Thinking Like A Terrorist:Technique for Teaching Adults

Homeland Security

Daniel C. Goodrich

Can you identify these items?

What are we trying to accomplish

• Increase individual situational awareness• Develop skill sets for personnel in other

disciplines who can apply their problem solving abilities to help improve security

• Develop champions throughout institutions who can assist their organization’s security

• Change people’s perspectives and behavior

Current training strategy

• Talk about threats in vague terms. “It’s all right out there on the internet on how to do it.”

• Does not explain how a perpetrator goes through the planning, surveillance, accumulating resources, rehearsals, and execution

• Offer little/no information on the other side’s limits of applying tactical knowledge. “Superman effect”

Another way• Focus on how a perpetrator would carry out

an attack• Look for the vulnerabilities in carrying out that

attack• Treat the technology/tools/tactics as neutral• Introduce security as using the perpetrator’s

thought process but in terms of how to slow down/recognize/compromise/deter the attack

Examples of Neutral Items

• Similarities between alarm systems and switches for bombs

• Sabotage instructions written for resistance groups by state actors

• Review of “softer” groups (ELF and ALF) material available on the internet

• Law enforcement training materials and memos• Reading “backwards”

Questions?

Daniel C Goodrich MPA, CEMResearch Associate

Mineta Transportation Instituterule308oes@yahoo.com

408/807-0930