April 15 - Cyber - Questions

[deholz]

Questions for Herb Lin, inspired by the week's readings:

1. Herbert Lin & Amy Zegart, Chapter 1 (Introduction) from Bytes, Bombs, and Spies
2. National Research Council, Summary section from At the Nexus of Cybersecurity and Public Policy: Some Basic Concepts and Issues
3. Herbert Lin, “The existential threat from cyber-enabled information warfare” (Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists)
4. Herbert Lin and Jaclyn Kerr, “On Cyber-Enabled Information Warfare and Influence Operations” (Oxford Handbook of Cybersecurity)

Questions: Every week students will post one question here of less than 150 words, addressed to our speaker by Wednesday @ midnight, the day immediately prior to our class session. These questions may take up the same angle as developed further in your weekly memo. By 2pm Thursday, each student will up-vote (“thumbs up”) what they think are the five most interesting questions for that session. Some of the top voted questions will be asked by students to the speakers during class.

[nikereid]

What do you believe the onset of a full-blown cyber-war would look like? Do you think this is a realistic outcome?

[brycefarabaugh]

Cyber capabilities pose significant risks when used to surveil or even undermine adversary nuclear arsenals and their associated command, control, communications, and information (C3I) systems. How significant do you think the risk is that mistakes or miscalculations in cyberspace could precipitate nuclear escalation, and do you think sufficient safeguards are in place to protect against this type of accidental nuclear use?

[jrgill-coder]

In 2019 there were reports that Russia had successfully tested an "unplugged" version of the internet. They seem to want the ability to have an internet that is inaccessible by foreign governments. My question is whether or not you think this will be a defining trend of cybersecurity in the twenty-first century or will countries continue to fight more out in the open?

[meghanlong]

Many have advocated strongly for the idea that faced with tradeoffs in the choice of where to spend, firms should invest in cybersecurity subject to their risk of attack. Given the increasing threat that cybersecurity poses to our society, and the extent to which cybersecurity is not a top priority for many businesses, should the US government subsidize programs to increase cybersecurity? To what extent would increased spending on cybersecurity decrease the frequency and magnitude of attacks?

[atzavala]

In our readings, it seemed like there may be two different adversaries who may use the cyberspace to threaten the information ecosystem that many infrastructures in the United States rely on to work and innovate. The first may be other countries or organizations looking to undermine or disrupt the democracy and integrity of financial and military functions of the US. The other is fake news sources, polarizing political social media accounts, and conspiracy theorists, which use the cyberspace to undermine scientific research and spread unfounded information about politics, public safety, and news. So, which of the two is the biggest threat to civilization as we know it? Does either of them seem to be a bigger threat to the United States in particular and how would we prioritize creating a defense against them?

[kaiyamerz]

To me, fake news feels especially prevalent in the United States compared to other countries (though I am certainly biased here, as I am American and have only ever lived in the US). Do you think there is a difference in the volume of disinformation campaigns targeted at the US vs other countries? If so, why do you think Americans are so much more affected by fake news and disinformation compared to citizens of other countries?

[jcrary711]

Do you think issues with cyber security (ie. hacking and other methods to undermine cyber security) will continue to grow as more people become familiar with ways around this security, or will diminish as the strength of cyber security increases with better technology?

[shiruan-uchicago]

The articles of this week argue that liberal democracies are more vulnerable to information warfare and more generally speaking, misinformation and disinformation in the cyberspace. The argument is fairly solid. My question, which has been time-honoured since the rise of the Nazis (Loewenstein 1937), is (a) how far democracies should and could go in order to rescue and consolidate themselves at the risk and cost of violating fundamental principles such as freedom of expression; and also: (b) how democracies justify their defensive activities accordingly; and (c) under current circumstances, how to prevent the counter-disinformation warfare from deteriorating into McCarthyism and xenophobic frenzy (thinking about the anti-Asian crimes and the information warfare with the Chinese government).

[mesber1]

Where do we draw the line between the suppressing of freedom of expression and the censoring of misinformation? Would government regulation of news outlets in order to prevent the spread of false information be considered a violation of free speech? How could this issue and its controversies be navigated?

