Supply Chain Security : Is there a risk of a nuclear terrorist attack?
September 19, 2006 by SwizStick
Filed under Supply Chain Management
The recent Bulletin of Atomic Scientists has a sobering reminder of the threat of a nuclear terrorist attack, arguing that those who discount such risks suffer from a “..failure of imagination..†Aside from the devastating human loss, the economic toll would be equally heavy:
A nuclear terrorist attack on the United States would have catastrophic consequences even for other countries. After the nuclear detonation, the immediate reaction would be to block all entry points to prevent another bomb from reaching its target, resulting in the disruption of the global “just-in-time” flow of goods and raw materials. Vital markets for international products would disappear, and closely linked financial markets would crash. Researchers at RAND, a U.S.-government-funded think tank, estimated that a nuclear explosion at the Port of Long Beach in California would cause immediate indirect costs worldwide of more than $3 trillion and that shutting down U.S. ports would cut world trade by 10 percent. [4]
The negative economic repercussions would reverberate well beyond the developed world. As U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has warned, “Were a nuclear terrorist attack to occur, it would cause not only widespread death and destruction, but would stagger the world economy and thrust tens of millions of people into dire poverty.” [5]
However, on the theory of how the nuclear device would be smuggled into the U.S., the usage of drug smuggling routes seem more plausible to me than the “follow the golf clubs†theory:
Two plausible methods would be to “follow the golf clubs” or “follow the drugs.”
Imagine a woman who lives in Tokyo wants to play golf at Pebble Beach, but prefers to avoid the hassle of carrying her clubs through U.S. customs. How would she get her clubs to the resort? She would call a freight forwarder, provide a plausible description of the contents of her shipment, and have her golf bag picked up at her home. The clubs would travel by ship from Tokyo to the Port of Oakland in California and then by truck to the golf course. The chance of anyone inspecting her bag between her house and the links is less than 3 percent.
If that seems too risky, terrorists might “follow the drugs,” tons of which find their way to U.S. cities every day. The illicit economy for narcotics and illegal immigrants has built up a vast infrastructure that terrorists could exploit. As Albert Carnesale, an arms control expert, has noted, no one should doubt the ability of terrorists to bring a nuclear weapon to New York: They could simply hide it in a bale of marijuana, which we know comes to all global cities.
I have no idea how or where the author came up with the figure that the chance of a personal golf clubs shipment traveling by ship from Tokyo to the U.S. being inspected was less than 3 percent. The official CBP (U.S. Customs and Border Protection) figure is that 6% of all incoming containers are physically inspected. The RAND Corporation, quoted in this article, has pegged the likely number between 5-6%. While still a very low percentage, it needs to be understood that CBP follows a detailed process in deciding which shipments get chosen for closer scrutiny. The 5-6% containers chosen for inspection are not just chosen randomly; they are the shipments determined by CBP to have a significant security risk. I won’t go into details about how CBP collects and sifts through the information needed to determine which containers get tagged for further inspection, simply note that they have a multi-layered risk assessment approach, combined with security measures and programs implemented post-9/11, that involves the gathering and processing of information that starts from before the container is even loaded on the vessel. While only 5-6% of all containers are inspected, the chances of a personal shipment of golf clubs being part of that 5-6% are high.
That’s not to say that the system is 100% secure or foolproof in any way, nor that I think that the inspection rate of 5-6% is adequate. On the contrary, I believe much more needs to be done to secure our ports and detect risky shipments before they arrive into the U.S. as well as improved processes and technology to inspect even more containers after they arrive. But to claim that a personal effects shipment of golf clubs would stand almost no chance of inspection is inaccurate. You also can not discount the possibility that one of the numerous parties to such a transaction – such as the origin trucker, the freight forwarder, the receiving personnel, the ocean consolidator (since it would be an LCL shipment), the carrier, the destination terminal, destination CFS, destination de-consolidation personnel, and the delivery trucker – would note and report if they found something suspicious about the shipment.
Let me emphasize that I am not saying it couldn’t happen this way, just that the chances of such a shipment making it to the U.S. without any scrutiny or inspection are lower than the article would lead one to believe.
Hat tip to Pajamas Media where I found the Bulletin report above.
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