Bob Herbert in today’s times has an op-ed on our decaying infrastructure that sounds like the late-1970s/early 1980s discussion. The column is not of much interest in itself, but refers to a CSIS Commission on Public Infrastructure that has been active (or has existed, at any rate) since 2004. There is a link to a 2006 panel on Guiding Principles for Strengthening America’s Infrastructure, and Herbert refers to recent testimony by Felix Rohatyn, the head of the Commission (who some will remember as a key player in negotiating New York City’s way out of financial crisis in the 1970s; sounds like a pretty interesting guy on other fronts as well). In any case, the interesting questions would obviously be: How do these proposals — classic questions of population security — relate to the substantial work in CSIS on Critical Infrastructure Protection? And is there any chance that these issues will get a different kind of hearing now that the democrats have more voice in the government? I wasn’t able to find the recent Rohatyn testimony, but this is one interesting possible space of movement in a shifted set of security emphases under new political conditions.
COLLABORATORY: VITAL SYSTEMS SECURITY
The Vital Systems Security collaboration examines how, today, security is being constituted as an object of knowledge, intervention, and political reflection. It proposes that the security of vital systems such as energy, transportation, communication and health is one norm in relationship to which security is being reproblematized. A central goal of the collaboration is to examine these issues through collective, conceptually driven inquiry that addresses rapidly developing contemporary problems.
