Cyber-scare
From my very long essay about the exaggerated fears over the digital (in)security that appears in the July-August issue of Boston Review: It is alarming that so many people have accepted the White House’s assertions about cyber-security as a key national security problem without demanding further evidence. Have we learned nothing from the WMD debacle? ...
From my very long essay about the exaggerated fears over the digital (in)security that appears in the July-August issue of Boston Review:
From my very long essay about the exaggerated fears over the digital (in)security that appears in the July-August issue of Boston Review:
It is alarming that so many people have accepted the White House’s assertions about cyber-security as a key national security problem without demanding further evidence. Have we learned nothing from the WMD debacle? The administration’s claims could lead to policies with serious, long-term, troubling consequences for network openness and personal privacy.
Cyber-security fears have had, it should be said, one unambiguous effect: they have fueled a growing cyber-security market, which, according to some projections, will¬†grow twice as fast as the rest of the IT industry. Boeing, Raytheon, and Lockheed Martin, among others, have formed new business units to tap increased spending to protect U.S. government computers from cyber-attacks. Moreover, many former government officials have made smooth transitions from national cyber-security policy to the lucrative worlds of consulting and punditry. Speaking at a recent conference in Washington, D.C., Amit Yoran—a former cyber-security czar in the Bush administration and currently the C.E.O. of NetWitness, a cyber-security start-up—has called hacking a national security threat, adding that “cyber-9/11 has happened over the last ten years, but it’s happened slowly, so we don’t see it.” One way for the government to protect itself from this cyber-9/11 may be to purchase NetWitness’s numerous software applications, aimed at addressing both “state and non-state sponsored cyber threats.”
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