After thinking about it, I’ve decided to post my thoughts about the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Cyber Shockwave over the next few days.  I have a lot of thoughts to get down.  But here is my initial reaction:

It’s good that the Bipartisan Policy Center is trying to get the country thinking about important issues.  Cybersecurity is certainly an important topic and our nation needs to consider cyberattacks along with all other sorts of attacks so that we are not blindly vulnerable to an enemy.  But, in doing this, I believe it’s incumbent upon such “doers of good” to keep the discussion true to the subject so that it really can help us.  On that note, I really think sponsors of events such as this — especially when the event is purported to be a “simulation” — have to be careful not to allow their corporate interests to enter into the simulation itself.  I think the whole event would have been much better if there didn’t appear to be ulterior motives at different points during the exercise.  I caught panelists several times subtly “proposing” ways in which information security companies could help the federal government.  I won’t go into them right now, but I intend to discuss them further in my subsequent blot posts.

Was Cyber Shockwave terrible?  No.  But, did it help the country?  I have to answer no.

Look for more thoughts on Cyber Shockwave in the coming days…

I’m planning to read the classic book “The Guns of August” by Barbara Tuchman. I’ve been thinking about how often times we base our current decisions and strategies on that which we have learned in the past, without understanding that our world has changed around us. “The Guns of August” describes how that exact thinking is what led us to World War I – by 1914 the world had changed technologically, economically and culturally since earlier wars. That meant that the military philosophies of the world’s leaders and the very nature of warfare had to change as well…but it didn’t and serious miscalculations resulted in a long, drawn out, costly World War.

How does this related to social media?  I think that the world has changed significantly with the advent of the Internet and social media:  people in third world countries are carrying cell phones even though they travel on dirt roads; netizens armed with smartphones, Youtube and Twitter rose up against Iranian leadership; and virtual wars are taking place regularly on the Internet.  To me, this means that the very nature of modern warfare has to change as well.  Perhaps weapons that inflict physical damage on the enemy won’t go as far in this new world as “smart” weapons that hit the enemy via social media sites, smartphone applications and denial-of-service attacks.  I think that in order to be competitive in the future, we must become experts in these new technologies so that we are prepared for the battles to be fought on the virtual landscape.