The news was dominated on Wednesday by reports of the arrest of a suspected British teenage computer hacker, in connection with a range of security breaches including attacks on the website of the CIA and the UK’s Serious Organised Crime Agency. We can expect many more such events as our security agencies struggle to address the challenges of cyberspace.
In a matter of days we have seen a huge data theft from the International Monetary Fund, reports that the Pentagon is reclassifying cyberattacks as “acts of war”, and Liang Guanglie, China’s defence minister, saying his country and the US must work together to deal with the cyber “problem.” In Britain, there has been a flurry of announcements about cybersecurity, just as there has been in the US. William Hague, the UK foreign secretary, is hosting an international cyberconference in the autumn, and Nick Harvey, the defence minister, has announced a new cyberdefence group.
To the extent that these initiatives focus attention on the need for renewed effort on cybersecurity, they are to be welcomed. But they fail to answer an urgent question: How coherent are the doctrines that underpin strategies both of nation-states and other organisations?