Science & Technology

35 Items

A boy plays with his toy soldiers inside a school that is being used as a shelter for people who fled the war, in Dnipro city, Ukraine, on Tuesday, April 12, 2022.

AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris

Analysis & Opinions - Offensive Cyber Working Group

Subversion over Offense: Why the Practice of Cyber Conflict Looks Nothing Like Its Theory and What This Means for Strategy and Scholarship

    Author:
  • Lennart Maschmeyer
| Jan. 19, 2022

Cyber attacks are both exciting and terrifying, but the ongoing obsession with ‘cyber warfare’ clouds analysis and hampers strategy development. Much commentary and analysis of cyber conflict continues to use the language of war, where actors use ‘offensive cyber operations’ to meet adversaries in ‘engagements’ striving for victory on the ‘battlefield’ in the ‘cyber domain’. This discourse persists despite a growing consensus that cyber operations are primarily relevant in conflict short of war.

FORT GORDON NELSON HALL, Augusta, Georgia, June 10, 2014 – The U.S. Army’s ‘Cyber Center of Excellence’, Fort Gordon in Augusta, Georgia, hosted a multi-service ‘NetWar’ to show, and build, cyber Warrior capabilities Tuesday, June 10.

Georgia Army National Guard photo by Staff Sgt. Tracy J. Smith

Journal Article - Quarterly Journal: International Security

The Subversive Trilemma: Why Cyber Operations Fall Short of Expectations

    Author:
  • Lennart Maschmeyer
| Fall 2021

Although cyber conflict has existed for thirty years, the strategic utility of cyber operations remains unclear. The subversive trilemma explains why cyber operations tend to fall short of their promise in both warfare and low-intensity competition.

Analysis & Opinions - The Washington Post

America’s Pandemic Response Doesn’t Bode Well for a Potential Cyberattack

| June 25, 2020

America’s botched response to the coronavirus pandemic is a warning that, unless our broken political and administrative systems are fixed, the country could experience a similar breakdown in future national crises, such as a massive cyberattack.

Book - Random House/Crown

The Perfect Weapon

| June 19, 2018

For 70 years, the thinking inside the Pentagon was that only nations with nuclear weapons could threaten America’s existence. But that assumption is now in doubt: in a world in which almost everything is interconnected – phones, cars, electrical grids, and satellites – everything can be disrupted, if not destroyed. In THE PERFECT WEAPON, Belfer Center Senior Fellow and Adjunct Lecturer in Public Policy David Sanger, the New York Times national security correspondent, details how this new revolution, being conducted largely in secret, is reshaping global power.

The Palace of Nations

Creative Commons

Analysis & Opinions - Strategist

How Will New Cybersecurity Norms Develop?

| Mar. 12, 2018

Many observers have called for laws and norms to secure this new environment. But developing such standards in the cyber domain faces a number of difficult hurdles. Although Moore's law about the doubling of computing power every two years means that cyber time moves quickly, human habits, norms, and state practices change more slowly.

A worker is silhouetted against a computer display showing a live visualization of the online phishing and fraudulent phone calls across China during the 4th China Internet Security Conference in Beijing. Aug. 16, 2016 (Ng Han Guan/Associated Press, File). Keywords: China, cyberattack

Ng Han Guan/Associated Press, File

Newspaper Article - The Wall Street Journal

Review: An Uneasy Unpeace

| Jan. 21, 2018

In the cyber arena, the same technologies that are creating unprecedented benefits for billions are also democratizing destruction. Graham Allison reviews ‘The Virtual Weapon and International Order’ by Lucas Kello.

- Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School

Carter and Rosenbach Envision the Belfer Center's Future

| Fall/Winter 2017-2018

As Director and Co-Director of the Belfer Center, Ash Carter and Eric Rosenbach have inherited from Graham Allison the world’s No. 1-ranked university think tank. They intend to build on that success by sustaining the Center’s core mission while widening its aperture; enhancing its unique ability to leverage science and technology to meet global challenges; and priming the next generation of leaders in both scholarship and policymaking.

Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall

U.S. Department of Energy

Announcement - Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School

Former Deputy Secretary of Energy Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall Named Senior Fellow With Harvard's Belfer Center

| July 12, 2017

Former Deputy Secretary of Energy Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall is joining Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs as a Senior Fellow, the Center announced today. Sherwood-Randall, who has served in the White House and Departments of Energy and Defense, is returning to the Center where she worked in the 1990s to help establish two pioneering projects – the Strengthening Democratic Institutions Project with Graham Allison, who this month stepped down as the Center’s director, and the Preventive Defense Project with Ash Carter, the former Secretary of Defense who is the new Belfer Center director.

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Testimony - Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School

Living in a Glass House: The United States Must Better Defend Against Cyber and Information Attacks

| June 12, 2017

Belfer Center Co-director Eric Rosenbach testified at a hearing on "Sponsored Cyberspace Threats: Recent Incidents and U.S. Policy Response" before the United States Senate Foreign Relations Committee's Subcommittee on East Asia, the Pacific, and International Cybersecurity Policy.