The debate began as rousing and intellectually stimulating as it ended. The motion was, “The Cyber War Threat has been grossly exaggerated.” This Neustar, WAMU, Newseum and Rosencrantz-sponsored debate refreshingly stayed on topic.  This, of course, was unlike the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Cyber Shockwave, which showed how unprepared government and industry can be in even hypothetically discussing cyber threats.

No, this debate took the best minds of cyber security, cyber defense, and cyber warfare and logically debated whether on not the United States is at the precipice of cyber war or merely lots of cyber crime. The debaters were all very qualified in their fields.

• For the motion: Marc Rotenburg and Bruce Schneier
• Against the motion: VADM Mike McConnell (ret.) and Jonathan Zittrain

The debate centered on trying to delineate the differences between cyber war and cyber crime. Both parties recognized that the Internet is not a safe place. In fact, metaphors regarding passing beer from one person to another at a Red Sox game abounded! Cyber crime, as Rotenburg argued, exists; however, calling it a war only provides billions of dollars in un-needed government expenses, and accelerates a historical “power grab” by the National Security Agency (NSA).

Rotenburg insightfully discussed the numerous attempts by NSA to take control of the Internet, referencing the infamous Clipper Chip, which, of course, was NSA’s failed attempt to be the man-in-the-middle of all encrypted communications on the Internet.

However, the side against the motion argued that this issue was not even the point to the debate. In fact, we are threatened every day by Russian and Chinese cyber warfare agencies. That’s right, they have cyber warfare agencies right now and are actively using them. The Russian cyber war attack on Georgia was referenced as evidence. Even more broad and successful cyber attacks used to reinforce traditional warfare have been conducted by Israel against Syriian radar and North Korean nuclear factories.

Unfortunately, the discussion had to remain at an unclassified level, need I say more?  Overall, the debate was very well argued on both sides. I concluded simply that the threat of cyber war is very real, but having defenses and preparations made in secret are counter productive. Keeping this issue open and transparent and reinforcing our cyber defenses are the only ways to actually mitigate these threats.

In the tradition of all Intelligence Squared Debates, a winner is chosen based on audience feedback. Initially, the vote revealed around 54% against the motion, 22% for the motion, and 24% undecided. However, by the close of the debate the tables turned: 72% against, 22% for, and 6% undecided.  So the convincing arguments from Jonathan Zittrain and VADM McConnell won the debate.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 9th, 2010 at 11:22 am and is filed under Jeremy Duncan, Cybersecurity, Blog: Information Assurance, Blog: IPv6. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.