More on Cybersecurity--and "Security" in General
Since February 2021, I have been posting on Substack weekly entries on nuclear weapon matters—history, technology, and “secrets,” not current events—in You Might Want to Know. To see the titles of other entries that might be of interest, see the Archive.
The new USCYBERCOM created at the end of the Obama administration was to operate under the Department of Defense. When it came to non-military cyber-security, the Department of Homeland Security, would be in charge.
DHS had been created in 2003, during the George W. Bush administration, after the surprise attacks on the homeland by terrorists on September 11, 2001. DHS was set up to address some of the obvious failures in security that had allowed the attacks.
After we have what is taken to be an “intelligence failure,” we almost always have the question of whether the failure was caused by not having crucial information or instead by not paying the right kind of attention to information we did have. More often the second one, I would guess, but those in charge at the time are probably going to want to claim it was the first one. That might justify a bigger budget for “intelligence collection.”
The Bush/Cheney administration claimed that the failures had been caused by limitations on intelligence collection put in place after the Church Committee hearings in 1975 that discovered those serious abuses in our security agencies. Others said that the failures had come because officials in the Bush administration had not paid attention to warnings they’d been given by officials from the Clinton administration about the danger of just such attacks.
In any case, after the attacks, the Department of Homeland Security was established to fix things. One thing it would try to do is improve information sharing among our many intelligence operations. The commission that had investigated the events on 9/11 had found that to be needed.
What all would DHS be having to look at to achieve security in the homeland? Here’s what today’s (2023) DHS webpage says about its mission, that is, its missions. It sets out four.
The first one is to “secure cyberspace and critical infrastructure.” As we’ve seen, the Nuclear Threat Initiative also took up that mission in 2021.
I think the “critical infrastructure” mentioned in the DHS mission statement is that having to do with “cyberspace” but it could mean all “critical infrastructure.” That could include the roads and bridges and railroads and canals the Department of Transportation is also overseeing. Would it mean helping to recover from weather disasters too, the kind of thing the Federal Emergency Management Agency had been doing since it was created during President Carter’s administration? Ah, I see that FEMA has been incorporated as a part of DHS.
The second mission listed is to “counter terrorism and homeland security threats.” That covers the kinds of attacks by terrorists that led to the creation of DHS, but really all threats to homeland security, doesn’t it? It’s listed here as a separate sub-mission. I’m not sure why.
The third mission listed is to “secure US borders and approaches.” Here the focus must be on illegal entry by people trying to migrate to our country, the drug trade that is thriving here, and other smuggling. Some of the smuggling would be not into the United States but out, especially of guns. It’s obvious we can’t “secure US borders” against such things as the effects of nuclear weapons and pandemics, and, we might now want to add, global warming and climate change.
DHS still has work to do in these areas, I’m sure you’d agree. In fact, matters seem worse in all of them than when DHS was created in 2003. Something seems to be fundamentally out of whack here. Maybe in the way we think about “borders”?
The final mission listed is to “preserve prosperity and economic security.”
I certainly agree with President Eisenhower, for example, that economic prosperity is crucial to homeland security.
“Preserving” economic prosperity suggests keeping things as they are. By catching those who rob banks, for example, something the FBI has long been devoted to. This would now include those who rob banks and people using computers.
Would it include keeping roads and bridges open and in good repair (which the Department of Transportation is also trying to do)?
Might “preserving” economic prosperity and homeland security call also for “making prosperity more equitable” or “making prosperity available to all Americans”? Or is that “promoting” economic prosperity?
“Promoting” is different from “preserving” it, isn’t it? “Promoting” economic security would no doubt require the participation of other departments, the Department of Commerce, maybe. And the Department of Labor. How about the Department of Education?
“Homeland security” is a many-faceted thing, isn’t it?
It is not clear to me, finally, just what DHS’s four missions are, or how they are supposed go together in one department that is devoted to “homeland security.” Maybe somebody has this figured out. Somehow I doubt it.
Here’s a different kind of consideration that may be worth thinking about: whether it is good to have “security” as your only goal.
If your overriding concern is always and only with “security,” it follows, doesn’t it?, that the world will present itself to you as a “threat environment.” That’s the expression our military and intelligence services typically use for the world they are charged to deal with. Their job is to imagine and identify real threats in this world and prepare to meet them.
In 2006, five years after the Bush administration took office, the new Director of National Intelligence was directed to deliver to the Senate Intelligence Committee a “Worldwide Annual Threat Assessment.”
We were to be allowed to see an unclassified version of the ATA if we wanted to. According to the “Statement for the Record” of the “Worldwide Threat Assessment” of 2019, the intelligence community had identified threats in
Cyber,
Online Influence Operations and Election Interference,
Weapons of Mass Destruction and Proliferation,
Terrorism,
Counterintelligence,
Emerging and Disruptive Technologies and Threats to Economic Competitiveness,
Space and Counterspace,
Transnational Organized Crime,
Economics and Energy,
Human Security.
A threat that many outside the intelligence community had begun to be concerned about by 2019 isn’t listed here: global warming and climate change. Maybe it’s included under “Economics and Energy.” Personally I think it’s worth a separate mention.
“Regional” threats were identified in
China and Russia,
East Asia,
Middle East and North Africa,
South Asia,
Russia and Eurasia,
Europe,
Africa,
The Western Hemisphere.
That’s a load, isn’t it? I wonder if any other country felt threatened by so many things in so many regions.
In early 2020, the next year, President Trump suspended issuance of the ATA. That ATA had warned, it seems, that we were dangerously unprepared for a pandemic. Like the COVID pandemic that had started at the beginning of that year.
In 2022, a year after Joe Biden became president, an unclassified version of the ATA was again made available to the public.
Certainly real threats shouldn’t be ignored. But fear has many faces. Not all perceived threats are real threats. Also, if we are looking only for threats, doesn’t a kind of narrowness set in that might keep us from seeing creative opportunities, and even cause us to create real threats that weren’t real threats before?
Might someone be directed to present to Congress an annual Worldwide Assessment of Opportunities?
“Security” may be necessary if opportunities are to be pursued. But if our whole world is to us only a “threat environment” and if “security” is our only concern, might we end up locked in our rooms, guns at hand, listening for strange noises, trying (though never managing finally) to stay awake? Could a whole country, or a significant part of it, get to be like that? Come to want to be like that?
There are ways of seeing and being in the world, I believe, that are as, or maybe more, important than seeing it as only a “threat environment.”
Some forthcoming entries in You Might Want to Know will look into this question.
Since February 2021, I have been posting on Substack weekly entries on nuclear weapon matters—history, technology, and “secrets,” not current events—in You Might Want to Know. To see the titles of other entries that might be of interest, see the Archive.