White House Cyber Policy Review: And a Cyber Czar
I enjoyed listening to the President today as he provided an update on where we are in our efforts to enhance our freedom of action in cyberspace. All the details are on the White House website and I hope you visit there yourself to download the 60-day cyberspace policy review. Details are here: http://www.whitehouse.gov/CyberReview/
I have been reading the report already– and will also read all the papers and studies referenced there.
So far I have three comments:
1) I really enjoyed hearing the President reference Melissa Hathaway. She has done an incredible job and to hear him praise her was music to my ears. Melissa deserves the thanks of the nation.
2) A great deal of work remains to be done. The policy review provides a framework for action and guidance that will help prioritize activities, but don’t expect instant miracles.
3) Number one on the list of near term actions is to appoint a cybersecurity policy official. The President did not do that today. That will be done in due time. I should also point out that no one in government is using the term “Cyber Czar” for this position. That term Czar is used by all the reporters and all the pundits. It sounds cool. It also brings lots of baggage. The typical “Czar” in DC is a powerless position that has little or no effect.
To underscore that point I’d like to close with a little self-plagerization. A reprint of a blog post I first wrote in January 2009 titled “We have a cyber czar, and he has spoken.“ In the post, now below, I try to make the point that if Putin can accomplish his objectives in our networks then he is our cyber czar. I also hope to make the point that we should not be happy with him being in this position.
We Have A Cyber Czar, and He Has Spoken
A debate has been running for months both among government thought leaders and the technical literati on whether or not the US should appoint a “Cyber Czar” who can exert authority over IT security in the federal space or perhaps even aspects of the nation’s IT defenses. This is a complex discussion that has had some of the greatest thinkers in and out of government involved. A great snapshot of issues and the opinions of many well reasoned experts are expressed in the CSIS report “Securing Cyberspace for the 44th Presidency“ and other thoughts are here: The Future of Cyber Security and here: Threats In the Age of Obama .
Unfortunately for those who would like to still debate and discuss this issue, there is already a Cyber Czar who can accomplish most all his objectives in our networks. His name is Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. This former KGB operative now controls Russia with an iron fist and has shown others again and again he will exert influence anywhere he needs to in order to accomplish his objectives. He will use tanks when required and cyber when desired and combinations when it suits him. There are indications his agents are also in our networks now. If our objectives are to keep players like him out, we cannot say we are accomplishing them. If his objectives are to get in, then we can say he is accomplishing them. Till this situation changes, we need to confront then this new reality: Vladimir Putin is the Cyber Czar.
We have our own great technologists and wizards of cyber, of course. And we have great hero entrepreneurs of technology who have built the cyber world we all use today. One of those greats is Michael Dell, creator of an idea and corporation that develops, manufactures, sells and distributes personal computers we all depend on.
But he is someone who will now think twice before thinking he can interact as a peer to Cyber Czar Putin. After listening to Putin’s speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Michael Dell praised Russia’s technical and scientific prowess and asked a nice, friendly question: “How can we help.” As a former govie CTO I would get asked that type of question all the time from industry and really appreciated it whenever a senior thought leader would ask that. But not Czar Putin. He did not appreciate that at all. Putin was offended by the assertion that the mighty Russia might need help in anything Cyber. The exchange is captured here on YouTube:
Fortune: described the exchange this way:
“Putin’s withering reply to Dell: “We don’t need help. We are not invalids. We don’t have limited mental capacity.” The slapdown took many of the people in the audience by surprise. Putin then went on to outline some of the steps the Russian government has taken to wire up the country, including remote villages in Siberia. And, in a final dig at Dell, he talked about how Russian scientists were rightly respected not for their hardware, but for their software. The implication: Any old fool can build a PC outfit.”
Clearly cyber domination is personal with Putin. He is the Cyber Czar.
I think I should end with a plea to all who care about cyber freedom and all who know the potential positive contributions of IT: Please don’t be pleased with this current situation. Please don’t just think the title of Cyber Czar I’ve now used to describe Putin is something we should be proud of. It is not. We should continue to act till we are able to assert that we are masters of our own networks. Our nation’s intellectual property, including the intellectual property of all our companies and citizens, is too important to let it be given away without at least a cyber fight.
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