Threat assessment is a disciplined process by which we characterize and prioritize threats to our well-being, and allocate our finite resources and efforts to avert, avoid, or mitigate them. To be useful, a threat assessment requires open-mindedness, focused research and intelligence-gathering, and deductive analysis.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security defines threat assessment as "a process of identifying or evaluating entities, actions, or occurrences, whether natural or man-made, that have or indicate the potential to harm life, information, operations and/or property." At the individual, family, or community level assessing such threats might seem obvious or intuitive, but without a disciplined approach, our biases, preconceived notions, and the absence of timely or properly vetted information can leave us in a purely reactive mode when threats materialize, without effective plans, preparations, or responses.

Threats come in many varieties. Some are simple and direct, like criminal violence. Others are more indirect but every bit as serious, such as political and social trends and events that affect our ability to conduct our affairs, or to protect and maintain our property, our wealth, and our freedom. A public health regime that forces our business to close can lead to the failure and loss of that business. If we are employees in an industry that cannot obtain parts or raw materials for its production process because of a credit crisis, a supply chain failure, or a war that interferes with access to foreign suppliers, then we may lose our livelihoods and become dependent upon the state. These are outcomes that the current regime favors, because they set the state for the triumph of socialism and authoritarian rule.

Threat assessment is just one input to the larger process of risk management, which also includes assessing our vulnerabilities to identified threats, and devising strategies to close those vulnerabilities. But first things, first.

Addressing threats honestly

A disciplined threat assessment protects us from two very common cognitive biases. The first is Confirmation Bias, defined by the American Psychological Association as the "tendency to look for information that supports, rather than rejects, one's preconceptions, typically by interpreting evidence to confirm existing beliefs while rejecting or ignoring any conflicting data."

The second is Normalcy Bias, a state of denial often seen during a disaster or crisis. It leads a person to deny the reality of what their senses report ("this can't be happening!"), resulting in inaction or paralysis. It is based on the assumption that since nothing like this has happened before, it cannot be happening now. It is just as much a threat before danger appears, when it leads to denial of emerging threats that do not match preconceived notions or previous experiences.

Pitfalls and Distractions

There are two common traps in threat assessment, in direct opposition to one another, which a disciplined process can help us to avoid. One can be seen historically in the extremes of response by ordinary people to the threat of global nuclear war between the superpowers during the decades between 1950 and 1990. Most people felt powerless to affect the probability of it happening. Their attitudes varied between survivalism (now rebranded as preparedness or "prepping"), and resignation arising from the belief that such a war would be a civilization-ending (if not planet-killing) event that about which nothing could be done.

The first group built fallout shelters in their basements and stocked them with a few weeks' worth of food (a symbolic but inadequate response), or tried to relocate out of target zones. As the survivalist movement matured somewhat, it still largely focused on the least likely but most dangerous scenarios. Families focused on stockpiling goods and living off-grid to survive global war, while the real enemy focused on taking over their country from within, with no shots fired.

The second group adopted an attitude of hopeless or resignation that at its extreme led them to say "I just hope I'm at Ground Zero so it will be over in a flash," and to live under a shadow of doom, trying to ignore it.

Responses to more likely and less dangerous contingencies varied across a similar spectrum. Some residents of hurricane-prone coastlands would go to great lengths to prepare for a catastrophic storm because they or their parents' generation had experienced those events; while others did little more than hope for enough advance notice to rush to the store for bottled water and plywood, or to evacuate, before the storm's landfall – if they thought about it at all.

Most Americans, at each end of the spectrum and in many gradations between, tended to ignore more likely (and annoyingly complicated) threats to focus on "the Big One" – or ignored it all and fiddled while Rome began to burn.

The New Normal

The conditions of our lives are now in a state of rapid change. The "old normal" – which persisted for many Americans as late as 2019 – is less and less relevant. The "new normal" is defined by what are, for many of us, unprecedented trends, events, and second-order consequences that are complex, accelerating, and worsening. Among them are:

  • Economic stressors, compounded of rising inflation, high unemployment, business failures, supply chain disruptions, domestic and international tensions. These exacerbate social tensions and feed the motivations for criminal activity.
  • Unrestrained government spending, raising the risk of national default and economic collapse.
  • Political polarization and unrest, with potential for violent disorders from local to national scale.
  • Public health issues including the COVID-19 pandemic, the public health response, and second-order effects on social cohesion and trust in government.
  • Terrorism has been encouraged by the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and a weakening of its commitments to traditional allies, which embolden foreign adversaries, state and non-state alike. Terrorism is enabled by a porous, uncontrolled southern border providing easy access.
  • Acts of war that can involve the U.S. directly due to overseas alliances and commitments, or indirectly due to global economic interdependence.
  • Natural disasters, ranging from predictable (such as seasonal wildfires or severe weather events) to more uncommon events like major earthquakes and tsunamis, or powerful solar flares and coronal mass ejections.
  • Crisis management, requiring extensive public resources sourced from neighboring states, regions, or the federal government is vulnerable to simultaneous, consecutive, or large-footprint regional or national-level crises that could stretch resources to the breaking point.
  • Supply chain challenges, created by political and economic decisions at the national and global level, limit our access to required materials, supplies, and services.
  • Social trust, a measure of cohesiveness and stability under stress, varies greatly with location, culture, and history but is declining in much of America.

These events and trends are the underlying conditions that will generate specific, tangible threats that demand a response, with characteristics and magnitude that vary depending on where and how we live, work, and interact with others. They are often inter-related and reinforcing; and they seldom impact us in isolation. For instance, the widespread civil unrest across America in 2020 was the direct result of perceived racial inequities, but were exploited by leftwing political organizations and exacerbated by the social tensions and economic consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic and the public health response. They had life-changing consequences for many who lived or moved in their path (e.g., in the business districts of Minneapolis or Portland) but had little direct effect on millions of others. Many of us watched from afar, saying, "That couldn't happen here," or as the old MAD Magazine icon Alfred E. Neuman put it, "What? Me worry?"

Threats that directly affect us as individuals or communities are more tangible and immediate than those large-scale trends and events. Perspective is important. Motives and underlying causes are important to understand but may or may not have a direct effect on our response. For example, an active shooter event can arise from a wide range of motivations, including bullying, psychological disorders, gang activity, or religious extremism; it can be random or targeted, spontaneous or planned. From the perspective of a person in the target zone, however, the shooter's motivation is probably both unknown and secondary to the simple reality that the shooter must be stopped or evaded, now.

Our Threat Assessment method has five steps.

  1. Describe the target: what is it that you seek to protect, and under what conditions?
  2. List all threats: do this in a brainstorming session, with a team of people familiar with your target and with your area. Individuals all have biases and blind spots, but a group will provide different and broader perspectives. List every natural or man-made event that could threaten your selected target, whether long term, short term, probable or improbable. The operating rule is that no one can veto anyone else's suggestion of a possible threat. Everything goes on the list.
  3. Characterize each threat to distinguish it clearly from others. Try to do this in no more than two or three sentences.
  4. Identify linkages between threats. Too often, as the old song goes, "you can't have one without the other." Threats will generate, or follow, or precede others, the way, for instance, that looting often follows a hurricane or an extended power outage.
  5. Rate each threat for its probability and its consequences at your level, and then plot it on a Graded Threat Matrix. These ratings should be established by discussion and consensus within your Threat Assessment team.

Then the hard work begins.

In Summary

A thorough and honest Threat Assessment is a necessary foundation for risk management, and for all forms of preparation for adversity. It is a powerful tool for avoiding "wasted sword motion." The second installment in this series, "Threat Assessment: the Method", will walk you through the process outlined above.