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Computers and communications are boosting performance, but interconnection increases the risk of a technological domino effect.
The infrastructure of the United States-the foundations on which the nation is built-is a complex system of interrelated elements. Those elements-transportation, electric power, financial institutions, communications systems, and oil and gas supply-reach into every aspect of society. Some are so critical that if they were incapacitated or destroyed, an entire region, if not the nation itself, could be debilitated. Continued operation of these systems is vital to the security and well-being of the country.
Once these systems were fairly independent. Today they are increasingly linked and automated, and the advances enabling them to function in this manner have created new vulnerabilities. What in the past would have been an isolated failure caused by human error, malicious deeds, equipment malfunction, or the weather, could today result in widespread disruption.
Among certain elements of the infrastructure (for example, the telecommunications and financial networks), the degree of interdependency is especially strong. But they all depend upon each other to varying degrees. We can no longer regard these complex operating systems as independent entities. Together they form a vast, vital-and vulnerable-system of systems.
The elements of infrastructure themselves are vulnerable to physical and electronic disruptions, and a dysfunction in any one may produce consequences in the others. Some recent examples:
* The western states power outage of 1996. One small predictable accident of nature-a power line shorting after it sagged onto a tree-cascaded into massive unforeseen consequences: a power-grid collapse that persisted for six hours and very nearly brought down telecommunications networks as well. The system was unable to respond quickly enough to prevent the regional blackout, and it is not clear whether measures have been taken to prevent another such event.
* The Northridge, California, earthquake of January 1994 affecting Los Angeles. First-response emergency personnel were unable to communicate effectively because private citizens were using cell phones so extensively that they paralyzed emergency communications.
* Two major failures of AT&T communications systems in New York in 1991. The first, in January, created numerous problems, including airline flight delays of several hours, and was caused by a severed high-capacity telephone cable. The second, in September, disrupted long distance calls, caused financial markets...