Critical Infrastructure Protection & Resilience for US Economy Questions
Discussion Questions: Briefly discuss, in your own words, why critical infrastructure protection, security and resilience is vital to the U.S. public confidence when considering the Nation's safety, prosperity, and your well-being? Understanding that all 16 sectors are vital to the nation's safety and security, which one would you select as the most critical?You must separate each aspect of the question into different paragraphs and incorporate headers to differentiate the various aspects. Failure to do so may result in a loss of points. The reason I require this is to help you ensure that you cover all of the key points in answering the discussion questions. Over my years of teaching for APUS, too many students failed to answer all of a forum's questions and thus lost points - I do not want this to happen to you.Required Readings:https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2013/02/12/presidential-policy-directive-critical-infrastructure-security-and-resilhttps://www.cisa.gov/critical-infrastructure-sectorshttps://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/National-Infrastructure-Protection-Plan-2013-508.pdfInstructions: Fully utilize the materials that have been provided to you in order to support your response. Your initial post must be at least 350 words. You also must respond to at least two other student's initial postings and these responses must be a minimum of 150 words to each student and include direct questions. You may challenge, support or supplement another student’s answer using the terms, concepts and theories from the required readings. Also, do not be afraid to respectfully disagree where you feel appropriate; as this should be part of your analysis process at this academic level.Student Responses:Student #1 William Good afternoon everyone, Welcome to Week 1 of our journey. This week we are discussing several talking points that include why critical infrastructure protection, security, and resilience are so vital to the United States economy, well-being, and prosperity. This also includes why any exploitation of critical infrastructure vulnerability can impact the public’s confidence and why that is an important thing to consider. Finally, we are to talk about what we believe may be the most important sector of critical infrastructure.Why Critical Infrastructure Protection, Security, and Resilience are Vital to the United States’ economy, well-being, and prosperityOne of the most important aspects of critical infrastructure is that a majority of these sectors are run, maintained, and planned by people. This means that a large portion of the country’s labor force relies on some sort of critical infrastructure for work. For example, the Food and Agriculture Sector is responsible for 8% of the nation’s workforce (Department of Agriculture, 2020). That is millions of jobs that hang in the balance if there is some sort of negative impact on our food supplies. Additionally, critical infrastructure has been determined as aspects of life that the citizens of the United States, and the country itself, rely on to operate efficiently without major struggles to survive. Natural or man-made disasters involving sectors such as nuclear energy, water, transportation, dams, communications, and more could leave large portions of the country inhospitable, leave citizens stranded, flood out entire cities, create millions of fatalities, destroy the nation’s wildlife, or leave water undrinkable. This is why critical infrastructure protection is so important. Just the breakdown of one sector could throw the entire country on its head medically, psychologically, and economically.Why the Exploitation of Critical Infrastructure Vulnerability Can Shake the Public’s Confidence and Why It MattersPublic confidence in local, state, federal, and private industries to protect the Nation’s critical infrastructures is paramount. Like the general feeling of unease and panic around the United States following the attacks on September 11th, a successful attack against the country’s critical infrastructure would leave citizens shaken and bring back the feeling of unease about their lives and the security of the country. I don’t believe it would even need to be an attack. It could be a natural disaster, a man-made error, or a piece of faulty equipment that could cripple one of the country’s critical sectors. This may cause people to stop using transportation sources or similar drastic countermeasures to build a sense of security again. The lack of use or when citizens stop buying products because they have lost faith in a critical sector could ultimately lead to job loss, economic shifts, and an outcry against the sector and their importance. For example, a nuclear accident that has a significant impact on the country could cause citizens to turn against the idea of all nuclear power stations which may lead to their forced closures. This could essentially stop the entire nuclear job industry in the country.Why the Food and Agriculture Sector is one of the Most Important Critical Infrastructures While each sector is vitally important in their own regard, hence the name critical infrastructure, the Food and Agriculture Sector should be considered one of the most important. This can be supported by a few different statistics. The first is that according to the United States Department of Agriculture, over 12.8 million jobs are somehow involved in food service, eating, or drinking locations (Department of Agriculture, 2020). This accounts for 6.4% of all United States employment (Department of Agriculture, 2020). This statistic doesn’t even include the 3.2 million jobs that make up food and beverage stores around the country (Department of Agriculture, 2020). That is an additional 3.2 million jobs and accounts for another 1.6% of United States’ employment (Department of Agriculture, 2020). A disruption at any level of the food process could have a major impact on the overall employment rate for the country. This can be as broad as farming, which involves the growing of crops and the raising of livestock, to the food service industry, which includes grocery stores, food manufacturing centers, and millions of eateries. The contamination of food products, extreme weather, or an attack against the farm to plate process can have major negative impacts on American citizens being able to continue working and keep up with their financial obligations. Additionally, the amount of food the United States generates doesn’t just impact the labor force. It also includes the well-being of the United States governmental economy and foreign partnerships. For example, in 2017, the agriculture, food, and related industries accounted for $1.053 trillion to the United States Gross Domestic Product (Department of Agriculture, 2020). That was 5.4% of the overall intake in the country. That is significant. Any disruption to the nation’s food supplies and exports could impact the United States’ government’s ability to continue operations and fund programs and projects all around the country. Stoppages or contaminated food could also be looked at as a deficiency by foreign nations which may cause them to stop buying American food exports. This could have long lasting effects on the amount of money the United States government has access to, as well as negatively impact our food labor force. It could also possibly create the loss of jobs in the transportation industry for shipping, impact the Financial Service Sector, or possibly impact the funding for the Government Facilities Sector. Any sector that could nativity impact other sectors if it goes down should be considered a top priority critical infrastructure.I enjoyed our topic this week. I look forward to seeing what everyone else posts. Have a great rest of the week. WilliamReferenceDepartment of Agriculture. (2020, March 3). Ag and Food Sectors and the Economy. Retrieved fromhttps://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/ag-and-food-statistics-charting-the-essentials/ag-and- food-sectors-and-the-economy/Student #2 ChristinaClass, When speaking on Critical Infrastructure protection and security, it is important to look at CI as a whole and think about all 16 sectors and how they operate together. Much of the American people are unaware of the intricacy of Critical Infrastructure and the amount of resources used to protect it. I will briefly discuss the importance of the protection of CI and a few things that would cause harm to the nation if there was no security. Briefly discuss, in your own words, why critical infrastructure protection, security and resilience is vital to the U.S. public confidence when considering the Nation's safety, prosperity, and your well-being?I believe that critical infrastructure protection, security, and resilience is vital to the U.S. public confidence when considering the Nation's safety, prosperity, and our well being because without all of it, there would most likely be a catastrophic situation. Protection and security ties together because without it, there would be no regulations in many of the sectors of CI. With no security and protection, our adversaries could easily gain access to destroy, poison, and even tamper with much of the U.S.'s CI causing serious harm or damage. Resilience is key when dealing with CI because with the ever changing processes, policies, and even funding, things are liable to change at any time. Each sector should be able to accommodate changes within other sectors to line up and work with their specific sector. After reading through a description of each sector, it is evident that every sector would not be able to function without at the proper functioning of at least one other sector. I do believe that many people in America take things such as clean, potable, running water for granted and do not know the extent of getting it to include the protection and security of water plants. Recently, the coronavirus has been a huge issue. It is said that it started with the exposure of a seafood and animal marker in Wuhan, China. When trying to tie in CI to the coronavirus, I think about all the food and agriculture laws in the U.S. specifically when attempting to bring those things in from other countries. Many may think our laws and security is too strict, but after reading about the coronavirus, people should understand the importance of the regulations put in place to protect the people of our country. I may have went on a complete side discussion but thinking about all these things gets my mind running about how the security and protection of all CI is critical and can be linked to just about anything.Understanding that all 16 sectors are vital to the nation's safety and security, which one would you select as the most critical?This question is very difficult for me to answer. When I decide something is the most important, I go back and change my mind. With that being said, I am choosing the water and wastewater systems sector to be most critical. Just about every other sector can be linked to the water and wastewater systems sector. Without proper water and waste disposal, the people in other sectors would not be able to fulfill their role in their CI sector. Because water is a vital part of the human body functioning, no water means loss of life. If there was potable water but no sanitary wastewater function, there would be mass illness and probably deaths. Overall, just about everything needs water to properly function.-Tina