Wiley Handbook of Science and Technology for Homeland Security, 4 Volume Set

THE MILITARY ROOTS OF CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE ANALYSIS AND ATTACK

STEVEN M. RINALDI

Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque, New Mexico

1 INTRODUCTION

Critical infrastructures underpin the political, military, economic, and social fabrics of societies. In recent years, it has become widely recognized that infrastructure disruptions could disproportionately affect the normal functioning of a nation. Disruptions from natural disasters, major strikes, attacks, and other mechanisms have amply demonstrated that critical infrastructures are highly interdependent, complex adaptive systems. Of import is the intricate, highly interdependent character of today’s infrastructures. A disruption in one infrastructure, such as the electric power grid, can spread to other infrastructures such as communications networks and the Internet, thereby creating cascading disturbances and magnifying the effects far beyond those of the original disruption [1].

Since the mid-1990s, the US government has placed increasing emphasis on protecting the nation’s critical infrastructures and associated key resources as matters of national and economic security. In 1996, President William J. Clinton issued Executive Order 13010, Critical Infrastructure Protection[2].¹ This order recognized that “(c)ertain national infrastructures are so vital that their incapacity or destruction would have a debilitating impact on the defense or economic security of the United States.” The order directed the establishment of the ...