Cybersecurity and Cyberwarfare

The Justice Department announced criminal charges against Huawei, the world’s largest communications equipment manufacturer, and one of its top executives — a move likely to intensify trade tensions between the US and China. A 13-count indictment filed in New York City against Huawei, two of its affiliated firms, and its chief financial officer, Meng Wanzhou, accuses Huawei and an affiliate of bank fraud and wire fraud. The company is also charged with violating US sanctions on Iran and conspiring to obstruct justice related to the investigation.

Over the past year, the United States has embarked on a stealthy, occasionally threatening, global campaign to prevent Huawei and other Chinese firms from participating in the most dramatic remaking of the plumbing that controls the internet since it sputtered into being, in pieces, 35 years ago. The administration contends that the world is engaged in a new arms race — one that involves technology, rather than conventional weaponry, but poses just as much danger to America’s national security.

Roger J. Stone Jr., a longtime informal adviser to President Donald Trump who has spent decades plying the dark arts of scandal-mongering and dirty tricks to help influence American political campaigns, was arrested after an indictment was unsealed in the special counsel investigation.

With Sen Kamala Harris (D-CA) joining the field of 2020 hopefuls, all Democratic senators now running for president have pushed for major cyber policy reforms -- from cracking down on election interference to stemming the flood of data breaches. Sen Harris was a co-sponsor of the Secure Elections Act (S 2261) while Sen Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) backed a separate bill that would have launched a 9/11 Commission-style investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

The Trump administration’s so-called “race” with China to build new fifth-generation (5G) wireless networks is speeding toward a network vulnerable to Chinese (and other) cyberattacks. So far, the Trump administration has focused on blocking Chinese companies from being a part of the network, but these efforts are far from sufficient.

The House unanimously approved the Federail CIO Authorization Act, a bill that would elevate the federal chief information officer within the White House chain of command. The bill would make the position a direct report to the Office of Management and Budget director. It would also designate both the federal CIO and federal chief information security officer as presidentially appointed positions. The legislation still has no Senate sponsor.  “Americans need to know that we are doing everything we can to keep their most precious information safe,” said bill co-sponsor Rep Will Hurd (R-TX).

The White House, which has boasted of taking unprecedented actions to secure the nation’s digital infrastructure, isn’t doing enough to protect its own emails from being copycatted by hackers and spammers, according to data by the email security firm ValiMail. It isn't following its own administration's rules that require protections against the threat known as email spoofing, according to the company. That makes it comparatively easy for fraudsters posing as White House officials on email to deliver malware to citizens or to con them into giving up personal information.

House Commerce Committee Chairman Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-NJ) sent a letter to Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai requesting he provide an emergency briefing to Committee staff on why the FCC has yet to end wireless carriers’ unauthorized disclosure of consumers’ real-time location data and what actions the FCC has taken to address the issue to date. Chairman Pallone wrote that an emergency briefing is necessary in the interest of public safety and national security, and therefore cannot wait until President Donald Trump decides to reopen the government. 

It is time to move past the political and marketing talking points to consider both the promise of 5G and the challenge to its realization. First of all, to call 5G a “race” is a deceptive metaphor. A “race” connotes a contest along a common course with a start and finish. The reality is that 5G networks will be built piece-by-piece, area-by-area, and application-by-application over a protracted period of years. The national strategy for 5G needs to move beyond slogans and press releases.

Hundreds of cities, large and small, have adopted or begun planning smart cities projects. But the risks are daunting. Experts say cities frequently lack the expertise to understand privacy, security and financial implications of such arrangements. Some mayors acknowledge that they have yet to master the responsibilities that go along with collecting billions of bits of data from residents. Concerns have intensified as Kansas City prepares to expand its technology experiment from downtown to poor neighborhoods on the city’s East Side.