basictraining
BY ART VAN BODEGRAVEN AND
KENNETH B. ACKERMAN
Snug as a bug in a … container?
WE HAVE WRITTEN A COUPLE OF TIMES ABOUT SECURITY.
We generally like to elevate the discourse to include aspects of protecting people, product, plant, and property in about that priority
sequence. Of course, 9/11 introduced tactics that could impact e) all
of the above. So, we occasionally turn to post-9/11 efforts.
The question of the day is whether those things that were comforting and logical on the surface—things like C-TPAT and TWIC—are
as comforting when the covers get pulled back.
THE BLACK SWAN
For those of you visualizing Natalie Portman in
skimpy ballet attire, we’re sorry to disappoint. This
ominous bird rises from the book The Black Swan:
The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Nassim
Nicholas Taleb.
Professor Taleb’s work concentrated on the potential for collapse of
the global financial system (and the “warnings imbeciles chose to
ignore”). Jim Giermanski translates the scenario to a likelihood that
simply taking out one U.S. port with a weapon of mass destruction
(WMD) would accomplish the same thing, given the supremely fragile interrelationships in the global supply system. His well-reasoned
argument was presented in two parts in the Aug. 3 and Aug. 8 editions
of The Maritime Executive magazine’s MarEx Newsletter. Part 1 documented the importance of port trade and the rippling consequential
effects of a successful terrorist attack on one port, while Part 2 examined the state of U.S. supply chain security.
In the second article, Giermanski offered his assessment of various
federal security initiatives, most of which came up short in his eyes.
Take the Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism (C-TPAT),
for example. C-TPAT gets high marks for its potential to discover and
prevent WMD entry. The program’s obvious weakness is that it is
purely voluntary, with membership effectively limited to those organ-
izations that already want to be secure. That is,
those who we wouldn’t worry about anyway. We
have previously noted that there are some pres-
sures from supply chain partners to get others in
the chain to sign up as a condition of doing busi-
ness, but these, again, are generally substantive
and secure operations already.
A VOICE CRYING IN THE WILDERNESS
Dr. Jim Giermanski, chairman of Powers Global Holdings Inc., writes
extensively on the subject of supply chain security. We have known
Jim for nearly 15 years and have found him to be thoughtful, insightful, and persuasive—and always watching the right ball while the rest
of us are being distracted by Lady Gaga’s latest shenanigans.
In recent days, Dr. Giermanski has become increasingly vocal on
supply chain security exposures, including holes
big enough to drive a truck through, so to speak.
We are inclined to listen, especially when he talks
about systemic deficiencies further weakened by
bureaucratic lip service and double-speak (no
mean feat when engaged in simultaneously).
ENTER HIGH-TECH SOLUTIONS
Positing that scanning solutions have already
failed in foreign ports and that they have proved to
be unreliable in domestic ports, Giermanski goes
on to explain that the most likely WMD technologies for terrorists to employ will not be intercept-
