Cyber Project

President Trump’s effort to improve the climate for dialogue with Putin may be commendable, but his reluctance to object to Russia’s offensive digital campaigns targeting democratic processes is a cause for concern. The indictment of 12 Russian intelligence officers is a sharp reminder of Russian capabilities for coming elections, writes two Swedish researchers at Harvard Kennedy School.

What does it take to build a good data product or service? Not just a product or service that’s useful, or one that’s commercially viable, but one that uses data ethically and responsibly.

Over the past year, there has been a great discussion of data ethics, motivated in part by discomfort over “fake news,” targeted advertising, algorithmic bias, and the effect that data products have on individuals and on society. Concern about data ethics is hardly new; the ACM, IEEE, and the American Statistical Association all have ethical codes that address data. But the intensity with which we’ve discussed ethics shows that something significant is happening: data science is coming of age and realizing its responsibilities. A better world won’t come about simply because we use data; data has its dark underside.

When we think about critical infrastructure, the first assets that come to mind include the electric grid, water networks and transportation systems. Further unpacking the definition of critical infrastructure, we consider industries such as agriculture, defense or the financial sector. However, we rarely think about where the underlying systems that enable technology functionality across these sectors physically reside, who developed the technology, and who can access and manage that technology.

The hard thing about being an ethical data scientist isn’t understanding ethics. It’s the junction between ethical ideas and practice. It’s doing good data science.

For years, political leaders have warned of the danger of a “Cyber Pearl Harbor.” Thus far, however, cyber weapons seem to be oversold, more useful for signaling or sowing confusion than for physical destruction.

In the middle of the twentieth century, people feared that advances in computers and communications would lead to the type of centralized control depicted in George Orwell’s 1984. Today, billions of people have eagerly put Big Brother in their pockets.

Bruce Schneier describes the methods and success of authoritarian governments' internet censorship.

Bruce Schneier discusses security threats and the shortage of security regulations.

This essay seeks to explain why the United States is struggling to deal with the “soft” cyberoperations that have been so prevalent in recent years: cyberespionage and cybertheft, often followed by strategic publication; information operations and propaganda; and relatively low-level cyber disruptions such as denial-of-service and ransomware attacks.