The new federal strategy for implementing cloud-computing solutions is called “Cloud First”— and with good reason. We now systematically prefer cloud-computing solutions to those based on local servers and laptops. The allure of efficiencies, economies of scale, high-end services and — most importantly — reduced costs are almost irresistible.
But, as American governments at the federal, state and local levels rush headlong toward cloud computing, wouldn’t it be wise to pause and ask, “What’s at stake?”
From a security perspective, as a former director of the National Security Agency charged with stealing other nation’s secrets while protecting our own, I believe these stakes are high and the costs of a mistake particularly grave.
The current structure of the Internet is fundamentally open — open in terms of access and open in terms of use. But this openness has consequences. As deputy secretary of Defense William Lynn said in a speech announcing our military’s Strategy for Operating in Cyberspace: “The Internet was designed to be open, transparent, and interoperable. Security and identity management were secondary objectives in system design. This lower emphasis on security in the Internet’s initial design … gives attackers a built-in advantage.”
The transition to the cloud gives us a chance to change that flawed security paradigm. We can, if we choose to, build in more powerful security principles from the beginning as integral components of cloud architecture. Where more sophisticated and costly security solutions are too expensive for an individual user (or small network), they are more affordable when the costs are distributed among a larger group of users.
Published for The Wall Street Journal, June 2nd, 2011:
The latest lunacy to get a popular hearing is the idea that harsh CIA interrogations yielded no useful intelligence. I guess we should toss out the 9/11 Commission Report.
For all of its well-deserved reputation for pragmatism, American popular culture frequently nurtures or at least tolerates preposterous views and theories. Witness the 9/11 “truthers” who, lacking any evidence whatsoever, claim that 9/11 was a Bush administration plot. And then we have the “birthers” who, even in the face of clear contrary evidence, take as an article of faith that President Obama was not born in the United States and hence is not eligible to hold his current office.
Let me add a third denomination to this faith-based constellation: interrogation deniers, i.e., individuals who hold that the enhanced interrogation techniques used against CIA detainees have never yielded useful intelligence. They, of course, cling to this view despite all evidence to the contrary, despite the testimony of four CIA directors, and despite Mr. Obama’s chief counterterrorism adviser John Brennan’s statement that there’s been “a lot of information that has come out from these interrogation procedures that the agency has in fact used against the real hard-core terrorists.”
The recent dispute over what strains of intelligence led to the killing of Osama bin Laden highlights the phenomenon. It must appear to outside observers like a theological debate over how many angels can reside on the head of a pin. So we see carefully tailored arguments designed to discount the value of enhanced interrogations: the first mention of the courier’s name came from a detainee not in CIA custody; CIA detainees gave false and misleading information about the courier; there is no way to confirm that information obtained through enhanced interrogation was the decisive intelligence that led us directly to bin Laden.
Published for The Washington Post, April 22nd, 2011:
Libyan rebels have made it clear that any proposal to cease fighting and end their current battle against the Libyan government must include the removal of Moammar Gaddafi. President Obama, along with French President Nicolas Sarkozy and British Prime Minister David Cameron, has repeatedly called for the removal of this violent dictator. The objective is clear. And Libya’s future is being determined by a civil war, one in which we unarguably have a hand.
In a speech last month at the National Defense University, President Obama carefully distinguished between the administration’s approach in Libya and America’s experience in Iraq. Referring to overthrowing Gaddafi by force, he stated: “To be blunt, we went down that road in Iraq. . . . [B]ut regime change there took eight years, thousands of American and Iraqi lives, and nearly a trillion dollars. That is not something we can afford to repeat in Libya.”
For one thing, it is not at all clear whether the president will have the luxury of achieving his political objectives without the application of more force. More important, the president’s statement reflects a fundamental misunderstanding that may have serious implications for the way ahead.
Regime change in Iraq did not take eight years. It was accomplished in a matter of weeks. What consumed eight years was the aftermath of regime change: the still ongoing process of transforming Iraq into a self-governing, reasonably secure, democratic society.
