Daily Security Blog

The Russian attack on many US government cyber systems reported Sunday in the New York Times is being called on of the most sophisticated attacks we have seen.

There are actually many lessons to be learned from the largest and most sophisticated cyber-attack to date reported in the New York Times Sunday, but perhaps the most basic is that what we are doing now to protect ourselves in cyberspace isn’t working. We need to rethink our approach to cybersecurity.

I was the optimist, I said I could stretch to a 1.5 out of 10. My fellow panelist Mark Montgomery, Executive Director of the Congressional Solarium Commission, wasn’t as generous. He said it’s just a 1 out of 10. No argument from me.

If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.

– Sun Tzu, the Art of War

In a major speech yesterday, President-elect Biden said that notwithstanding the great work that had been done to create a vaccine for COVID-19, it was his responsibility to “level” with the populace about how we still had a long difficult and dangerous winter ahead of us.

In earlier posts we documented that China through their comprehensive digital policies – largely articulated in their Belt and Road and Digital Silk road initiatives — has launched a comprehensive program to embed their technologies around the world. We have also indicated that this program has already succeeded throughout much of the world placing the west in general, and the USA in particular at a substantial geo-political disadvantage.

In previous posts we have documented that China has used their comprehensive. Integrated – and exceedingly well endowed – cyber strategy BRI and DSR initiatives) to steal intellectual property, compete unfairly in international markets and create a strategic advantage in digital technology on 5 continents (including until recently our own).

In previous blogs we discussed how China used theft of western intellectual property to quickly make up ground in technology. Fueled with this infusion of knowledge China has maximized its utility by providing massive support to its domestic industry enabling their companies to have competitive advantages. In this fashion – a traditionally Chinese approach – they seek to supplant the western, US led, model not be invoking the workers of the world to unite, but by streamlining access to YOUTube and TikTok

This post is a one in the “Rethink Cybersecurity” series. Additional posts in this series are available here It might be understandable that countries with underperforming economies and anxious to provide their citizens with the economic development that can be stimulated by digital technology would be attracted to low priced, high value Chinese technology. But […]

In an earlier post we demonstrated that US diplomatic efforts to encourage countries to remove Chinese technology, while compelling from a security perspective, may be politically and economically impractical. Many European, Latin American African and Asian 5-G systems will be built on top of existing 3-G and 4G systems which are built on Huawei and ZTE technology.