Authored by Glenn

“When the Trump administration takes office in January, it will face decisions over a set of profoundly important antitrust cases against several U.S. tech firms. These cases might significantly change how Americans communicate, shop, and receive news and entertainment. But another element of the cases has largely escaped attention: If they proceed as planned by the government, they could result in serious danger to national security…”

Book review of ALGORITHMS OF ARMAGEDDON: The Impact of Artificial Intelligence On Future Wars, By George Galdorisi and Sam J. Tangredi/U.S. Naval Institute Press

“Their excellent book is intended ‘to provide a detailed and impartial picture of the current state and potential evolution of military applications of AI.’  Given the technical complexity of the topic, it succeeds in that goal in a surprisingly readable way. The first three chapters are a useful explanation of big data, artificial intelligence, machine learning and autonomous systems, with a historical overview of how AI developed and in particular how it is being deployed by Russia and China. While that will all be familiar to experts, it’s a welcome addition to the explanatory literature in this area. The middle, and most alarming, part of the book is a discussion of how AI is being weaponized; it considers whether autonomous AI-empowered weapons can truly remain under human control. The final chapters speculate, in a disturbingly realistic way, how an AI-assisted or AI-directed global World War III might ignite and conclude…”

Book review of UNIT X: How the Pentagon and Silicon Valley are Transforming the Future of War, By Raj M. Shah and Christopher Kirchhoff/Scribner

“In October 2016, at the height of America’s air campaign against ISIS in Syria and Iraq, Defense Innovation Board members and the head of the new Defense Innovation Unit Experimental (DIUx) wanted to see how technology was helping the military’s mission and where improvements were needed. So, they visited the Combined Air Operations Center in Qatar, which controlled military flights in 21 countries from northeast Africa and the Middle East through Central and South Asia. They didn’t like what they saw. Arguably already out of date when the center opened in 2003, the CAOC’s technology had remained mostly unchanged in the ensuing 13 years – several lifetimes in technology cycles…”

Book review of RETHINKING CYBER WARFARE: The International Relations of Digital Disruption, by R. David Edelman/Oxford University Press

“Cyberattacks are ubiquitous and constant; Russia, China, Iran and North Korea launch cyber-maliciousness with impunity; and traditional concepts of deterrence seem useless.  As the old saying about the weather goes: everybody talks about it, but nobody does anything about it. Rethinking Cyber Warfare seeks to fix this. In author R. David Edelman’s view, Russia’s massive cyber offense against Estonia on the morning of April 27, 2007, was the first nation-state cyberattack intended to have a national security outcome. Subsequently, as we all know too well, countries around the world have suffered from an ever-increasing barrage of cyber mischief ranging from theft to espionage to destruction to disinformation. And yet nations aren’t in full-fledged cyberwar…”

Book review of MEANS OF CONTROL: How The Hidden Alliance Of Tech And Government Is Creating A New American Surveillance State, by By Byron Tau/Crown

“In many ways, what Americans profess to want is exactly what they are unable or unwilling to achieve. Perhaps the best example of this peculiar phenomenon: despite our related aversion to government intrusiveness and desire for privacy, we Americans (alone among industrial democracies) have been unable to adopt basic privacy legislation or even limited regulation of data brokers. Congress has been struggling with privacy legislation for a decade, and just weeks ago, as part of the recent reauthorization of part of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, it rejected an amendment barring government purchases of Americans’ information from data brokers. This perhaps puzzling inability to safeguard the privacy we claim to want is, in journalist Byron Tau’s opinion, largely due to the public’s ignorance about just how little privacy they really have…”

Book review of Data, Emerging Technologies and Intelligence, by Miah Hammond-Errey/Routledge

“Starting roughly in 2010, the increasing popularity of social media and mobile devices was both the cause and consequence of an explosion of data about individual users – identities, location, commercial patterns and other personal details. Just how useful such information could be was revealed to the general public by the sensational disclosures in 2018 of Cambridge Analytica’s harvesting of Facebook user data. But well before then, intelligence agencies had recognized the value of mass information about the digital lives of domestic and foreign citizens. Although their comments may have been aimed at a smaller and more technical audience, experts in government and academia had been examining the growing significance of big data in the process of producing national intelligence. Over the past decade, articles, scholarly journals, conferences and books have sought to explain and predict just how the acquisition, compilation and analysis of ‘big data’ would change the way Western intelligence agencies operate…”