[Brunofireflame]

Is there a digital solution to the current crisis of news reporting in america? With digitization, traditional costs like printing and office space are reduced, but we are still seeing a massive cratering of independent journalism. Is there a good solution in the digital world or does it just present the same issues but with a different medium?

[dnaples]

Is there a way to better educate people on the use of social media and the spread of online information? Is it possible to recognize "fake news" when we see it, and how do we defend ourselves against it? When is censorship on social media ok?

Do you think the spread of information online and on social media has greatly affected the views of politicians and world leaders in recent years? Do you think they've contributed to any action/lack of action toward the topics of doom we have already discussed in class?

[apolissky]

It has become fairly widely accepted that the algorithms in use to push certain content to the top of our feeds favor extreme and sensationalist content. This results in information further from reality often making its way to the front of our feeds. But these algorithms (as far as I understand) don't identify sensationalist information in and of itself, they rely on how we interact with it. To what extent do we have a misinformation problem because a large portion of our society wants an alternate reality, and how might we address this need?

[LanceJohnson1]

After completing the four readings assigned for this week, I looked at the line item breakdown for the Department of Defense's 2020 Fiscal Year budget and was shocked to see that Cyber was only allocated $9.6 Billion given that 78 F-35 Joint Strike Fighter Planes alone were allocated $11.2 billion. How is it that politicians can prioritize incremental technological upgrades to already existing hardware with limited applications over the current and expeditiously growing cyber battlefield? Wars are no longer fought in the air - they are fought online and it is time that our nation's defense budget reflected that.

As an aside, the Air Domain budget included $0.8 billion for 6 new presidential helicopters - Cyber was allocated 6x less money than was the Air Domain and about 40% less money than was projects for Space! When will the time come when Cyber is allocated more than Air and Space defense?

[kottenbreit]

Many of the readings discussed potential ways that countries can protect themselves from propaganda campaigns led by foreign actors. Since, unfortunately, the governments of countries do not always have the best interests of all of their citizens at heart, do you think there could be away to combat misinformation using a global enforcer, such as the UN?

[jtello711]

In today's age, society has become so reliant on the reliance of information and the validity of sources that external actors and malevolent forces have begun to target the integrity of such information in the hopes of sowing distrust and falsehood. Knowing how ingrained these systems are to devising plans in every sector of our nation's infrastructure, how can we best assure those with little to no knowledge of the depth of cybersecurity threats about the integrity of the data they provide and the information they seek when algorithms are already tailoring what information and data they're made aware of? Is it practical to expect to properly filter out the noise and falsities in the day-to-day bases of information people rely on such as partisan news or biased social media sites?

[brandonhuang1]

Can fake news and misinformation ever be removed in a way that doesn't make some people feel it is partisaned? Misinformation will nearly always be pushed by some agenda so perhaps a framework of partisanship is not useful in thinking about misinformation. What kind of punishment exists for those who spread misinformation?

[slrothschild]

I think part of the problem with cybersecurity is differentiating threats versus legitimate danger. How are we currently able to differentiate the two, and how could this system be improved? Additionally, how are we able to tell that threats are coming from the location or group that they claim to be (i.e. independent groups versus governments) and what is the time frame for discerning this?

[Aiden-Reynolds]

While misinformation certainly is an issue right now and a powerful weapon for political entities to use, do you think over a longer time frame, that the public cannot adapt to it? Is it possible for the general public to independently become significantly more adept at choosing which sources to listen to and which to ignore? It seems that most news sources do have some level of credibility associated with them that varies somewhat with that organization's actions. Over a long enough time period will the public be able to accurately use credibility to separate misinformation from verified facts?

[k80ambrose]

I'm interested in how different age groups perceive cyber threats. Most of us (college students in 2021) grew up with the internet, so what we consider private and public is radically different than our parents' standards of privacy due to social media. Does growing up on the internet, a place where make gen z less or more equipped to deal with cyber threats?

[madelman99]

What do you think that the future of cyber security is considering the rise of Quantum Computing, both from an offensive and defensive perspective? Are our current suppositions about cybersecurity going to become outdated as current computing technology falls to the wayside?

[joshuanash]

How do you think social media companies can work to prevent the spread of informational chaos caused by black hat Russian hackers at the Internet Research Agency? How can we best avoid fake pages that are designed to polarize our politics and erode the foundation of our nation?