Government expert talks on threats to American security

As the Penn football team prepared to pummel the Princeton Tigers on the gridiron, a distinguished Penn alumnus gave a talk on a very different kind of warfare. Last Friday afternoon, United States National Security Coordinator Richard Clarke, a 1972 College graduate, presented a lecture entitled "New Threats in the Global Village." The speech was part of the centennial celebration of Penn's Sphinx Senior Society. As a student at Penn, Clarke was himself a member of Sphinx, an organization that recognizes 30 students from the senior class each year as outstanding campus leaders. The Christopher H. Browne Center for International Politics, affiliated with Penn's Political Science Department, cosponsored the event. As the title of his talk indicates, Clarke addressed the areas in which the United States is most vulnerable to attack by adversaries. Clarke said that "nobody poses a significant military threat" to the country because U.S. military spending exceeds that of the next four most powerful nations combined. However, he firmly emphasized that the fight is not over, since enemies are constantly developing new dimensions of warfare. In what President Clinton calls "asymmetrical warfare," adversaries are no longer attacking on the battlefield but are targeting our Achilles heel -- which Clarke said is "here in the United States." Clarke outlined three main means of attack to which the United States is most susceptible. The first is foreign terrorism, which has become an alarming trend in major cities. The most famous example in recent years is the 1993 World Trade Center bombing in New York City. Clarke cited the "information war" as the second threat to the country. The computer software systems running essentially every utility in the country were "built without any thought of security," Clarke said. Those systems -- which control necessities such as banking, telephones, rail, water and electricity -- can easily be infiltrated by hackers, he said. To address this threat, the government is spending $500 million on research and development to make hardware and software resistant to attack. An additional $900 million is being spent on an artificial intelligence system to scan for "trapdoors" in computer code and on a detection system for government-operated networks. While the first two weaknesses do pose a real danger, the threat of chemical and biological weapons is what really keeps Clarke and the president "awake at night." Though instances of chemical warfare are few in the United States, the nerve gas attack on a Tokyo subway several years ago is a portent of the future of terrorist crimes. To prepare for a similar attack, the government began a five-year program to restructure the public health system in the country. Among other things, the program provides for training of doctors, police, fire departments and health officials in 157 cities nationwide. The $8 billion program also funds the purchase of chemical suits and medicines to help civilian victims of chemical warfare. When asked what surprises him most about national security in the U.S., Clark said, "I am amazed every day that very little has happened." Since leaving Penn, Clarke has held several positions in the Defense Department, the State Department and the National Security Council. In May 1998, President Clinton appointed Clarke the first national coordinator for security, infrastructure protection and counter-terrorism.