we guard against risks that are most likely to occur and that, if they do occur, will cost the company the most money... I've been wondering ? as I watch spending on national security continue to skyrocket, with diminishing marginal returns ? why we as a nation can't apply this same logic to national security spending.

Bruce Schneier, one of my favorite bloggers who writes about security concerns and issues, pointed me to an article written by an anonymous CSO (Chief Security Officer) about our National Security Priorities. He proposes that if we take a pragmatic approach to our spending we could be much more effective in keeping our population safe.

Read the article here.

This resonates with me quite a bit. I think it's reasonable to define the purpose of government as an organization that provides societal infrastructure and services that we feel to be universal. The key is how do we measure our progress against those goals? In the corporate security world the goal is to save the company money. In this essay the CSO suggests that the way we should measure out defense spending is by reducing the number of American deaths. This leads him to suggest a large scale moving of resources from anti-terrorism spending to health care improvements - since nine of the ten top ten causes of death in the US are health related.

He slips up a little here though. The problem with reducing health related deaths as a goal is that as people grow older they have health problems. At some point everyone will die, and most of the time it will be health related. The key focus should be prolonging life. That's why things like homicide, terrorism and automobile accidents are such great targets for prevention. Those are people who die far before their time. By reducing those causes of death you get a great return on your efforts.

Other leaders like heart disease, cancer and stroke might require some statistical analysis. Overall it's not that hard a problem though. Make our national priorities two fold: rise the average lifespan and intensely target reasons why people fall significantly short of that average. [1] This is something the government can do, it's just a matter of deciding what our real spending priorities are.

Regardless, the selection of priorities is a little more complicated then suggested in the article. But the idea is sound. Sometimes you need a leader to step back and take a holistic view of priorities and spending. Without that kind of broad scale vision organizational inertia takes over.

I think one of the reasons the country is so divided these days is that President Bush is the kind of leader that is taking a broad scale look at the government and re-organizing it to fit his vision. The problem is his vision is radically different from what many of us would like to see over here on the left end of the spectrum.

It's funny, I used to hate organizational inertia. I thought it was a big impediment to true progress. But now that I'm watching Bush remold the government with remarkable effectiveness and speed I'm wishing we had more of it. That's really the whole point right? Big organizations are supposed to move slowly, that's how we stick to the right path. There are lots of different ideas about the way things should be run, and I hold no illusions that mine are absolutely correct and large parts of the country are absolutely wrong. I just have to remember these times when the whole thing is moving away from me and I want to slow it down - that way in the future when we swing it around I can be ok with the other side slowing it all down.

Notes:
1. Related to this, I think the most insulting thing Bush has done while trying to sell social security changes is to suggest that Black Americans should be for social security reforms since the system as it stands is unfair to them. Why is it unfair? The black demographic has a significantly shorter lifespan so they get less payout from the system. It's an extra special level of insulting to say we'll fix that problem by allowing people to leave some money to their heirs then to say we're going to work on upping your expected lifespan a bit. Which do you think that population would like more? I'm guess they'll vote for the extra years of life.

2. My favorite statistic from the last week is that the 56 Republicans in the US Senate, who are viciously complaining that the democrats are halting their ability to legislate and thwarting the will of the people, have fewer constituents then the 44 Senate Democrats.

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