Former NSA Head General Michael Levinson Comments on the Threat of Cyber Terorism

When confronting cyber crime and terrorism there are three layers: the government system, the political system and popular culture. So, the governmental system: Raw incompetence is the best explanation I can offer you. That’s at the executive-branch level. At the political level, we began last week in Washington with reining in the renegade National Security Agency for actually having phone bills—yours and mine—up at Fort Meade.

Wednesday, we have the Boston Police Department shooting someone who is committed to behead people. And Thursday, we learned that OPM had lost four, make it 14, million sets of records. At the level of popular culture, we Americans have not yet decided what it is we want or what it is we will permit our government to do in this cyber domain. And until we make those decisions, these kinds of events are more likely. American military doctrine says this cyber thing is a domain. There are no rivers or hills up here. It’s all flat. All advantage goes to the attacker. That’s one reality. Then, all of us just fell in love with the ease and convenience and scale, so we decided to take things we used to keep if not in a safe, at least in our desk drawer, and put it up here, where it’s by definition more vulnerable. No. 3, we still have a bunch of scrimmages down here in physical space about what it is you will let your government do to keep you safe. We have no consensus whatsoever up here in the cyber domain. What’s the impact for you? Share your comments with the Cloud ad Cyber Security Center.