time he goes somewhere to raise money for his re-election. There are a lot of legislators who want to "do something" about the security of general aviation.  Let's think this through: Big planes cause big damage. Little planes cause little damage.  Why on earth do we want more big planes, then?  Why do we want more congestion, in the air? Why do we want to cram more money into money-losing airlines, and have them bailed out by the taxpayer? When you're providing a system, it makes tremendously more sense to have your points of failure within that system be as minimal in their failed effect as possible.  If we are able to shift traffic away from large planes and high volume airports, we are able to significantly reduce our vulnerability overall.  A small plane is utterly useless as a terrorism device; a minivan is far more effective.  Big jets, on the other hand, can do some pretty substantial damage. I think the country should be shifting its usage patterns to reduce our vulnerability, not increase it.  Unless, of course, you're an airline, and have a bunch of congresscritters in your back pocket.  If that's the case, you want to eliminate General Aviation, which forces all those formerly free individuals to play your crazy pricing games, and support you through both lack of choice and through tax dollars.  Sounds like a great deal! Small points of vulnerability, and many of them.  That's the right approach.  It makes terrorism kind of pointless, doesn't it?  What self-respecting terrorist is going to commandeer a Piper?  None.  12:54:31 PM    comment []

Poindexter's Markets. [a letter to Amir Oren of Haaretz] These futures markets are used in many situations to attempt to harness general expertise that may exist, in an attempt to assign probabilities to potential events.  Universities have been working with these kinds of devices for a number of purposes.  They have been shown, for example, to do a very good job of predicting the results of elections. The ethical aspect of these markets does NOT lie in the mechanism; it lies in the questions being asked.  Yes, we may be uncomfortable with the notion of posing a question that may involved terrorism.  There are many other geopolitical questions that can be asked as well.   It is purely reactionary to suggest that "persons who want to perpetuate terror invest in terror stocks".  If an analyst predicts that terrorism is likely to occur, is that analyst perpetuating terror?  I am certain that your government has many analysts hard at work attempting to predict, based on information at hand, where terror attacks are likely to occur. Is this a delusional and/or morally suspect activity?  It is not.   The futures market was an attempt to gather in expertise that might otherwise not be available to the government.  Persons overseas with information not available to the government might lend their expertise.  Some of these persons might even be, shall we say, somewhat unsavory.  The end goal is to do a better job of interdicting terrorism.   It is difficult to understand how an Israeli citizen could so casually dismiss an idea with real, academically proven, merit.   And Poindexter's fate?  It was sealed by knee-jerk reactions like your own.  Congratulations.  I do not approve of things like Total Information Awareness and for that I could seem him retiring, but I do believe that we must evaluate each proposal on its own merits, and determine which have benefit.  I am quite confident that the career-ending fear and uncertainty visited upon the creative community within the intelligence gathering during this last episode will certainly have a chilling effect on those attempting to do something different, to find a new way. 12:02:21 PM    comment []