EXPLORING NEW PROCESSES TO DEVELOP U.S. ENERGY SECURITY
Date Initiated: June 2007

For the last five years, through Markle’s Task Force on National Security in the Information Age, the Foundation has focused on how best to mobilize information and information technology to improve national security while protecting established liberties. Based upon the Task Force’s recommendations, the President and Congress have mandated the creation of an Information Sharing Environment to prevent terrorism. Better information exchange and collaboration across agencies and jurisdictions is now widely accepted as key to enhancing our nation’s security.

Now, as we explore how to build upon our previous work to address new generation of national security needs, Markle is undertaking program explorations in several areas. Among the first is a partnership with the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), to conduct a major study of the challenges posed by the complex intersection of growing energy demands, technological change, global instability, and U.S. national security. This study is motivated by a recognition that the relationship between energy and security will be one of the most important policy challenges confronting the United States in the twenty-first century, affecting the nation’s standing and global influence.

Although there is growing consensus in the U.S. and around the world about the dangers of global dependence on non-renewable resources, the debate on how to address these dangers is still in its infancy. We are only beginning to understand how energy dependency, particularly on undemocratic nations and unstable regimes, determines much of our foreign policy. We are only beginning to acknowledge that energy dependency can increase hatred for our nation and breed international terrorism.

One of the most valuable contributions of the exploratory study will therefore be to map out and conceptualize this emerging field, in the process helping us understand the security challenges we are likely to confront in the twenty-first century. In particular, CNAS will undertake a broad scoping of the issues, including the nature of the threat, actions taken to date, and the information needs of various affected parties in the United States and internationally. Building on the work already done by Markle and its partners, the study will pay close attention to ways in which better information flows, and innovative uses of information technology, can help foster energy security. Post 9/11, we know that information is critical to more effective decision-making in complex, uncertain and inter-dependent fields. Energy security, like the more general issue of national security, is one such field; this study will enhance our understanding of the field, in the process increasing our national security.

Unique to the project is its methodology. CNAS will use the methodological framework known as "Solarium II." This framework, which draws its name and inspiration from a method used by President Eisenhower over fifty years ago, uses a form of competitive strategy development to develop optimal strategic responses to security threats. The original Project Solarium helped the U.S. develop a robust – and ultimately successful – response to the threat of the Cold War; it is our hope that the same methodology can today help the country explore how to address the equally grave challenge of developing collaborative and informed processes toward energy security.

To read more about the Solarium Methodology, click here.