Thinking about How Many Guards Will Do the Job

摘要

Scott Sagan has provided a fascinating theoretical treatment of the problem of how many guards to assign to protecting nuclear facilities (Sagan, this issue). Sagan's analysis clearly demonstrates that it is wrong to think about the problem as though the guards were redundant technical components of a system who do not affect each other's performance. Although Sagan does not draw out the broader implications here, the issues he raises arise in a far wider array of situations— in virtually any system where there are decisions to be made as to how many people to assign to security-critical or safety-critical tasks.