The events of Christmas Day, nine years after 9/11, show that our current airline security system is a failure. The ability of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to board a US bound, Delta Jet on Christmas Day, without undergoing a secondary search proves the current airline security system is fatally flawed. Despite spending billions of dollars on security measures, and totally reorganizing our intelligence agencies, no one, nor thing stopped Abdulmutallab from boarding the US aircraft. A new approach is desperately needed.  President Obama has outlined a series of steps to insure that this does not happen again.  Unfortunately the steps taken cannot fix a basic system that is fundamentally flawed, and relying on government agencies to fix themselves is too likely to fail.  A new approach is needed.

An approach that relies primarily on the effectiveness of the thousands of TSA agents has always been a non-starter. Nearly a decade after 9/11, the task of creating an effective list of those deemed potential flight risks seems to remain beyond the capability of the US government. There are those who suggest the US adopt the systems used by Israel. This is not a realistic option. Those that suggest this approach fail to understand the methods El Al uses. With a relative small number of fliers, EL Al can quickly classify the great majority of its passenger as "safe", thus allowing its security team to concentrate its efforts on the small percentage of passengers who could pose a potential risk.

The US could, of course, choose to profile all young Muslim men. Unfortunately, that would contradict the core principles for which our country stands. Alternatively, we could give additional attention to all young men flying without families. Even if we allow the road warriors to get positive clearances this plan would create a net so large, that it would be ineffective.

There is an alternate approach. The US government needs to create and maintain an effective worldwide terror list that will help identify potential terrorists, and insure they do not get on any commercial aircraft without the most intensive screening. Does that technology exist? I believe it does. However, this technology cannot likely be obtained or developed in the normal government development or procurement processes. Last week I visited the Kennedy Space Center for the first time. While it was fascinating, and especially enjoyable being able to share the experience with my youngest child, aged 10, it was also a sad experience. While visiting this site that created so much excitement in my youth, we were told of the plans for the newest rocket to replace the Space Shuttle. The guide informed us that the latest rockets will be based on that same technology as the Saturn 5, the rocket that powered the launch of the Apollo 11 to the Moon in 1969, forty years ago. This combined with its continued lack of focus says it all about the state of innovation at NASA. The fact that the FAA has not been able to create a new computer system, after a decade of trying, combined with the fact that the air force is still flying an aircraft (the B-52) that flew before I was born in 1955, tells us how poor the government has been at applying new technologies.

The Democrats, led by President Obama, believe in an expanded role for government. While I ideologically support increased government programs, the Republicans are correct to criticize the government as being inefficient and incapable of taking on an expanded role. The solution: find ways to bring meaningful innovation to the government quickly. The place to start: the war on terror.

In order to win the war on terror, it is going to require new and "out of the box" solutions. Al Qaeda and other enemies of the US and West have spread out like hydra to ever more places. Fighting terrorism will not succeed if the major efforts are limited to fighting in the mountains of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Let the US use its true competitive advantages in technology to fight terrorism by developing a state of the art database accessible to all those responsible for fighting terrorism, from the analysis to TSA agents at the airports. In order to create the necessary worldwide database, the government needs to find a company that possesses the technology and buy it. An example comes to mind in the acquisition last year by EBay of the Fraud Sciences of a small Israeli company. EBay had not been in the market to purchase a company specializing in online fraud, but when the company, whose technology was based on developing an online risk assessment showed that it could analyze millions of Visa credit card transactions and predict which transactions were fraudulent, EBay knew it needed to own that capability and paid $169 million to purchase it.

I am not suggesting the government purchase any specific company or technology. I use this example to illustrate that the technology exists. To this end, I suggest President Obama creates a small emergency committee of some of the leading technologists of the country, such as Sergei Brinn and Larry Paige of Google or Bill Gates. Give them 30 days to find the best technology that currently exists in the marketplace. I guarantee they will find it. Then, set a deadline of six months to do the impossible: create an interactive database that identifies everyone who buys a ticket and assigns each one a risk factor. The project sounds impossible, but in a world in which the safety of everyone who flies is constantly at risk, this can and must be done.