Excerpt from a talk given by John D. Kasarda at the General Alumni Association forum "Understanding the Attack on America." Kasarda is Director of the Frank Hawkins Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise and professor of management and of information technology and e-commerce at the Kenan-Flagler Business School.

hese tragic series of events will impact the lives of those at all levels of the socioeconomic ladder and the ultimate competitiveness and prosperity of this nation and other nations. The twenty-first century will be the aviation century, just as the eighteenth century was driven primarily by seaborne commerce, the nineteenth century by railroads, the twentieth century by highways and automobiles and trucks. Forty-two percent of the value of world trade goes by air today.

The United States economy is involved in a complex reticulated supply chain that comes down to affect you as a consumer, affects people producing parts and components in Thailand, Brazil, or Mexico, and the way the stock exchange operates in New York. If you listen to business educators like Peter Drucker or economists such as Lester Thurow or futurists such as Alvin Toffler, they’re all saying the same thing—that logistics will determine the future of America’s competitiveness, and increasingly today logistics is tied to aviation.

We really have moved into what many people may call the fast century. Not only in terms of travel by business people and faculty, but in particular in the way in which goods move around the country and around the world. A laptop computer produced here in the Research Triangle Park is really not manufactured—it’s assembled. The integrated circuits come from Japan; (the disk drives from Singapore; the glass screen from Mexico; the electrical system from Thailand; the keyboard from Taiwan)—mostly by air. In the pharmaceutical industry and biotechnology, which are so critical to this region’s economy and to the country’s economy, almost all of that product goes by air. Everything from digitized automobile parts to fresh-cut flowers, seafood, and agricultural products are increasingly moving by air.

Why is that the case? Because the fundamental drivers and priorities that shape today’s industry are increasingly based on speed and agility. It’s also interesting what we have learned in business school—firms, at least those in the production sector, no longer compete. The competing unit is the network, the system, or the supply chain. So when Dell computer leapfrogged over Compaq computer as the number one producer of laptops and PCs, it wasn’t Dell competing against Compaq, it was Dell’s global supply chain competing against Compaq’s global supply chain. Much of Dell’s production was done around Panang, Malaysia, then parts were shipped to the Dallas–Fort Worth area, where they were assembled, and then the product delivered to the customer, usually by air express. So speed and agility have become critical, even in our daily lives.

When you order a book from Amazon.com, do you just simply ask for two-to-three weeks delivery? No, you want two-to-three days delivery. Despite the death of the dotcoms, e-commerce is increasingly growing in importance, and 70 percent of products that are moved, whether it’s business to business or business to consumer, go by express.

After the events of September 11, speed and agility are going to take a step backward because of security. You’re going to wait in line longer. Our products are not going to move as fast. There will be many more security checks in the cargo holds and of the products that are shipped on our freighter aircraft.

All of this is going to have an impact on our businesses, on you as personal travelers, and in general on our daily lives, including what is served at home for dinner. ...And, it’s going to affect all of our lives in terms of the basic feelings that we all have when we go onto an aircraft. Aviation will be viewed differently by everyone because commercial aviation was recently used as a weapon.