Science, Technology, and Public Policy

Joseph Nye argues that prudence results from the fear of creating unintended consequences in unpredictable systems and can develop into a norm of nonuse or limited use of certain weapons or a norm of limiting targets. Something like this happened with nuclear weapons when the superpowers came close to the brink of nuclear war in 1962, during the Cuban missile crisis. The Limited Test Ban Treaty followed a year later.

Bruce Schneier and Tarah Wheeler describe the future of war as cyberwar. They advise that if weapons and systems aren't secure, don't even bother bringing them onto the battlefield.

Tarah Wheeler critiques a new book, This Is How They Tell Me The World Ends by Nicola Perlroth, and concludes that it gets the policy recommendations right while making technical errors that could undermine trust in its conclusions.

Bruce Schneier recommends that the United States improve government software procurement. Scrutiny cannot end with purchase: Security requirements need to be monitored throughout the software's life cycle, along with what software is being used in government networks.

If Joe Biden defeats Donald Trump in November, the question he will face is not whether to restore the liberal international order. It is whether the United States can work with an inner core of allies to promote democracy and human rights while cooperating with a broader set of states to manage the rules-based international institutions needed to face transnational threats.

Joseph Nye writes that In the cyber realm, the same program can be used for legitimate or malicious purposes, depending on the user’s intent. But if that makes traditional arms-control treaties impossible to verify, it may still be possible to set limits on certain types of civilian targets and negotiate rough rules of the road that limit conflict.

Understanding deterrence in cyberspace is often difficult, because  minds remain captured by an image of deterrence shaped by the Cold War: a threat of massive retaliation to a nuclear attack by nuclear means. A better analogy is crime: governments can only imperfectly prevent it.