“Two summers ago, when Honeywell told the Pentagon it feared that a subcontractor had improperly put Chinese metals in some F-35 jet engines, the reaction was swift. The Air Force halted acceptance of new aircraft containing the Chinese cobalt and samarium alloy. While the Defense Department and prime contractor Lockheed Martin raced to find out if the Chinese-sourced metals could be relied on, 18 badly needed fighter jets sat on a tarmac in Texas. We were lucky that time. The Air Force resumed deliveries after determining that the potentially compromised parts wouldn’t affect airplane safety. Next time, could sabotaged or defective Chinese parts, or secret surveillance devices, be slipped into weapons or communications systems by unwitting vendors further down the defense supply chain?…”

“In the cyber equivalent of a Hollywood exposé, nearly 600 documents apparently leaked from a Chinese hacking contractor were posted publicly to the web late last month. The files contain the kind of private details and gossip that normally only spy agencies such as the National Security Agency and the U.K. General Communications Headquarters get to see. Yet there they were on the front pages of the world’s newspapers. There is more than a little irony in seeing a hacking group, whose efforts were supposed to be secret, being caught with its pants down. It’s also fascinating to have the curtain pulled away, revealing some very practical aspects of the world of freelance hackers. But on a deeper level, the hackers’ internal secrets illuminate the threats we face from that world…”

“Only two months remain before the most important operational statute in the national security area expires. Yet Congress struggles to agree on the terms of any extension. Republicans and Democrats in both the Senate and House broadly concur that Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which lapses on April 19, is of critical value. Even so, there’s widespread acceptance of the need for some level of reform, in part to address past abuses of the statutory authority by the FBI. Members of Congress are sharply divided, however, over whether to amend the statute to require the FBI to obtain a court order before it looks in its computer database for Americans’ information incidentally acquired under that section. While such a proposal might seem attractive, it’s misguided…”

“When asked at a Cipher Brief conference several years ago, to name the most serious security threat facing the United States, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper had a short and ready answer: disinformation. General Clapper elaborated that cyber-propelled foreign and domestic disinformation could have the pernicious effect of corroding the legitimacy of our democratic institutions, leading to loss of trust in government and ultimately to autocratic reactions. That deep concern over the threat posed by disinformation and other lies spread and turbocharged by social media is at the heart of Liar in a Crowded Theater, a new book by Jeff Kosseff, a Professor of Cybersecurity Law at the U.S. Naval Academy…”

“It’s hard to imagine another occasion when a senior group of national security experts has made so sweeping a statement about a failure to act. More alarming is that the prospect of such a failure is so real. This is exactly the situation Congress and the national security establishment are facing with the year-end expiration of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The statute, considered indispensable to the US Intelligence Community, allows the surveillance of foreign intelligence targets located overseas who use American email and other communications systems. Notwithstanding its crucial importance, the law is the subject of complex controversy – both old and new, and technical and political. Understanding that controversy requires a brief explanation of the statute…”

Book review of The Future of National Intelligence, by Shay Hershkovitz/Rowman & Littlefield

“Over the past century, America has been warned that it was inadequately prepared for world wars, on the verge of losing the space race with the launch of Sputnik, woefully ill-equipped after the 9/11 attacks to thwart international terrorism, and more recently, moving too sluggishly to deal with technological innovation affecting many aspects of our national wellbeing. Yet if history is any guide, we’ve mostly been able to catch up and address impending threats.… Is it different this time? The technological advances relevant to the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) are now so different in scale, speed and scope that they threaten to overwhelm, if not render partly irrelevant, our foreign intelligence system. That’s the premise of The Future of National Intelligence, by Dr. Shay Hershkovitz, a respected commentator and academic who has focused on innovation and intelligence…”

“Since its enactment in 2008, the electronic surveillance program established under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) has been controversial, in large part because Americans who happen to be in contact with a foreign surveillance target might have their communications picked up by the U.S. Intelligence Community. This ‘incidental collection’ of Americans’ communications is seen as an inevitable byproduct of the program. But the subsequent searching for Americans’ names or email addresses in the information acquired under Section 702—even for well-intentioned and legitimate purposes—has drawn criticism…”

