The National Infrastructure Simulation and Analysis Center (NISAC): A New Contributor to Strategic Leader Education and Formulation of Critical Infrastructure Policies and Decisions

With the collapse of the World Trade Center Towers, many national policy makers feared the financial markets would follow, causing a cascading breakdown of other critical infrastructure assets. Fortunately, our worst nightmare failed to materialize, but the need to protect and to better understand our nation s critical assets was unmistakable. The clarion from the 911 terrorist s attack calls for strategic leaders to understand the complexity, interdependency, and vulnerability of our infrastructure. The National Infrastructure Simulation and Analysis Center NISAC provides an unparalleled modeling, simulations, and analysis capability to assist the military s Senior Service College SSC community in educating future strategic leaders about the realities of the Nation s infrastructure system and in researching the effects that new government security policies and actions would have on the nation s critical assets and public and private sector services. For example, a policy affecting increased security at all west coast sea ports could have devastating second and third order effects on regional and national commerce, transportation, labor, energy, banking, and so forth a series of terrorist acts could have similar effects.