On March 3, the Biden administration released its Interim National Security Strategic Guidance. Regarding cybersecurity, the document stated that 

Read the rest at Lawfareblog

On February 10, 2021, the China Program at Shorenstein APARC hosted Professor Oriana Skylar Mastro, Center Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies​ for the virtual program "Military Competition with China: Harder to Win Than During the Cold War?" Professor Jean Oi, William Haas Professor of Chinese Politics and director of the APARC China Program, moderated the event.

As US-China competition intensifies, experts debate the degree to which the current strategic environment resembles that of the Cold War. Those that argue against the analogy often highlight how China is deeply integrated into the US-led world order. They also point out that, while tense, US-China relations have not turned overtly adversarial. But there is another, less optimistic reason the comparison is unhelpful: deterring and defeating Chinese aggression is harder now than it was against the Soviet Union. In her talk, Dr. Mastro analyzed how technology, geography, relative resources and the alliance system complicate U.S. efforts to enhance the credibility of its deterrence posture and, in a crisis, form any sort of coalition. Mastro and Oi's thought-provoking discussion ranged from the topic of why even US allies are hesitant to take a strong stance against China to whether or not Taiwan could be a catalyst for military conflict. Watch now: 

On Jan. 6, the U.S. Capitol was assaulted and occupied for the first time since 1814. Five people were killed, including a Capitol Police officer. Two Republican Representatives have introduced a bill to establish a national bipartisan commission to investigate the attack. We agree that a commission is needed. Here, we sketch the mandate, major areas of inquiry, and legislative language that we believe are needed to guide this effort.

Read the rest at Lawfare Blog

Last week, I wrote about cybersecurity issues raised by the loss of physical control in the U.S. Capitol during the occupation. Since then, it has become clear that a number of devices are missing and presumably taken by the occupiers. The rioters took laptops from the offices of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Sen. Jeff Merkley. These devices are now in the physical possession of people who can be considered adversarial threat actors, and those actors now have the opportunity to take their time in trying to penetrate them and see what data is available on those machines.

Read the rest at Lawfare blog

The recently revealed SolarWinds hack unfolded like a scene from a horror movie: Victims frantically barricaded the doors, only to discover that the enemy had been hiding inside the house the whole time. For months, intruders have been roaming wild inside the nation’s government networks, nearly all of the Fortune 500, and thousands of other companies and organizations. The breach—believed to be the work of an elite Russian spy agency—penetrated the Pentagon, nuclear labs, the State Department, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and other offices that used network-monitoring software made by Texas-based SolarWinds. America’s intelligence agencies and cyberwarriors never detected a problem. Instead, the breach was caught by the cybersecurity firm FireEye, which itself was a victim.

Read the rest at The Atlantic

On October 19, the U.S. Department of Justice unsealed charges accusing six Russian military intelligence officers of an aggressive worldwide hacking campaign. 

Read the rest at  Council on Foreign Relations

Security costs money. You pay for security because you want something to not happen. It’s not that something good happens with security, it's that something bad doesn’t happen. 

Read the rest at Politico 

Does a tracking system making laws more enforceable actually improve society? Ahmed examines how technology firms and the Chinese government build databases and information sharing procedures that monitor the behavior of individuals, corporations, legal institutions, and government representatives, with the end goal of building a society where those individuals and corporations follow the law.

Read the rest at Stanford HAI