{"id":24,"date":"2020-03-26T14:34:59","date_gmt":"2020-03-26T14:34:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/alistairclark\/?p=24"},"modified":"2020-03-26T14:35:01","modified_gmt":"2020-03-26T14:35:01","slug":"disaster-management-in-a-crisis-review-of-oliver-letwins-apocalypse-how","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/alistairclark\/2020\/03\/26\/disaster-management-in-a-crisis-review-of-oliver-letwins-apocalypse-how\/","title":{"rendered":"Disaster Management in a Crisis: Review of Oliver Letwin’s Apocalypse How?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Oliver Letwin (2020) Apocalypse How? Technology and the\nThreat of Disaster<\/em>, London: Atlantic Books, ISBN 978 1 78649 686 7, \u00a314.99.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The UK, and world, is in crisis due to the COVID-19\npandemic. Governments have seemed slow to respond. Under these circumstances it\nis instructive to note that one former UK government minister, Oliver Letwin,\nhas just published a book on disaster management positing a catastrophic\ntechnological breakdown. Here I review Letwin\u2019s book, both on its own terms,\nand through the prism of the current crisis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Letwin\u2019s book is based on his experiences as Cabinet Office\nminister between 2010 and 2016. During this period he was Minister for\nGovernment Policy, from 2014 Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, a member of\nthe UK\u2019s National Security Council, and crucially for this book, UK minister\nfor national resilience, which included cyber resilience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The disaster he foresees is one of a catastrophic\nelectricity grid failure which takes out all internet-based networks and\ncommunication. Setting the scenario a little into the future, he posits a\nsituation where effectively every means of communication, transport, commerce,\nis reliant on internet-based technology. Think of the internet of things (IOT)\ncurrently increasingly populating households, the proposed widespread uptake of\nelectric cars and transport, and reliance on satellites for location and\ncommunications all going dead to begin to see the profound implications.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Back-up forms of communication have been discontinued\nbecause of cost, the feeling that the networks are robust and well defended,\nand that there was therefore no significant probability of such a failure. Such\na premise has also been deployed in fiction. One of Henning Mankell\u2019s Wallander\nnovels, Firewall<\/em>, was also premised on such a failure. The potential\nproblem has only grown with greater, and potentially more disastrous, effects\nsince then.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The book intersperses fictional chapters, with more\nanalytical discussions every second chapter. The fictional chapters are seen partly\nthrough the eyes of Dr. Bill Donoghue, Duty Officer at the Bank of England when\nthe failure happens, and the personal and professional issues it raises for him.\nThese chapters include convincing descriptions of how the inevitable COBR meetings\nunfold and the unenviable choices facing participants. In the end, the outage\nlasts five days and leaves many thousands of people, often vulnerable and\nelderly, dead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Analytical chapters discuss how low probability \u2018black swan\u2019\nevents, such as the grid and network failure premised in the book, are often\ndiscounted by policy makers, and what might be done to avoid that. The answer is\nto build in resilience by scenario-planning which provide layers of fall-back\noptions. In relation to grid and network failure, this means having available old-style\nfail-safe analogue communications, such as walkie talkies and analogue phone lines,\nand non-electronic details of critical infrastructure. Letwin goes so far as to\nimagine how the threat of such catastrophic technological failure might be\nmitigated at the international level. He posits a long diplomatic march which\nultimately helps get momentum behind the idea of a UN-based Convention on\nGlobal Network Protection. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Letwin\u2019s book is a welcome reminder about the potential\nfragility of the connected world that we live in. It is recommended reading for\nanyone interested in public policy around technology, disaster management and\ninterconnectedness more generally. Given current events around COVID-19, it is\nhowever difficult not to read it through the lens of the current government\nresponse to the unfolding public health crisis. While clearly a different type\nof crisis, there are some lessons in Letwin\u2019s book that help interpret current\nevents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first, and perhaps most important, is that in dealing\nwith such a crisis it is important that decision-makers have what he calls \u2018emotional\nintelligence\u2019. What he means is that while technical expertise and skill will likely\nbe available to those in charge, such emotional intelligence will help them ask\nthe correct questions of these experts to begin with, so that correct decisions\ncan ultimately be made. In other words, the buck stops at the top with leaders\nwho need to be both sympathetic to the problems being experienced by individual\ncitizens, society, the economy and so on, and have sufficient analytical\ncapacity to ask the right questions and balance the consequences to begin with.