Making the nation safe in the twenty-first century

• Main Author: Heck, Brenda L.
• Other Authors: Simeral, Robert L.
• Published: Monterey, California. Naval Postgraduate School 2012
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10945/4426

CHDS State/Local === This thesis addresses how the United States' national security system better protects the nation given that twenty-first century threats are borderless, adaptive, and complex. To best respond to these new and ever changing threats, the United States security system needs the ability to quickly translate covert intelligence into law enforcement action, creating both a proactive and reactive response to twenty-first century threats. This paper proposes the following recommendations to make the nation safe: 1) combine domestic intelligence and law enforcement functions and formally create a national security organization-the FBI; 2) create a new national security doctrine which defines national security, domestic security, domestic intelligence, law enforcement, and homeland security for the twenty-first century; and 3) change the mindset and culture of the current national security players so as to transform the system into a megacommunity. It is acknowledged that it will take time to achieve these recommendations, as it has taken decades to build the walls of today's national security system. Within these walls lie individual stove-piped agencies that compete as opposed to being a community of networked, interconnected, and decentralized agencies working in unison. The national security system needs to undergo dramatic reform, which will require the national security system players to learn, unlearn, and relearn. But the stakes have never been higher.