“A provision of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that has generated controversy around fears of the potential for abuse has proven to be crucial for America’s intelligence community in uncovering a web of fraudulent North Korean activity, which had been generating revenue for its nuclear program, according to a top State Department official…”

“For many of the things we depend on, government regulations keep us safe where market forces alone are insufficient. We feel confident pulling a box of pills off the shelf at the drugstore because we know the government is watching the pharmaceutical industry closely. We don’t even stop to think about it, and that’s true for many other critical products and services. But there is one major exception: the cyber and digital technology we rely on every day. That’s about to change…”

“A ban of TikTok throughout the United States, if it could actually be enacted, would immediately solve our national security concerns about the wildly popular Chinese-owned video app. But such a ban might ultimately put our national security at greater risk. Moreover, it would sidestep a broader problem…”

“…the intense, politically charged focus on criminality deflects attention from a far more pernicious danger — that we fail to appreciate the national security risks posed by casually tossing government documents into moving boxes.”

“With the laudable goals of promoting competition and outlawing unfair tactics in the online world, Congress is considering antitrust bills that would regulate how companies such as Apple, Amazon, Facebook (Meta), Google (Alphabet) and Microsoft treat other businesses that use their digital platforms. Regardless of the extent of regulation, everyone recognizes that the platforms must be kept free from malware and spyware. But some of the provisions in the bills might inadvertently undercut the ability to do that…”

“As Russian missiles rain on Ukraine, there’s another battle brewing — in the cybersphere. Destructive malware has flooded hundreds of Ukrainian websites and computers since Vladimir Putin announced his invasion. It would be a mistake to assume such attacks will remain limited to Ukrainian targets…”

“President Joe Biden has taken forceful and public efforts to address the ever-worsening scourge of Russian-based ransomware attacks. By taking ownership of the issue, however, he inadvertently reduces the pressure on the two groups that can fix the problem: Congress and the private sector…”

“Managing competition with an ever more assertive China isn’t expressly on the agenda for President Biden’s meetings this week with European leaders. But the issue of how best to counter China will nonetheless percolate through their deliberations, surely influencing the expected American agreement to Europe’s proposal for a new EU-U.S. Trade and Technology Council…”

“Foreign adversaries who use U.S. servers are hiding in plain sight, but we can unveil them without violating the Constitution…”

“It’s unrealistic to think we’ll be able to detect and stop every future attack; yet there are bolder steps the government can take now that will make a big difference in protecting its vital information and systems and aiding the private sector…”

“On Wednesday, July 15th, shortly after 3 p.m., the Twitter accounts of Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Warren Buffett, Michael Bloomberg, Kanye West, and other politicians and celebrities began behaving strangely…”

“The Election Day results aren’t all in, but already there are three clear winners: disinformation by a landslide, early voting by a clear majority, and governmental security steps by a significant margin…”

“Chances are we will soon look back on the 2020 elections as the most secure in our history. There will probably be delays, disputes, and disinformation. But actual large-scale chicanery with the balloting or tabulation won’t be among the problems…”

“To prevent this type of total systems failure from happening again, we need a better way to stop deadly pathogenic outbreaks in their tracks at the earliest moment. The bad news is that we can’t do that under the current global health system. The good news is that the solution is within our grasp…”

“If the Black Death in 1348 and the Spanish Flu in 1918 accelerated existing but nascent societal trends, what developments will the Covid-19 pandemic jump-start? While some developments will be revealed only retrospectively, one is immediately manifest: public health requirements will force us to decide just how much technology-fueled surveillance we really want…”

“While intelligence professionals must continue working as usual during the coronavirus crisis, their jobs must change post-crisis in four fundamental ways: The scope of mission must be broadened; public information relied on much more; taxpayer dollars used with greater effectiveness; and our battle against foreign disinformation intensified…”

“The threats of cyberattack and hypersonic missiles are two examples of easily foreseeable challenges to our national security posed by rapidly developing technology. It is by no means certain that we will be able to cope with those two threats, let alone the even more complicated and unknown challenges presented by the general onrush of technology — the digital revolution or so-called Fourth Industrial Revolution — that will be our future for the next few decades…”