Balancing act

National Security | With U.S. seaports ranked among top terror targets, experts debate how to secure shipping without slowing trade | Lynn Vincent

LONG BEACH, Calif. — In Long Beach, a pair of gravity-defying suspension bridges links the city's trendy downtown area, all pastels and angles, with the dust and noise of its booming seaport—the nation's largest and the fifth-largest in the world. From one bridge with an aerial view of the mile-long Pier T, global trade numbers most of us only read about are transformed into millions of tons of moving steel.

Imagine a camera lens trained on a single royal-blue container that is the exact size and shape of a railroad car, and stamped "Seaco" on the side. Zoom out to see five containers stenciled with names like Hanjin, Maersk, and China Shipping, stacked up like giant Legos in faded green, brick, and gray. Pull back further to see 10, 50, 100 containers, then 500, thousands, stacked stories high and football-fields deep in colorful columns and rows, stretched along the wharfs, creeping along railroad tracks, and hanging from more than 70 gantry cranes that tower over the port's 15,000-acre complex like the skeletons of Imperial Walkers.