At a glance.
- Italy's new cybersecurity agency.
- Taking the offensive to establish deterrence.
- Does the US need a Cyber Force?
- China's government sees a cyber risk in smart vehicles.
Italy stands up a new cybersecurity agency.
ZDNet says Italy is preparing to spend €11 billion on renovating government software and hardware as the new Agenzia per la Cybersicurezza Nazionale (ACN) finds its footing. Over the next several years, ACN will onboard roughly one-thousand cybersecurity experts, implement a budget of €529 million, consolidate cyber competencies, create a security strategy, and invest in workforce development.
An op-ed advocates taking the offensive in cyberspace.
A New York Post opinion piece foresees an emboldened China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea with the potential for a renewed cyber onslaught following the US’ withdrawal from Afghanistan, and makes the case for going on the offensive to regain credibility and put an end to the cybercrime currently siphoning billions from the US economy.
China and Russia are working to subvert international diplomatic channels with bad faith endeavors, the piece argues, and “multilateral gabfests” have produced few practical results anyway, with international law still unclear on and unbinding in cyberspace. Defense is difficult and costly, leaving deterrence through retaliation as the strongest course of action. Mutually assured destruction stabilized the global order during the Cold War; the promise of reciprocal cyberattacks could similarly calm the waters now. The Biden Administration should sharpen the US’ offensive capabilities and undertake preemptive operations, the piece concludes: the world will understand.
An independent military service for cyberspace?
An op-ed in The Hill claims the US needs a Cyber Force on the double, just as it needed an Air Force and a Space Force following technological developments on those fronts. Cyberattacks have the potential to devastate critical infrastructure, and while Federal agencies have some authority to react to destructive attacks, the author thinks the US needs a dedicated preventive force.
Whether the Space and Air forces represent unambiguous historical successes isn't entirely clear. While air forces have certainly compiled records of success and gallantry, in the US at least the Air Force's formation had at least as much to do was significantly shaped by once-influential theories of strategic bombing as a war-winner that would make armies and navies as obsolescent as the internal combustion engine had made the horse. (That hasn't happened.) Space Force is too recent, and it was organizationally modest, falling under the existing Department of the Air Force with relatively clear relationships modeled on those that obtain between the Navy and the Marine Corps.
The introduction of new services often brings unwelcome downsides like stovepiping, competition over roles and missions, and so on. Those can be and often have been overcome, but the call to establish a new Service can be a reflexive attempt to lend importance and urgency to a newly perceived operational need. It would be worth asking, and seriously considering, one question: what could a new Cyber Force do that the existing Cyber Command cannot?
China warns that it sees a security threat in smart vehicles.
As Beijing builds out the world’s largest alternative fuel vehicle market, Ministry of Industry and Information Technology officials worry about the threat of cyber intrusions, Bloomberg reports. Regulations governing standards, security self-inspections, data protection, and software maintenance are forthcoming.