An examination of how post-9/11 security concerns have transformed the
public view and governance of infrastructure.
After September 11, 2001, infrastructures--the mundane systems that
undergird much of modern life--were suddenly considered "soft targets"
that required immediate security enhancements. Infrastructure protection
quickly became the multibillion dollar core of a new and expansive
homeland security mission. In this book, Ryan Ellis examines how the
long shadow of post-9/11 security concerns have remade and reordered
infrastructure, arguing that it has been a stunning transformation.
Ellis describes the way workers, civic groups, city councils,
bureaucrats, and others used the threat of terrorism as a political
resource, taking the opportunity not only to address security
vulnerabilities but also to reassert a degree of public control over
infrastructure.
Nearly two decades after September 11, the threat of terrorism remains
etched into the inner workings of infrastructures through new laws,
regulations, technologies, and practices. Ellis maps these changes
through an examination of three U.S. infrastructures: the postal system,
the freight rail network, and the electric power grid. He describes, for
example, how debates about protecting the mail from anthrax and other
biological hazards spiraled into larger arguments over worker rights,
the power of large-volume mailers, and the fortunes of old media in a
new media world; how environmental activists leveraged post-9/11
security fears over shipments of hazardous materials to take on the rail
industry and the chemical lobby; and how otherwise marginal federal
regulators parlayed new mandatory cybersecurity standards for the
electric power industry into a robust system of accountability.
