Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, please meet Governor Napolitano of Arizona.

Governor Napolitano is the one, who, before coming to D.C., punctured the hubris of glib solutions to complex problems by repeatedly noting that for every 12-foot border fence the U.S. builds, there's a 13 ladder to scale it.

We may yet see signs of Governor Napolitano's realism in the person running DHS; we'll see what happens when she decides the ultimate fate of SBInet.

SBInet probably needs little introduction; it's a bloated, multi-billion ($1.1 billion so far) effort to create a high-tech force field around the southern border, to do with technology what probably only a combination of more manpower, more trucks, more judges and--dare we say it--immigration reform will accomplish.

But the track record of Secretary Napolitano leaves room for doubt. Maybe it's something in the tainted Potomac water we drink, but she may have succumbed to the Washington logic of Big Projects done with Big Money. The thinking is that Big Projects don't get canceled.

And our Big Departments like spending Big Money because it makes them feel big--and companies like Boeing (the SBInet prime) are there with a shovel. A big one.

A fine case in point: The Government Accountability Office published in 2009 a list of all SBInet task orders performed by Boeing. By 2009, it was obvious that SBInet wasn't doing well in its Southwestern border efforts. Why, then, did DHS spend $30 million in February and March 2009 to extend SBInet to areas near Buffalo and Detroit, on the Canadian border? I'm sure logical reasoning went into that decision, but I suspect it can be tied back to the need for Bigness.

The problem is that the Big Bloat eventually becomes too much and things start crashing down. Like they are now with SBInet, and as they also did in 2004 with a similar effort called the Integrated Surveillance Intelligence System.

So now what? The logic of bigness isn't going to disappear anytime soon. The answer is to do what must be done. Kill off SBInet and move on--to the Next Big Thing.

Still, Governor Napolitano might attempt a end-run around bigness when the inevitable replacement project comes around. At least, if she hasn't been totally replaced by Secretary Napolitano. - Dave