Posted on 03/09/2006 9:10:45 AM PST by Valin
Critics of the plan that would put a United Arab Emirates (UAE) company in charge of operations at six major U.S. ports have cited security as their central concern. Advocates of the deal have most often argued that security will not be effected by Dubai Ports (DP) World management, largely because port security is the province of domestic U.S. agencies.
A third argument has not yet been made by the major factions, and may never be. That argument says that the UAE company's role here might result in better security implementation for the cargo container terminals than would otherwise have been possible.
Two factors explain potentially improved security under DP World management. The first is merely deductive. Given the intense furor already stirred to life in the media, the pressure to assure security could rise to a make-or-break agenda item for the ambitious company which already operates more than 40 terminals around the world.
Even before the media firestorm, a member of the U.S. committee that originally approved the DP World deal said that because the company is Persian Gulf-based it has "a strong incentive to make sure [terrorist threats to U.S. ports] never materialize." If anything, that incentive doubled when critics made a billboard issue of the deal.
More studied reasons for supposing port security in the U.S. could improve under DP World begin with the company's demonstrated ability to significantly grow its business managing shipping hubs while operating within environs associated with terrorism. In the same period that terrorist Web sites have increasingly advised jihadists on different ways of attacking or infiltrating ports and commercial maritime activities, the port of Dubai in UAE has soared from a mid-level operation to one of the busiest ports in the world.
Carved from the Dubai Ports Authority, the company's reputation for technological implementation dates back to its project to automate many of its processes in the 1990s. At that time, Dubai became one of the first ports in the world to implement so-called e-shipping, digitizing most of its planning, scheduling and operations while "building out" a CRM (customer relations management)/Web portal system that was one of the first of its kind used by a port.
According to American e-commerce experts who followed the UAE technology implementation as it has evolved, it was Dubai's willingness to invest in IT that allowed it to offer container shipping and related services at lowered costs for its customers. Last year, a Homeland Security official called the two-terminal Dubai facility "modern and extremely efficient ports."
While the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks and the implementation of the White House-backed Container Security Initiative (CSI) tested the resilience of port operators both here and abroad, the port of Dubai continued even in that period to grow both in volume and influence in worldwide shipping. In 2004 Dubai made another bold-stroke decision, becoming the first Middle Eastern port (and 35th overall) to agree to the CSI, signing formally last March. CSI gives U.S. Customs personnel a foothold in foreign ports and requires that state-of-the-art security systems such as gamma ray, x-ray and radiological detection systems be implemented for cargo inspection.
Dubai's interest in security has seemingly followed the same upward curve that most critical infrastructure operators have followed. All confront greater threats from terror groups, and particularly from al Qaeda.
The attack on the USS Cole in 2000 made it clear that Osama bin Laden's group was acutely interested in wreaking havoc on maritime targets, if it could. The Cole attack was, in fact, masterminded by an operative whose nickname inside the group was "Prince of the Seas," and who had gathered reconnaissance information on about 150 potential, mostly seaside targets around the world at the time of his arrest.
The port of Dubai itself has not gone unscathed as transnational terror has spread. The oft-cited use of the port by the notorious A.Q. Kahn nuclear weapons black market involved the creation of a bogus computer company in the Emirates that subsequently was able to ship banned materials to Libya. A few other conventional weapons proliferation incidents have been traced back through the port, though such problems are not exclusive to Dubai.
In fact, if DP World's most recent project is any indication, the Dubai company might already have absorbed its lessons and staked a claim in what is fast becoming a "security market." At the recently opened Pusan Newport in South Korea, DP World and tech partner Samsung of Japan worked with the Korean port authority to build a state-of-the-art security port.
Pusan opened for business late last year fashioned around a Samsung-developed central security system in which threats are anticipated and met via a network of monitors including advanced CCTV, lasers, radiological and other sensors, and explosives- and motion-detection fencing of the sort normally found in high-sensitivity military settings.
Samsung often relies on security specialist companies, such as GVI Security Systems of Texas, which increasingly build "intelligent" systems that rely on a portfolio of technologies including "smart cameras" that can send alerts and trigger other defenses, vulnerability analysis and remediation systems, biometrics and identity management devices, and other emerging applications.
Pusan aside, most ports around the world are analog facilities often operated more in accordance with maritime traditions than modern efficiencies. In fact, shipping in general is so under-automated that even an investment in advanced security can exert downward pressure on overall costs — such as that which occurred during a study of container "e-sealing" done in 2003 in Singapore.
Sponsored by the U.S. Trade and Development Agency and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, officials from BearingPoint added radio frequency identification (RFID) chips to container seals for better cargo tracking, and not only achieved a higher level of security but a probable shipping cost reduction of about $220 per container if the port in Thailand and the one in Seattle (used in the study) were fully networked.
The value of automation in tracking cargo from points of origin through the supply chain to the destination has already been accepted conceptually elsewhere too, including the New York/New Jersey "Megaports Project." But projected security enhancements and cost savings related to RFID and other shipping innovations "will remain elusive" unless ports are prepared to more fully automate and network with one another so as to leverage Web services and other supply chain management practices, the Asian study determined.
The driving force for such innovations in hundreds of ports worldwide begins with the broadest international treaties and agreements and works down through national governments to ports and their operators. To all outward appearances, DP World's business model has seemingly been crafted around a parallel acceptance of e-commerce and technological standards, leading to better security such as that at Pusan.
