RiskUKOctober2017

In the Spotlight: ASIS International UK Chapter
all transcending local areas of infection to
become potentially global pandemics.
The question that needs to be asked is: ‘Have
the global, regional and national authorities
used these experiences to increase global
resilience to pandemics and prepare for the
impacts that would happen if another major
pandemic was to occur?’
Unfortunately, and perhaps predictably, the
generally accepted answer is that these ‘near
misses’ haven’t been used to both practice and
improve upon global response capabilities.
Political and social unrest
When Francis Fukuyama scripted his bestselling
book ‘The End of History’, the claim was
made that, with the victory of social democracy
and market-led capitalism, the great divides
that had characterised human history were
over, and we now had the opportunity to gain
from the benefits that world peace and
prosperity would bring.
The last decade has seen the upheavals
caused by the Arab Spring, the rise of Islamic
terrorism and the impacts on Western Europe of
the influx of refugees and economic migrants.
However, we’ve also witnessed a modern,
globally-connected country like Qatar being cut
off from the world due to the pressure of its
surrounding neighbours, the aggressive
expansionism of China across what it sees as
its own natural sphere of influence and the
resurgence of Russian military and political
influence, both in its own back yard – Georgia,
Crimea and the areas around the Baltic States –
and regions where the US would once have
considered itself the main player (eg Syria).
This has all been combined with a growing
alienation and polarisation between the
political elites and the mass of people who feel
the world has left them behind, and who look
to the traditional ‘enemies’ – the stranger, the
outsider and the weak and vulnerable – which,
in turn, is having impacts on both the rhetoric
and reality of local and national politics.
For those with a political memory, parallels
with the period of the 1930s, involving both a
global recession and increasingly violent
political rhetoric, are not exaggerated. From a
risk management perspective, any city in the
world can be considered potentially high risk in
terms of a rapid destabilisation, with the
emergence of a street environment that’s both
volatile and perhaps highly challenging.
Cyber failures
Although we often talk about cyber terrorism,
it’s the wider aspect of cyber failures that’s
equally worrying. Although there’s no denying
the fact that targeted cyber attacks – whether
from state actors, international terrorists, cyber
criminals or the bored hacker – are
undoubtedly serious, the potential for
catastrophic cyber failures on a global scale is
becoming increasingly more likely.
Low-level, home-grown terrorism has become
the ‘new normal’. It was interesting to see that
the recent ‘bucket bomb’ attack in London on
Friday 15 September, which injured 30 people
and created a ‘wall of fire’ inside a crowded
London Underground train, served as headlines
for 24 hours before being relegated to
‘updates’ on the progress of the operation to
identify and find the perpetrators.
If home-grown and low-level attacks are the
‘new normal’, then it’s perhaps only a matter of
time before the ‘new new normal’ emerges –
which would be some form of home-grown dirty
bomb. Whether chemical, biological or
radiological in nature, the impact this would
have on a major city – and the consequences in
terms of ‘reactive security’ in other cities across
the world – is almost incalculable.
Crises can no longer be deemed to be mere
one-off isolated events. Rather, they must
increasingly be viewed in terms of system-wide
failures impacting on the global network of
interconnected dependencies, with both
instantaneous impacts and catastrophic effects
being realised.
“Although there’s no denying the fact that targeted cyber
attacks are undoubtedly serious, the potential for
catastrophic cyber failures on a global scale is becoming
increasingly more likely”
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