In 2009 the Justice Department announced that 9/11 plotter Khalid Shaikh Mohammed would be tried in New York City, setting off a firestorm of protests. Besides the cost and safety concerns, at issue are whether terrorists should be tried in criminal court or whether national security requires the use of military commissions. Likewise, issues like the closing of Guantanamo, the reading of Miranda rights, and enhanced interrogation all center on the same question: How should the U.S. treat captured alleged terrorists? In a war with no foreseeable end, whose actors are neither criminals nor soldiers; can we keep America safe and still bring terrorists to justice.
The Panel
For The Motion:
Michael Hayden
Marc Thiessen
Against The Motion:
David Frakt
Stephen Jones
Moderator:
John Donvan is a correspondent for ABC News Nightline. He has served as ABC White House Correspondent, along with postings in Moscow, London, Jerusalem and Amman.
EVENT DETAILS:
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 2010
Reception:5:45 – 6:30PM
Debate:6:45 – 8:30PM
NYU Skirball Center
566 LaGuardia Place
at Washington Square South
New York, NY 10012
As published for The Washington Post on January 31st, 2010:
In the war on terrorism, this country faces an enemy whose theory of warfare ends the hard-won distinction in modern thought between combatant and noncombatant. In doing that for which we have created government — ensuring life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness — how can we be adequately aggressive to ensure the first value, without unduly threatening the other two? This is hard. And people don’t have to be lazy or stupid to get it wrong.
We got it wrong in Detroit on Christmas Day. We allowed an enemy combatant the protections of our Constitution before we had adequately interrogated him. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab is not “an isolated extremist.” He is the tip of the spear of a complex al-Qaeda plot to kill Americans in our homeland.
In the 50 minutes the FBI had to question him, agents reportedly got actionable intelligence. Good. But were there any experts on al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula in the room (other than Abdulmutallab)? Was there anyone intimately familiar with any National Security Agency raw traffic to, from or about the captured terrorist? Did they have a list or photos of suspected recruits?
When questioning its detainees, the CIA routinely turns the information provided over to its experts for verification and recommendations for follow-up. The responses of these experts — “Press him more on this, he knows the details” or “First time we’ve heard that” — helps set up more detailed questioning.
As published for the Washington Times on August 20, 2009:
Early next week the Obama administration is expected to release another collection of documents on the U.S. government’s detention and interrogation of al Qaeda terrorists. The documents will likely include a lightly redacted version of the CIA inspector general’s 2004 report on the program, more Department of Justice legal opinions (including the 2007 opinion on which I relied while director of CIA), as well as some reporting on the overall effectiveness of the program.
Many intelligence professionals are simply asking: “Why?”
Indeed, in his own recent op-ed, CIA Director Leon E. Panetta noted that one of his Western allies had recently asked him why Washington seemed to be so consumed with what CIA had done in the past given all the challenges of the present.
There is no simple (or good) answer to that question, but most professionals at Langley knew that more of these kinds of releases were inevitable once the president decided in April to release DOJ memos that revealed substantial details of the interrogation program. If those once highly classified facts would no longer be protected, what would be? Where was the line?
As published for the New York Times on July 27, 2009:
THE recent report of inspectors general on the President’s Surveillance Program operated by the National Security Agency has led some to make hasty and deeply flawed judgments about the value and legality of what was a critical part of protecting America from further attack after Sept. 11.
The program was crucial in addressing one of the most stinging criticisms of the 9/11 commission — the need to reduce the gap between foreign intelligence and domestic security. This was an especially difficult task, which helps explain both the program’s importance and its sensitivity. The program was lawful, effective and necessary.
The reflexive judgments to the contrary seem hasty at best. Although the inspectors general report notes that the compartmented nature of the program hurt its utility (it should be noted that restricting access to especially sensitive data is hardly a unique phenomenon in an intelligence community that forever has to balance using information and protecting it), it also notes that users of the information rated the program “of value,” “useful” and a “key resource,” albeit one that was most often used in combination with other intelligence sources.
Intelligence professionals call that “connecting the dots,” something for which we were roundly criticized after Sept. 11 as not sufficiently doing. The report also suggested that there were counterterrorism successes associated with the program but that these could not be discussed in an unclassified venue. Although little commented on, the report also mentions that “even those read into the program would have been unaware of the full extent” of reporting.
