A favorite bumper sticker among anti-nuclear activists reads: One nuclear bomb can ruin your whole day. That effectively sums up the thinking behind a bill filed by California Rep. Duncan Hunter in the House of Representatives. The bill would require U.S. Customs to inspect every cargo shipment entering our country, whether by truck or by steamship line. Although no one wants to talk about it, the bill is driven by the fear that terrorists might smuggle a nuclear bomb, or more likely a dirty bomb (a conventional weapon that scatters radioactive particles), into the United States, resulting in horrors that even Edgar Allan Poe or Stephen King couldn't depict.

Given current events, Hunter's bill has considerable appeal. If the United States is locked in a war with diabolical terrorists capable of turning aircraft into suicide bombs, prudence surely dictates that we take every precaution to ensure our safety. That means government officials physically inspecting every container or trailer entering our land.

However, as someone who has written about commerce and logistics for two decades, I'm concerned about what these total and pervasive cargo inspections would mean for American business. Supply chains would stretch from a few days to perhaps a few months as the limited number of customs inspectors now in the government's employ searched every container. Such inspections could bring commerce to a halt, and our terrorist enemies would have succeeded in crippling this economy without firing a single shot.

Let me toss out a counterproposal: The United States should require every shipment entering this country to submit an electronic notice prior to its arrival at our borders. Customs could then use sophisticated software to check the importer's background and conduct a risk assessment to decide whether the shipment should be searched.

Such a requirement wouldn't pose much of a burden on business because the majority of traders already use electronic communication to some degree. In a speech at the Coalition of New England Companies for Trade's annual conference earlier this year, customs official John Durant reported that 72 percent of all entries are now completely paperless and 99 percent have some information filed electronically.

On top of that, the federal government has begun work on the Automated Commercial Environment (ACE) project to facilitate paperless trade and modernize customs. The ACE project now under way provides the perfect vehicle to gain enhanced control over our frontiers through the deployment of information technology. Although small shippers and importers may lack electronic identification capabilities, emerging XML technology would allow them to submit shipment notifications over the Internet. The ACE project is looking at using existing commercial messaging formats to minimize inconvenience to business, but it could also incorporate XML technology, whose data-tagging capabilities would also further facilitate risk assessment.

As a nation, we can't succumb completely to our fears. We must be realists and strike a balance between security and commerce. Letting the Customs Service review shipments electronically in advance of their arrival would allow the federal government to judiciously apply its limited manpower and inspect those containers and trailers that are deemed most likely to pose security threats.