Topic:National (USA) Security Challenges
Subject:Homeland security
Volume: 5 pages
Type: Other
Format: APA
Description
About the class:
Description: In this course, we will examine the prevailing range of special challenges to US national security and the difficulties of countering them. The US is confronted by an increasingly diffuse and hidden adversary. US technical capabilities, from detection to intervention, are a useful but limited means of countering this adversarial threat. Students will be challenged to develop meaningful solutions to security challenges that feasibly counter the adversary while avoiding legal and ethical pitfalls.
Assignment
Your task is to write a double-spaced 5-page paper cogently assessing the implications and potential impact of one of the 5 national security challenges we cover in the first half of this course, and provide one or more feasible technological solutions to the challenge.
The national security challenge to analyze
– lone wolf terrorism
Points to cover:
– Vulnerabilities & limitation to detection
– Implication and impact
– Provide one or more feasible technological solutions to the challenge
The substantive depth of your paper is the most important factor in grading, but the formatting and style also are important.
The short length of this paper may make this assignment seem easy, but one of the challenges of such a paper is to convincingly present useful evidence supporting a well-constructed argument with very little room for error or extrapolation.
Outside of the 5-page limit, the paper should have source citations in endnotes, using APA style.
I’ll emphasize that within the national security community, writing is normally terse, devoid of unsupported opinions, and based directly on evidence. Successful papers typically adhere to a “fractal” pattern of a few paragraphs, with each paragraph consisting of an analytic line and a few evidential points in support. Policy makers have no tolerance for fluff or extraneous data, so this terse style is useful to them.
A good example of this writing style can be found on pages 2-5 of the National Intelligence Council’s short article, “Wildlife Poaching Threatens Economic, Security Priorities in Africa.” Clearly this specific article is off-topic for us, but it is an excellent example of dispassionate and factual writing.
Interesting sources:
http://www.shootingtracker.com – US statistics
https://lawfareblog.com/tragedy-mass-shooter-algorithm
