a report on how effectively the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was spending its funds. The committee praised the approaches used in the department for decisions about natural hazards, saying they were "near state of the art . . . based on extensive data, have been validated empirically, and appear well suited to near-term decision needs." In contrast, with regard to the department's spending on counterterrorism, the committee could "not find any DHS risk analysis capabilities and methods that are yet adequate for supporting DHS decision making" and observed that "little effective attention was paid to the features of the risk problem that are fundamental" (National Research Council 2010). As far as we can tell, this seemingly newsworthy report inspired no media coverage whatever.In general, it seems, counterterrorism agencies simply identify a potential source of harm and try to do something about it, rather than systematically thinking about the likely magnitude of harm caused by a successful terrorist attack, the probability of that attack occurring, and the amount of risk reduction that can be expected from counterterrorism efforts. Without considering such factors, it is impossible to evaluate whether security measures reduce risk sufficiently to justify their costs.