Blogging will be light this week!

Don’t expect too many updates this week, as I am attending (and speaking) at TED Global at Oxford. In the meantime, here are links to the two pieces I had published last week! From my op-ed in The International Herald Tribune last week: The problem with the current approach to cybersecurity is that by miring ...

Don't expect too many updates this week, as I am attending (and speaking) at TED Global at Oxford. In the meantime, here are links to the two pieces I had published last week!

Don’t expect too many updates this week, as I am attending (and speaking) at TED Global at Oxford. In the meantime, here are links to the two pieces I had published last week!

From my op-ed in The International Herald Tribune last week:

The problem with the current approach to cybersecurity is that by miring it in unnecessary secrecy, we are shrinking, rather than growing, the number of eyeballs that can find and fix those bugs.

Much of the real computer talent today is concentrated in the private sector. The only two countries that have successfully found ways to involve their private sectors in cybersecurity — Russia and China — are also the ones commonly accused of being on the cyberoffensive, undoubtedly a very exciting proposition for their patriotic hackers.

Cyberdefense, however, is much less glamorous. To inject more talent into government IT jobs, it is necessary to raise their visibility and prestige, perhaps by creating national Tech Corps that could introduce talent into sectors that need it most. It’s no secret that many computer science graduates perceive government jobs as an “IT ghetto.”

From my column in this week’s Newsweek International:

If you had to choose one weapon for fighting the next religious war, you could do worse than to pick an iPhone. In recent months, the foot soldiers of religion have come out with a bevy of new programs designed to win converts and make religious practices more accessible. For those of the Jewish faith, iBlessing helps in figuring out which blessings go with which food, ParveOMeter keeps track of the waiting times between eating meat and dairy, and Siddur gives prayer times based on one’s GPS coordinates. Devout Roman Catholics will appreciate iBreviary, which pulls up and displays complete missal and principal prayers in Spanish, French, English, Latin, and Italian.

Evgeny Morozov is a fellow at the Open Society Institute and sits on the board of OSI's Information Program. He writes the Net Effect blog on ForeignPolicy.com

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