After bin Laden: when vigilance turns into panic

In the days after Osama bin Laden's death, American officials warned the public to expect possible retaliation. The warning was not abstract: material recovered from the Abbottabad compound showed al-Qaeda had considered attacking U.S. rail and transit systems — tampering with tracks, leaving packages near stations. The FBI and Homeland Security told local officials to watch for missing track spikes, suspicious packages, and other signs of vulnerability.

That is how "see something, say something" is supposed to work. But there is a second-order effect that American security culture has struggled with in the decade since September 11: in a country where millions of people move through transit systems every day, the baseline level of unattended bags, forgotten backpacks, and discarded food containers is high. Treating each one as a potential threat is psychologically exhausting and practically unsustainable — and a heightened-alert atmosphere guarantees a wave of false alarms.

There is a cost-benefit dimension that rarely gets discussed. Every false alarm diverts bomb squads and police from genuine threats, delays thousands of commuters, and adds to a baseline level of anxiety that serves no protective function. The goal of terrorism is not only physical harm — it is to disrupt normal life and impose fear. A security posture that does that work on terrorism's behalf, in the absence of any actual attack, is worth questioning.

Vigilance is not the problem. Uncalibrated vigilance is: a system where ordinary abandoned objects routinely become mass-disruption events is a system that has stopped distinguishing between being alert and being afraid.