Science & Technology

For a decade now the Halifax International Security Forum has been a place to discuss the major external threats facing Western democracies and how to counter them.  One of the main themes coming out of this year's gathering of military, political and academic leaders is the biggest threat to democracy is coming from within.

"In the democratic world, many of our strongest and largest democracies are in some type of crisis," says former U.S. ambassador Nicholas Burns, who now teaches at the Kennedy School at Harvard University.

Last week, Special Envoy of Senegal's Head of State, Aminata Touré hosted a seminar at Harvard University. She addressed several questions regarding US-African relations.

The administration should be given relatively high marks for the document’s cybersecurity components—especially for recognizing the breadth of the threat and that it’s going to take more than the help desk to fix it. Admittedly, that’s a pretty low bar. But National Security Strategy documents are not known as documents where big policy innovation occurs. Instead, the best you can usually do is articulate the broad contours of the main threats to national security coupled with some rough themes about what the government will do to make things better. Here, the administration does not isolate “the cyber” to the sidelines; instead, by talking about cyber issues throughout the document, the administration shows an understanding that cyberspace is a critical part to practically every aspect of national security.

There is good reason to fear it could be the Second Korean War, with craziness in North Korea and chaos in the South. Or it could be yet another quagmire in the Middle East. Trump's most excitable critics keep warning that World War III will happen on his watch. But I am more worried about Cyber War I - especially as it has already begun.