On Tuesday March 3, 2015, the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations held a hearing entitled, “Understanding the Cyber Threat and Implications for the 21st Century Economy.” This was the first in a series of hearings focused on cyberspace, the Internet, and the challenges and opportunities that they present. Cyberspace has become the backbone and engine of the 21st century economy, and recent high-profile information security breaches have raised awareness of the vulnerabilities and risks facing cyberspace. With this hearing series, the subcommittee seeks to expand the discussion surrounding these issues to examine the broader implications for businesses and consumers in today’s 21st century economy. This initial hearing will provide an overview of the issue, focusing on the history, evolution, and future of cybersecurity.

The witnesses included Herbert Lin, Senior Research Scholar at the Center for International Security and Cooperation and Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University; Richard Bejtlich, Chief Security Strategist, FireEye, Incorporated; and Gregory Shannon, Chief Scientist, CERT Program, the Software Engineering Institute, Carnegie Mellon University. III.

Lin's testimony begins at 21:00.

In the past years, different forms of non-democratic rule have expanded, associated with revamped attempts at controlling the media. New mechanisms, including legislative, commercial and technological tools have been used to contain, co-opt and silence critical voices. At the same time, bottom-up pursuits of pushing the boundaries of the permissible and redefining the space for creative critical discourse have intensified, with outspoken journalists and netizens creating new platforms to bypass complex political restrictions. This panel presents a unique discussion on how this cat and mouse game works across non-democratic contexts: in Russia, China, and Turkey. These cases present different degrees of separation from democracy, with China being the furthest, categorized as a full authoritarian regime, Turkey being in between an illiberal democracy and competitive authoritarianism, and Russia positioned in the middle of China and Turkey. Beyond illuminating the specific dynamics of each case, the panel will engage in drawing the parallels and distinctions in control and resistance mechanisms across the three cases. It will further explore and reflect on the recent tendencies of cross-authoritarian diffusion of information management, illustrating how the three regimes and the critical journalists in them may be learning from one another and what that means for our understanding of media in non-democratic contexts. Watch Jaclyn Kerr's discussion of the Russian case.

Every week, the Islamic State (ISIS) makes further headlines with its ruthless behavior. Beheadings, mass executions, burnings and extreme acts of brutality are the methods of a terrorist campaign intended to cow opponents and rally potential fighters. At the same time, the group is fighting a guerilla war against Iraqi forces while engaging in more conventional infantry battles against Kurdish Peshmerga and Free Syrian Army cadres. The many tactics of ISIS raises the question: Which type of war are we fighting against?

CISAC's Joe Felter and his Empirical Studies of Conflict colleagues Eli Berman and Jacob Shapiro ask those questions in this National Interest article.

In a commentary on the long-term storage of SNF in the March 2015 issue of Nature Materials, Professor Rod Ewing writes that, "to design reliable and safe geological repositories it is critical to understand how the characteristics of spent nuclear fuel evolve with time, and how this affects the storage environment. Globally, about 10,000 metric tonnes of heavy metal (MTHM) are produced each year by nuclear power plants, and a cumulative inventory of approximately 300,000 MTHM is stored either in pools or dry casks at reactor sites around the world1. Most of this inventory is destined for long-term storage and eventual geologic disposal. Thus, the behaviour of UO2 in spent fuel as a waste form must be understood and evaluated under the extraordinary conditions of geologic disposal, which extends to hundreds of thousands of years. The behaviour of nuclear fuel under the conditions of long-term disposal in a geologic repository depend specifically on the chemical changes that have occurred to the fuel during service life in the reactor."

For 25 years now, a weak-state fixation has transfixed U.S. foreign policy, Amy Zegart writes in this Foreign Policy piece. But Washington's paranoia over weak and failing states is distracting it from the real national security threats looming on the horizon.

As the fallout from the November 2014 cyber attack on Sony Pictures Entertainment continues, with Sony co-chairman Amy Pascal stepping down this month, it’s still not clear how the story will end, either for the Hollywood luminaries or U.S. national security. Herb Lin writes in this Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists piece that we can learn from the incident and start to formulate responses for the future attacks that will inevitably occur.