Revisiting the Balance Between Security and Efficiency in Aviation Policy
Published in Social Sciences, Economics, and Law, Politics & International Studies
When I published Comparative policy analysis in airport security through the lenses of the multiple-streams framework in the Journal of Transportation Security in 2024, my goal was to examine an enduring question in public administration: How do governments balance preventing catastrophic security failures with maintaining efficient public services?
The September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks fundamentally reshaped U.S. aviation security and led to the creation of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). In the years that followed, debates expanded beyond screening effectiveness to include operational efficiency, organizational arrangements, and alternative approaches to airport security, including the TSA’s Screening Partnership Program.
Using John Kingdon’s Multiple Streams Framework (MSF), my research examined how problems, policy alternatives, and political considerations interact to shape government decisions. The central question was not simply whether security or efficiency mattered more, but how policymakers prioritized competing objectives.
This tension extends beyond airport screening to emerging threats involving aircraft communications and navigation systems. A September 2026 report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) makes the issue particularly timely. The report identified gaps in the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) risk assessments, real-time monitoring of spectrum-related threats, and coordination with nonfederal partners. These findings raise important questions about whether existing oversight and response mechanisms are keeping pace with evolving aviation risks.
My original research also provides a foundation for examining how governments respond to GPS jamming and spoofing. GPS spoofing can transmit misleading location or timing information, potentially disrupting aircraft navigation and complicating pilots’ and air traffic controllers’ situational awareness. A major terrorist attack can rapidly concentrate political attention, whereas persistent technical threats may develop without a single defining event that generates comparable urgency. How do governments prioritize and address security vulnerabilities before a major crisis forces action?
The September 2026 GAO findings provide a timely starting point for investigating this question. Applying MSF, future research could examine how emerging threats gain recognition as policy problems, which mitigation strategies become viable alternatives, and how political attention and institutional responsibilities influence government action. It could also explore how agencies strengthen security while minimizing unnecessary disruptions to aviation operations.
The implications extend beyond aviation. Similar comparisons could examine maritime cybersecurity, passenger rail security, and civilian aviation risks in conflict zones. Studying these cases could help explain how institutional responsibilities, political priorities, and available policy alternatives shape the balance between security and efficiency across transportation systems.
My continuing interest is in how public policy theory can explain these decisions—not only after a major security failure, but also when governments must anticipate evolving threats and act before a crisis forces their hand.
Read the original article: Comparative policy analysis in airport security through the lenses of the multiple-streams framework, Journal of Transportation Security (2024).
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Emerging Risks to Transportation Networks from Robotic Autonomous Systems, Artificial Intelligence, and Cyber-Kinetic Attacks
The Journal of Transportation Security invites original manuscripts for a special issue on the emerging risks that artificial intelligence (AI), robotic autonomous systems, and cyber-kinetic attacks pose to transportation systems.
Transportation networks are increasingly connected, autonomous, software-defined, and data-driven. AI and robotics promise major gains in safety, efficiency, and resilience across aviation, maritime, rail, highway, pipeline, logistics, and intermodal transportation—but they also introduce vulnerabilities that nation-states, terrorists, criminal enterprises, and other malicious actors may exploit.
Cyberattacks are no longer limited to data theft or digital disruption. By manipulating autonomous vehicles, navigation, communications, sensors, industrial control systems, or decision-support tools, AI-enabled cyber-kinetic attacks can produce real-world physical consequences: disrupted services, damaged infrastructure, endangered passengers and operators, interrupted supply chains, and cascading failures across interconnected networks. As digital attacks increasingly produce kinetic effects, the traditional boundary between cybersecurity and physical security is dissolving.
This special issue seeks high-quality interdisciplinary research that advances understanding of these threats and identifies practical strategies for prevention, detection, mitigation, resilience, and recovery.
Topics of Interest
Topics include, but are not limited to:
Threats and attack vectors
- AI-enabled cyber-kinetic attacks on transportation infrastructure, including ports, airports, rail networks, highways, and logistics hubs
- Malicious use of robotic autonomous systems and unmanned vehicles (aerial, ground, surface, and underwater)
- Adversarial machine learning and attacks against AI-enabled transportation systems
- Sensor spoofing, navigation manipulation, GPS/GNSS denial, and perception attacks
Security and defense
- Security of autonomous road, rail, maritime, aviation, and logistics systems
- Transportation operational technology (OT) security
- Secure-by-design autonomous transportation architectures
- Detection, response, attribution, and recovery from cyber-kinetic attacks
- Supply chain security for AI-enabled transportation technologies
Resilience and risk
- Transportation network resilience and continuity of operations
- Cascading failures across interconnected transportation systems
- Risk assessment and modeling of cyber-physical transportation threats
- Digital twins, simulation, red teaming, and transportation wargaming
- Human-autonomy teaming and operator decision-making under attack
Policy and practice
- Policy, governance, regulation, and legal implications
- Public-private partnerships and critical infrastructure protection
- Case studies of transportation security incidents involving AI or autonomous systems
Types of Contributions
The editors welcome:
- Original research articles
- Review papers
- Conceptual and theoretical studies
- Technical and engineering research
- Risk analysis and modeling
- Simulation and experimentation
- Case studies
- Policy and governance analyses
- Practitioner perspectives
Interdisciplinary submissions bridging transportation security, cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, robotics, engineering, operations research, supply chain management, emergency management, public policy, and defense studies are particularly encouraged.
Submission Information
Authors should prepare manuscripts in accordance with the Journal of Transportation Security author guidelines and submit them through the journal’s online submission system.
Please select the Special Issue:
“Emerging Risks to Transportation Networks from Robotic Autonomous Systems, Artificial Intelligence, and Cyber-Kinetic Attacks.”
All submissions will undergo the journal’s standard double-blind peer-review process.
Important Dates
- Call for Papers Released: August 15th 2026
- Manuscript Submission Deadline: October 15th 2026
- Initial Decisions: December 1st 2026
- Revised Manuscripts Due: January 1st 2027
- Final Decisions: February 15th 2027
- Expected Publication: April 1st 2027
The editors look forward to receiving innovative contributions that advance the understanding of one of the fastest-evolving challenges facing transportation security worldwide.
Publishing Model: Hybrid
Deadline: Jan 15, 2027
