As the terrorist attacks of 9/11 demonstrated, "homeland" security is deeply interconnected with international security. CISAC conducts a homeland security research program of fellowships and seminars focused on discovering how emergency-response organizations and a vast federal department like DHS can best learn from terrorist attacks, other emergencies, and exercises, and adapt to meet future security needs.

The program sponsors fellows who conduct in-depth research at Stanford into pressing, unanswered questions facing DHS and other security agencies, as well as national and international policymakers. How can security organizations learn to function efficiently, especially when--as in the case of DHS--they must coordinate their efforts with many distinct agencies dispersed across the nation? Why do organizations often fail to learn from past failures? How can they learn to change quickly after something goes terribly wrong? Fellows' projects have included a review of literature on organizational learning issues related to homeland security, computational aspects of homeland security, legal issues in prosecuting transnational terrorism, and the "competitive learning" that terrorists and government agencies use as they try to defeat each other. With this research, CISAC strives to produce knowledge that can help solve immediate problems in homeland security training and management.

This program grew out of CISAC's successful work with DHS and other U.S. departments on the planning and execution of TOPOFF-2 (the acronym refers to "top officials"), a terrorism-response exercise involving more than 25 agencies at national, state, and local levels. Under Michael May's leadership as principal investigator and CISAC fellow Laura Donohue's direction, the center participated, beginning in July 2002, in a series of four seminars and "table-top" exercises with government officials from the U.S. Departments of State (DOS), Justice (DOJ), and Homeland Security (DHS) in planning for TOPOFF-2. These seminars and exercises examined issues that could arise in the event of an attack on U.S. soil, including public communication in crisis, radiological dispersal devices, biological attacks, and recovery, mitigation, and remediation. CISAC scholars wrote reports after each of these meetings.

In May 2003, the full exercise, TOPOFF-2 simulated a "dirty bomb" attack in Seattle, the release of a biological agent in Chicago, and a mass distribution of antibiotics. Ten CISAC scientists and social scientists, along with other Stanford University faculty, observed the exercise and evaluated the planning, execution, and results. CISAC's findings were gathered in a collectively written final report, edited by CISAC research assistant Tonya Putnam, and presented to senior administration officials, including U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge.

In 2004-2005, CISAC and the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif., began the Organizational Learning for Homeland Security program, funded by the Department of Homeland Security. CISAC extended the program in 2005-2006 under other funding, broadening the scope of the research but still emphasizing organizational learning issues.