The port security grant program: good enough, or can it be made better?
Masters thesis — Naval Postgraduate School, 2016. Full text: https://archive.org/details/theportsecurityg1094549476
Arguments
The port security grant program: good enough, or can it be made better?
It's the resilience-vs-hardening debate behind every infrastructure grant program — defending points fails, defending systems survives.
Fifteen years in, the Port Security Grant Program hardened individual facilities — building "Maginot Lines," or worse, "independent pill boxes, which the Threat can bypass rather than directly confront" — instead of making the maritime transportation system resilient as a whole; the program should aim to make the system "like a block of ballistic gel; able to absorb impact and still retain its shape," kept as a discrete program with transparency and fiduciary reforms.
Why it matters
It's the resilience-vs-hardening debate behind every infrastructure grant program — defending points fails, defending systems survives.
Use when: Don't build walls around assets; build systems that absorb the hit — defense in depth beats a brittle perimeter.