The Challenge: Increasing Vulnerabilities
The security of the United States and perhaps even its very survival depend on the safe, secure, and reliable functioning of its critical defense and civilian infrastructures. Americans must have the continued capacity to deter and respond to aggression. They also need a reliable electrical system that is safe from blackouts, telecommunications systems that support a strong economy and national defense, and a transportation system that ensures people and goods reach their destinations safely. Americans also must be able to live in communities that are relatively crime free, and work in buildings that can withstand an earthquake or terrorist bomb.

The President's Commission on Critical Infrastructure Protection has outlined many of these concerns in its report and has called for a national effort to ensure our infrastructures are protected from threats, whether they be natural events or accidents, terrorism, recreational hackers or even human error. The more sophisticated our infrastructures become, the more sophisticated must be the solutions and technologies that are used to safeguard them. The future well-being of our nation depends on it.

The Surety Solution
Surety is confidence that a system will perform in acceptable ways in both expected and unexpected circumstances. Sandia's nearly 50-year history in applying surety principles has provided the nation with a nuclear-weapons program that has never experienced the unthinkable - an accidental nuclear detonation. Surety principles ensure the ultimate in quality. They stipulate that the probability of an accidental nuclear detonation due to malfunctions of nuclear weapon components shall not exceed one in one billion.

Surety technologies are the science-based disciplines and capabilities developed specifically for the Department of Energy's nuclear weapons program and are unique to Sandia National Laboratories.

The very same surety principles that have successfully been applied to nuclear weapons can also be put to use in a broader sense to protect our nation's critical infrastructures. The same systemic approach that incorporates modeling and simulation, testing and evaluation, risk management, reliability development, and physical security can also safeguard Americans in the way they live and work, and as they move into the progressively complex future.

The Surety Expo
Sandia National Laboratories is planning to illustrate surety principles and technologies as they apply to emerging national needs in defense, energy, and the environment, as well as how these same principles can and are being applied in the effort to safeguard Americans and their infrastructures. Sandia already has developed partnerships to develop such technologies with agencies such as the FBI, Department of Defense, and National Institute of Justice. Exhibits and presentations in collaboration with our partners will show how surety principles are being used to:

• Design and build structures that can better withstand natural disasters and terrorist attacks.
• Develop ultra-sensitive sensors that can detect minute particles of explosives on a terrorist attempting to board an airplane.
• Construct a "smart gun" that prevents its unauthorized use.
• Develop a bomb-disabling device that was instrumental in solving the Unabomber case.
• Produce a mine detector with the ability to "sniff out" explosives in order to help rid the world of the abandoned deadly devices.
• Monitor and analyze a staggering range of activities, materials, and communications that could be evidence of nuclear, chemical or biological weapons development.
• Design ultra-secure computer networks.

• Building surety principles.
• Forming surety partnerships among government agencies and laboratories, industry, and universities.
• Providing solutions to many problems affecting public safety and well-being.
• Anticipating surety needs for the future.

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