Volume 3: Issue 3
Mark Nance Reviews "Cyber-Threats, Information Warfare, and Critical Infrastructure Protection: Defending the U.S. Homeland" by Anthony H. Cordesman
“Government is naturally obsessed with itself,” writes Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Cyber-Threats, Information Warfare, and Critical Infrastructure Protection: Defending the U.S. Homeland. Perhaps it is an understatement, but one borne out nonetheless by dozens of pages quoting “findings” and “recommendations” by numerous federal organizations empanelled to sort out the nation’s critical infrastructure vulnerabilities. The fact that the author devotes only a onepage chapter to the role of local and state governments, and only two pages to Chapter 7, Role of Private Industry is telling. Without a doubt there are areas where the federal government will play first (and only) chair in cyberwarfare and defense, but the feds will not find the resources to maintain superiority by looking inward. Much of the excerpted testimony and quoted government-speak in Cyber-Threats seems to fall in the category of bureaucratic navel gazing. That is not to say that valid points are not made, it is more to say that the same points seem to get made year after year in study after study.