The Problem of Redundancy Problem: Why More Nuclear Security Forces May Produce Less Nuclear Security

Examines how nuclear security and emerging terrorist threats should be thought about, warning that adding redundancy to improve security can backfire. How redundancy is used to evoke reliability is demonstrated before contrasting that with ""normal accidents theory.'' The latter is further developed with new arguments regarding potentially counterproductive effects of redundancy and with empirical examples. The catastrophic common-mode error problem, the social shirking problem, and the overcompensation problem are analyzed and their implications discussed for the policy issue of whether more security forces will provide improved security against terrorist threats.