Homeland Security Discussion Questions

In 250 words and focus on directly answering the assigned question in a scholarly manner - like a very short paper with in-text citations from the lesson/required readings. Each sentence quoting or paraphrasing any ideas or information from any source must be cited properly including the author and year of publication. If directly quoting, you must also include the page or paragraph number that you are quoting from like (Hoffman, 2006, p.7) or for articles and sources without pages (Renner, 2016, para.15). If there is no page number to cite, then you manually count the paragraphs. You also need to have a reference list at the end of your post listing your sources.

A. Concepts of Homeland Security and Homeland Defense

1. Describe the concept of homeland security and its relationship to homeland defense

B. National Strategies and Strategic Documents in Homeland Security

1. What are the desired characteristics of a national strategy document?

2. What is meant by a strategy hierarchy?

C. Threats to the Homeland and Terrorist Tactics

1. Identify the top three threats to homeland security and why you chose those as the primary threats.

2. Considering individual tactics, which one do you consider to be the most intimidating and which do you see as the most likely to be used to carry out the next attack on U.S. soil?

D. Critical Infrastructure and Homeland Security

1. Define/describe critical infrastructure and its relevance to homeland security.

2. Offer a detailed means of attack upon one of the following critical infrastructure sectors. These links will take you to their sector specific plan:

Chemical Sector
Energy Sector
Food and Agriculture Sector
Healthcare and Public Health Sector
Transportation Services Sector
Water and Wastewater Systems Sector

F. The Vital Role of Intelligence in Homeland Security

1. Fusion centers and the Interagency Threat Assessment and Coordination Group (changed to Joint Counterterrorism Assessment Team in 2013) were identified as two initiatives in the area of homeland security intelligence that have the potential to have substantial impact on coordination and information sharing. Fully describe these two initiatives and what you see as their value to homeland security.

2. Which strategic goals within the Department of Homeland Security's Office of Intelligence and Analysis Strategic Plan do fusion centers and the ITACG directly support and how?