60 Minutes On Cyberwar
The CBS 60 Minutes special, Cyberwar: Sabotaging the System, has been all over the internet since it was first shown last weekend, so I’m behind the response curve here. I was really hoping for an honest piece of illuminating journalism but I’m afraid that’s not what we got.
I don’t know if this is an endemic failing of major US news outlets – rest assured, we have our problems in the UK too; I’m not Yank-bashing – but if you’re going to broadcast pieces as documentaries, then you need dissenting voices to balance your case. Without them there is no dialogue, and you end up with a polemic, which is how this film comes across. It is low on facts and high on unsubstantiated speculation and scaremongering. Worse, it feels like an institutional attempt to shame big business into action. They may need a kick up the ass but portraying them solely as entities who, I quote, “lied to Congress” is unlikely to foster the sort of partnership an integrated strategy requires.
The film was also dishonestly edited in at least one place and, overall, the film just doesn’t cut the journalistic mustard. Let me qualify my comments a bit though and in so doing reiterate what have unintentionally become central themes of this blog:
1. Threats exist.
2. A small number of these threats are potentially serious.
3. Most of these threats are not really threats.
4. Strategic planning relies in part on consideration of worst-case scenarios.
5. Worst-case scenarios should not be the sole pivot of public debate.
6. Hyperbole should be avoided in serious debate.
7. Serious and public debate is necessary.
8. Media have a responsibility to portray the real debate, and in its proper context.
9. Manichean views of cybersecurity are unhelpful and inaccurate: you are not either ‘against us’, or ‘with us’.
10. Concerted and responsible action is required.
When you put it like that, life doesn’t seem quite so hysterical, does it? I would also add a last point:
11. Who are you?
What is your position in this debate, and whose interests are you serving? I would suggest that if you’re not actually focused on your neighbourhood and your fellow humans, wherever they may be, then you may need to recalibrate your view of the world. Sam Liles has just kicked off a new series on community biases and I look forward to his comments. This is also something that I’m going to be looking at over the next year or so, although my ontological approach differs from Sam’s epistemological one. Both are valid and the results may help to clarify what exactly we’re all talking about.
If you get your ideas from programs like this CBS one, I’m sorry. I’m sorry also that CBS got its ideas from a small corner of the security establishment, and failed to acknowledge this. Worst of all, they failed to capture the nature of the environment satisfactorily. Poor show.
Update: John Robb agrees, admittedly for slightly different reasons than I’ve outlined above:
60 Minutes on cyberwarfare. Sensationalist. Based on a comprehensive misunderstanding of the dynamics of warfare driving this. The $17 billion that is slated to be spent on US “cyber security” will almost certainly be ineffectual. The consultants in the show are so far behind the powercurve, they aren’t even in the game. They are only a small part of phalanx of contractors now pushing cyber security — a process akin to the sale of the Maginot line…
Excellent post. I especially like:
“Worst-case scenarios should not be the sole pivot of public debate.”
Unfortunately, that is the norm in every sphere related to national security.
Cheers, Ryan.
Yes, and no: a typical Stevens response, perhaps. There is a tendency towards polarisation, it’s true, but discussion over Afghanistan in the US and UK at least allows for voices on both or more ‘sides’ to be heard in relatively nuanced fashion.
Cyber is somehow different. You caution care and attention, and someone will scream at you for being an ignorant fool playing into the hands of terrorists and China. Or Chinese terrorists. The CBS film didn’t have one person speaking against the institutional message that unless we do something it’s going to be Katrina/9-11/Pearl Harbor all over again. That’s bad journalism, and actually does a disservice to the real threats that they correctly identified. You can’t push a party line and expect non-partisans to take you seriously.
In a way it is sort of par for the course for 60 Minutes. I have a ton of respect for the show, but they often take on noble (or seemingly noble causes) to push a party (corporations or government) to do the right thing or pay attention to an issue. They often have an agenda in that direction. As a result, they sometimes exaggerate.
Ah, that would explain a lot. They’ve got ‘previous’. I certainly haven’t got the knives out for them but this programme was poor.
I like John Robb’s comments. They dovetail with my own idea that much of the talkabout walls and whatnot in cyberdefence could benefit from an examination of the military historical literature on the function of a stronghold.
It could, I’m sure. A ring of steel will simply not be sufficient on its own, not in the way some commentators envisage it at least. There seems to be too much consideration given to defensive breadth, rather than depth. I’m not sure that dimensional analogy is sufficient either. Some of the ‘matrix’ approaches to internet regulation could be well worth looking into…