The company's willingness to embrace technology could be the most significant edge it brings. While Bush administration officials and other supporters for the deal continue to insist that DP World is not going to be the security provider for ports in the U.S., security experts often note that the quality of organizational security is ultimately determined not by specialist providers or security officers but by the support (or lack of it) that operations and management interests bring.
To the extent that it can be measured, U.S. commercial port operators have not been all that committed to security. One Coast Guard estimate puts the security shortfall at American ports at about $7 billion overall, and the New York Times has reported that the very terminals DP World would operate here are among the lacking.
Moreover, as noted in the 2003 RFID test and by other technologists, the enterprise security model best suited for large and multifarious undertakings like port operations will likely be less than effective if built into an otherwise under-automated (or porously automated) operational infrastructure.
It requires no facts or metrics to say (with or without hysteria) that an Arab company represents a higher risk than weak technology does, merely because most terrorism is generated in Arab environs to begin with. But to all appearances, DP World's embrace of security innovation as encapsulated at the Pusan Newport in Korea and its own rise to prominence via broad technology investment, might indicate it uniquely understands the risks, in part because it faces them at point-blank range. If so, DP World could become a focal point of improved security at U.S. ports.
Robert M. Green is senior editor for the Washington-based Public Sector Institute.
"It's dead, Jim."
This is another example of the Bush tin ear about the concerns of constituents.
Wow, the voice of reason. If the hysterical congress stops this deal and then the UAE retaliates by kicking us out of their port, what have we gained? Too much ignorant screaming about subjects that little is really known by the screamers. I hate all politicians.
I don't remember the democRATs raise much of a stink over that deal even though COSCO is deeply implicated of illegally importing AK-47s for dispersal to some gangs in Oakland.
Really? I remember that 9/11 ringleader Mohammed Atta lived in Germany and several of the 9/11 hijackers lived in Pakistan before moving to San Diego. The shoe bomber came from England and the London subway bombers resided there too. And so on and so on. Singling out one country (the UAE) seems ridiculous to me, especially given the fact that they are behaving like an ally not an enemy.
I always remain suspect when the dems become involved in something like this, pretending to be strong on National Security.
A correct and fine analysis - but a stampeding cattle herd isn't going to stop to listen to it.
I smelled a rat from the beginning.
To the Democrats its nothing to do with National Secuirty but Monetary Security.
No problems with Dubai World world...they beat everyone to the punch and sold their port interest.
Meanwhile, Bush had success with his India visit and signed back into law the Patriot Act. It was an distraction don't you think or the liberals would be tinkering around with the Patriot Act to make it ineffective.
Dubai has now performed coitus interruptus. The deal is dead. They have pulled out.
Great idea pissing off the only Arabs who have a half-decent work ethic! Can all the Uber-Patriots now demand we stop giving truckloads of money year after year to Egypt and Palestine who have no skills except killing Jews? You obviously have pull with your congressmen.
Bush doesn't have constituents. He's an executive, not a representative.
Dubai is selling these contracts. It is over.
People elected him, or at least we elected the electors. We are his constituents. Otherwise there would be no presidential rating polls.
You have made a distinction without a difference. Bush Sr. and W. - tin ears.
So you prefer a President who acts as a weathervane and govern by polls rather than principles, eh?
Personally, I'll take the guy who does what is right rather than what is popular. You don't like what he does, elect someone else.
<< I smelled a rat from the beginning.
To the Democrats its nothing to do with National Secuirty but Monetary Security. >>
Talking about port and other areas of "security" the "Democrats," in just an iceberg's tip of examples, have recently given away our Panama Canal and participated in the Peking predators' abjectly corrupt absolute takeover of the ports and every other facility at both ends of it and the same murderous gang's and its Singapore pals takeover of several left coast ports including the former United States Naval Base at Long Beach.
But in every way as evil and infinitely more hypocritical is the "Democrats" complicity with the real owners, operators and controllers of and source of most insecurity at the nation's ports and what's left after decades of mob raping, looting and pillaging of the US Mercahnt Marine: -- the Mafia and its murderously-controlled mobbed-up unions. Every one of which launders millions of mob moolah into the hands of such of its shills, consigliere and good fellows as mrs cli'ton, Schemin' Schumer, Keg Kennedy, et al.
The world's leading ports m,anager, DB World Ports, will transfer its port contracts to its US incorporated ports management company and all will be well with that outcome.
And the rotten recidivists who pose as America's politicians will continue to rob and loot and steal.
And to at every oportunity lie down with America's and the world's most evil and conspire to continue to rob and screw us all.
<< I'll take the guy who does what is right rather than what is popular. You don't like what he does, elect someone else. >>
Me too. In this case, in one more example of the Founding Fathers' eternal genius, the cynically-hysterical behavior of the weather vane pols, their Pravda media mates and the moronic mob combined to remind us why America is, thank God, a Constitutional Republic, not a [Mob-ruled] democracy.
Bush has many good qualities. He has been a real leader in the war against terror. I do not like weathervanes as president. Bush is not good at communicating to the public. His people are not good in dealing with Congress.
When I heard DPW pulled out I thought, score one for the no-nothings
And they're so happy about it.
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