Editorial

American lawmakers raise spectre of national Cybersecurity weakness

For Congress, “The U.S. government is currently not designed to act with the speed and agility necessary to defend the country in cyberspace”

Posted 12 March 2020 by Gary Flood


A year-long congressional study of American cyberspace strategy concludes that the United States remains ill-prepared to deter attacks, including from Russia, North Korea and Iran.

According to a story in The New York Times, whose reporters attended the press conference where findings of the research were aired yesterday, the politicians behind the research are now calling for “an overhaul of how the United States manages its offensive and defensive cyberoperations”.

The report, which was ordered by the US Congress and chaired by a bipartisan group of lawmakers, says the military needs many more personnel trained for cyberoperations. Another key priority is to prioritise keeping the US economy would continue to function online, ensuring the flow of goods and services nationally in the event of a cyber attack.

It also says Congress needs to dedicate committees to cyberoperations, and the public and private sectors need vastly improved defenses created in layers, along with more aggressive offensive actions inside the networks of other nations.

Which is far from a trivial task – as, the paper notes, “Those steps would be intended to drastically raise the cost of attacking the United States or its companies.”

“The U.S. government is currently not designed to act with the speed and agility necessary to defend the country in cyberspace,” the final report of the so-say ‘Cyberspace Solarium Commission‘ concludes.

“We must get faster and smarter, improving the government’s ability to organize concurrent, continuous and collaborative efforts to build resilience, respond to cyber threats, and preserve military options that signal a capability and willingness to impose costs on adversaries.”

The story also notes that ‘cyberoperations’ are of growing importance, but they are not yet as central to American national security strategy as nuclear weapons were in the 1950s, but adds that just as early Cold War strategists needed to build up the nuance of deterrence around nuclear weapons, “national security experts today are wrestling with how to deter adversaries in cyberspace”.

To build up deterrence, a key recommendation of the commission is that the United States speak more clearly about its cyberoperations, which are shrouded in mystery and rarely publicly discussed, it adds.

The Reuters news agency adds that among the group’s recommendations are a set of proposals that could set in motion the creation of a new “National Cyber Director” at the White House, a strengthened military cyber reserve force, and a unique State Department bureau for cyber issues.

America needs a plan to keep the national economy going in case of a massive Cyber attack, says the study