To Czar Or Not To Czar
The whole political maelstrom in Washington is entirely too binary for my taste.
Should we have a cyber czar or not?
First of all, this is an old age discussion. Many of us lobbied for national cyber leadership nearly two decades ago, but Congress and the White House said, “it’ll never be an issue.”
Wrong on count one.
Two. This binary thing, from Ms. Hathaway to Obama’s House to the NSA or DHS… this is the modern equivalent of eminent domain, the 19th century national political dynamo that resulted in Native American genocide. This is a political land grab for control… and that is not what we need now.
What we need is Leadership. We need the kind of leadership… not control… that will find realistic, real-politik, global sensibilities and balance them against our national (Western?) interests. Not to mention, some 3 million geeks (good hackers, please…) will need to be mollified and included in the process.
I sat with some Fed-types at InfowarCon a couple weeks ago and told them they had to get over the fact that the very people they need to work on national cyber security are the least likely they are to hire… under current policies.
For example: What government security clearance goon is going to approve a metal-detecting, pot-smoking, un-educated (formal) smelly character with Asperger’s Syndrome to develop technology to bring the Dubai Tower elevators to a grinding halt… and be assured he won’t attack the Sears Tower in response to a billing error?
Those are the folks we need, and only a major re-think of what we mean by leadership is going to allow us to approach national security in the asymmetrical way we must… if we ever expect to successfully defend our cyber-borders.