The air cargo system is the invisible infrastructure that powers the modern economy, making up over one-third of global trade value. It moves high-value, time-sensitive goods, including life-saving medicines, perishable goods, electronics, e-commerce, and manufacturing inputs, to every corner of the globe and every community in the United States.
The security framework governing this system must keep pace with the evolution of global supply chains and the increasingly sophisticated methods adversaries use to exploit them.
The system is already being tested.
In 2024, foreign operatives were found concealing incendiary devices in air cargo shipments bound for the West. In 2017, ISIS attempted to detonate a package bomb routed through the cargo network. These are not isolated incidents. They are warning signs of a system whose adversaries are more active and adaptive than ever.
We must ensure that technology and policy also evolve to reflect the air cargo landscape of the future, both to meet evolving and emergent threats and to keep up with growing air cargo demand and other changes in the marketplace.
That is why the current TSA reauthorization conversation in Congress matters so much, and why Congress should treat it as a genuine inflection point rather than a routine legislative exercise.
We Are the Frontline
In the passenger environment, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) screens travelers and their bags. In air cargo, the model is fundamentally different. The industry is responsible for all aspects of security operations in the all-cargo environment in accordance with TSA security programs. We are not passive participants awaiting instruction; we are operational security partners, making layered, risk-based decisions across complex global logistics networks in real time.
Strengthening cargo security is not a question of expanding TSA authority or responsibility. It is a question of aligning policy, investment, and operational execution while removing regulatory and structural obstacles that have held that alignment back for decades.
The Technology Divide
After September 11, Congress and TSA made sustained, systematic investments in passenger screening technology. The process was neither fast nor cheap, but it was coherent and consistent. Government created a clear demand signal, funded development, and built a predictable pathway for private-sector innovation and investment. That framework was never fully extended to air cargo.
In 2004, Congress directed TSA to develop advanced technologies for identifying, tracking, and screening air cargo. More than 20 years later, there is still no long-term technology roadmap for our sector. Without a consistent government demand signal, private-sector investment in advanced cargo screening tools, including by equipment manufacturers, has been cautious and fragmented. Meanwhile, the complexity, speed, and volume of cargo have expanded dramatically, driven by e-commerce and global supply chain integration.
The threat has grown, and the technology must keep pace.
This is a solvable problem, but only with government leadership. Innovation follows investment and deployable capability follows clear demand signals. Congress has the authority to create that alignment, and it should.
A Fragmented Framework
The Known Shipper Program was created in the late 1990s to address a security problem that no longer exists. Congress recognized this in the TSA Modernization Act of 2018, directing a comprehensive review of the program. That review was completed and delivered to TSA in 2020. Six years later, the framework is structurally unchanged.
This is not a bureaucratic footnote or minor administrative issue. It is a mismatch between policy design and operational reality. Modern cargo security already operates on a foundation of 100% screening of cargo onboard passenger aircraft and other layered, risk-based controls. Within that framework, the Known Shipper construct introduces procedural requirements that do not yield proportionate security benefits.
As Congress considers the next TSA reauthorization, it should direct TSA to replace the Known Shipper framework with a performance-based model that reflects how cargo actually moves today, with built-in flexibility across freight, express, and belly cargo business models. Security outcomes – not legacy procedures – should be our framework.
Emergency Authority and Accountability
TSA’s emergency security directive authority is a legitimate and necessary tool. When credible threats emerge and rapid response is required, industry fully supports the appropriate use of that authority. But emergency power is not designed to function as indefinite regulation without review.
Under the current structure, TSA can issue emergency security directives, set the duration, and extend them without systematic external review, cost-benefit analysis, or extensive, independent oversight. Some directives have remained in place for years, well past the life of the original threat that triggered them. This creates a meaningful governance gap: without systematic external review and oversight, there is no mechanism to ensure that emergency measures remain proportionate to threats that justify them.
CAA recommends clear statutory guardrails. All emergency security directives should expire after 30 days unless ratified by the Transportation Security Oversight Board. Extensions beyond 60 days should require formal review of operational and economic impact.
Security effectiveness and accountability are not competing goals. They reinforce each other.
The Window Is Now
TSA has been reauthorized by Congress only once in its 24-year history. That legislation moved the needle significantly, but much of its promise remains unfinished.
The United States has the technical capability, industrial base and expertise, and operational infrastructure to lead the world in cargo security. What has been missing is sustained policy attention.
Congress now has an opportunity to complete the work it began in 2018: modernize TSA authorities, accelerate cargo security technology development and deployment, reform outdated frameworks, and establish meaningful guardrails on emergency powers. These are not competing priorities; they are three interlocking pieces of a more secure, more efficient, and more resilient air cargo system. There is a window to act, it would be a mistake to let it close for another decade.
Lauren Beyer is President of the Cargo Airline Association (CAA), where she leads the association representing the all-cargo air carrier industry.