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The second is that there are what Letwin calls \u2018hidden\npublic services\u2019. These include the food supply chain and pharmacies. Since\nthey are in the private sector, these are not always recognised. Letwin also includes\nin this category having sufficient transport capacity \u2013 airlines etc \u2013 to\nrepatriate people who may be stranded abroad during a crisis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thirdly, Letwin discusses the tendency to bring in \u2018free-thinkers\u2019\nto \u2018think the unthinkable\u2019 and prevent groupthink among experts. As he puts it\n(p.82) \u2018such efforts often fail , because those who are engaged to think the unthinkable\ngenuinely do just that \u2013 and end up being discounted by the experts as\neccentric \u2013 or seek to preserve their standing with the experts by engaging in\nself-censorship in order to raise only those thoughts that the experts consider\nto be at least nearly thinkable\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The final lesson is not explicitly drawn out, but is evident\nthroughout. It is one of complexity, of how one crisis or disaster can lead to multiple\nsub-crises in different fields or levels. Thus, in the book, the power and\nnetwork outage leads, among other things, to the inability of emergency crews\nto communicate, the filling up of hospitals and the inability of councils to\nlocate vulnerable people they have responsibility for because these details are\nall stored on computers and cloud computing services.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These issues all have resonance in the current COVID-19\ncrisis. The world has looked at the UK response with\nalarm<\/a>. It is far from clear that the UK government, Prime Minister Boris\nJohnson, and key ministers were engaged\nenough with the outbreak early enough<\/a>. It is equally far from clear that\nthey were prepared to ask the correct\nquestions of experts<\/a>, and not place too much faith in advisers such as Dominic\nCummings who like to give the impression of \u2018thinking the unthinkable\u2019. \u2018Emotional\nintelligence\u2019 has\nappeared lacking<\/a>, to put it mildly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Only after widespread reports of supermarket shortages\ncirculated did the government seem to appreciate the ongoing difficulty faced\nby food suppliers, and how other private enterprises might contribute to public\ncohesion. And this is clearly a complex individual, social and economic crisis\nplaying out at several levels. To take one example, which will grow in\nresonance the deeper into the crisis we get, many councils are understandably restricting\nhousehold waste\ncollections<\/a>. Already cut to the bone, such services are nonetheless also\nvital for public health and have the potential to lead to an unforeseen\nsecondary crisis. Similarly to Letwin\u2019s account, this is also a crisis hitting the\nhealth service and the elderly in complex ways. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finally, to return to technology, with a huge increase in working\nfrom home, networks have shown signs of at least\ncreaking<\/a>, while vaunted online services \u2013 online shopping, Netflix and so\non \u2013 are struggling to cope with the demand or restricting quality. Were\nnetworks to crash, as Letwin warns, this would amplify the current problems by\nmany multiples.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Letwin has therefore written a thoughtful and timely book. A\nConservative MP from 1997, he stood down at the 2019 general election having\nhad the whip withdrawn by the Johnson government over his attempts to find\ncompromises over Brexit. It is to be hoped that someone of Letwin\u2019s experience\nis helping guide resilience and co-ordination during the current crisis. Yet\nincredibly, at the time of writing, no\nminister is cited as having been given the role<\/a>, and previous incumbents up\nto 2019 seem to have resilience mentioned only hand in hand with cyber\nproblems. Since Letwin, none have been particularly senior. If so, and given\nthe multitude of potential and current threats to national security, this at\nminimum surely needs rethought as the UK goes forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Alistair Clark<\/p>\n\n\n\n

26th<\/sup> March 2020                                 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Oliver Letwin (2020) Apocalypse How? Technology and the Threat of Disaster, London: Atlantic Books, ISBN 978 1 78649 686 7, \u00a314.99. The UK, and world, is in crisis due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Governments have seemed slow to respond. Under … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8364,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorised"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/alistairclark\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/alistairclark\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/alistairclark\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/alistairclark\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8364"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/alistairclark\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/alistairclark\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/alistairclark\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24\/revisions\/27"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/alistairclark\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/alistairclark\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/alistairclark\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}