Analysis & Opinions - The Washington Post

DHS Used to Guard Against All Hazards. Trump's Focus on One Risk Invites Disaster.

| Apr. 10, 2019

What happens when, after 2001, you focus your entire homeland security apparatus solely to stop the next 19 terrorists from getting on four airplanes and killing thousands of Americans?

The answer, in some ways: the government's disastrous response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Katrina was a lesson in what can go wrong when we lose sight of a big, complicated mission: protecting the American people. Which is why, after 2005, the Department of Homeland Security and its state and local partners began to adopt an "all hazards" approach to protecting our communities. Instead of focusing on just one threat, America would be safer if we sought to reduce the threat of all highly probable risks across the board: climate change and oil spills, terrorism and cyberattacks, pandemics and unlawful immigration....

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For Academic Citation:

Kayyem, Juliette."DHS Used to Guard Against All Hazards. Trump's Focus on One Risk Invites Disaster." The Washington Post, April 10, 2019.

The Author

Juliette Kayyem Headshot

Juliette Kayyem

  • Member of the Board, Belfer Center
  • Belfer Senior Lecturer in International Security, Harvard Kennedy School
  • Faculty Director, Homeland Security Project
  • Faculty Affiliate, Middle East Initiative
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