Protecting the Digital Domain

The importance of cyberspace is such that it cannot be left undefended

From The Diplomat

By Narain D. Batra

January 24, 2014

If the Internet had been created in China or the Soviet Union, its architecture would have been very different. America created cyberspace in its own image: free, open, decentralized, distributed and self-governing.

Unfortunately its very openness and freedom have become the source of its vulnerability. Authoritarian nations, whether secular or theocratic, find freedom of cyberspace very threatening. And they are trying to build firewalls to protect their societies from freedom; or attack the U.S. to cripple its systems.

A most intriguing feature of cyberspace is that its threshold of entrance is so low that a self-trained person with access to computer can create apps and new platforms; or become a hacker and get into financial or military systems without leaving a trace. Terrorists and rogue states use footloose hackers to damage others’ infrastructures, spy and steal their intellectual property, or pry into their diplomatic and strategic plans.

On his way to the Shangri-La Security Dialogue in Singapore on June 1, 2013, the U.S. Secretary of Defence Chuck Hagel described the cyber security threats as “quiet, stealthy, insidious,” not only to the United States but also other nations. “Rules of the road” are necessary to protect cyberspace, the domain into which all our activities, military, economic, commercial, political and cultural activities are being done now.

This fear is not irrational because power grids, financial systems and defense networks could be brought down by not only hostile states but also non-state actors acting alone or in collusion with their patron states. Most importantly, one of the most precious assets, intellectual property, could be stolen.

Last May the U.S. Defense Department reported to Congress that Chinese hackers had accessed the designs of some major U.S. weapons systems to modernize its military. The hacking according to the report was “attributable directly to the Chinese government and military.”

NATO systems, particular the systems used to coordinate military actions among the 28 allied nations, also face frequent computer attacks. The attacks on the security of cyber-dependent European nations are diverse in nature and origin. They range from simple distributed-denial-of-service attacks that make websites inaccessible to strikes that can cause physical destruction to vital installations.

But attacks can come from anywhere. A case in point is Estonia. In 2007, the Baltic country was subjected to a large, sustained cyber attack that lasted several days and paralyzed its commerce. The cyber attack was thought to have originated in Russia, but it couldn’t be determined who was responsible.

In 2008, Georgia came under Russian cyber attack during their war over the dispute regarding South Ossetia. Although the attack was limited to disabling a few Georgian government websites, it was ominous, however, as to what might happen in the future if hostilities were to erupt between any two nations.

The knowledge and technology needed to conduct cyber attacks are easily accessible. Today most perpetrators can conceal their location thanks to the anonymous nature of the Internet. Given current technology, attribution of cyber attacks is problematic.

But the cyber age is the age of big data and data mining software is being developed to pinpoint and locate the perpetrator. Mandiant, an American computer security company, reported last May that a unit of the People’s Liberation Army, APT I, Unit 61398, located in Shanghai has “systematically stolen hundreds of terabytes of data” from American corporations, organizations and government agencies. They stole “product blueprints, manufacturing plans, clinical trial results, pricing documents, negotiation strategies and other proprietary information from more than 100 of Mandiant’s clients, predominantly in the United States.”

What can be done? The United States has been droning al Qaeda terrorists in Yemen and Pakistan and sent Navy Seals to Abbottabad to kill Osama bin Laden. What can be done with hackers if they originate from Iran, Russia or China?

The Commission on the Theft of American Intellectual Property, an independent commission, has issued an interesting report. The report says, “Intellectual Property (IP) theft needs to have consequences, with costs sufficiently high that state and corporate behavior and attitudes that support such theft are fundamentally changed.” 

The most intriguing recommendation is this: “without damaging the intruder’s own network, companies that experience cyber theft ought to be able to retrieve their electronic files or prevent the exploitation of their stolen information.”

And, the report recommends, “both technology and law must be developed to implement a range of more aggressive measures that identify and penalize illegal intruders into proprietary networks, but do not cause damage to third parties.”

This is a call for limited and calculated private retaliation. But will it work? Could Google, for example, fight the People’s Liberation Army of China? Yes, Google could have retaliated in 2010 when it faced cyber attacks and censorship of its search results but the company wisely decided to leave China and moved its operations to Hong Kong.

One would think that Silicon Valley software wizards must have developed foolproof encryption systems to protect themselves and their data. But last year’s revelations by former contractor Edward Snowden that the NSA has been having unlimited access to information about U.S. citizens and foreigners has made such claims dubious.

The NSA conducts surveillance under the authority of a most secretive court established under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). It collects metadata from telephone companies and Internet data from Internet Service Providers. Under other secretive programs, such as Boundless Informant and PRISM, the NSA has been carrying out global surveillance, including on major world leaders. U.S. President Barack Obama in his recent address at the Justice Department has vowed to modify the surveillance program but not give it up totally because he, and many in Congress, consider NSA’s operations to be indispensable not only for national security but also for global security.

With so much surveillance power, why can’t the NSA give Americans complete cyber security? The answer is simple: No single system is good enough to offer such a thing.

Information technology companies must develop weapons of self-protection and must be allowed to use them, which will require amendments to he existing laws. Most importantly, the marketplace for cyber security systems must be incentivized to grow.

The three pillars of cyber security are: the National Security Agency but only under the close scrutiny of lawmakers, courts, and the news media; lawful cyber tools of active defense; and last but not least, a highly developed cyber security marketplace.

Cyberspace has been called the fifth domain: land, air, water, space, and now cyberspace, and it’s evolving. America like rest of the world has become a cyberspace-dependent nation. Cyberspace is going to define the future of humanity. It cannot be left alone as the Wild West.

Dr. Batra is author of The First Freedoms and America’s Culture of Innovation (Rowman & Littlefield, 2013) and a professor of communication and diplomacy at Norwich University. He is working on a new book, India Must: Compete or Perish. 

Be Wary of Iran’s 'Sweet Reasonableness'

Be Wary of Iran’s 'Sweet Reasonableness'

 Iran’s skillful international PR needs to be rigorously tested

By Narain D. Batra

January 16, 2014

The Diplomat


It might seem that recent international events – particularly Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad’s fulfillment of his commitment to give up its chemical weapons under a Russia-US deal – has transformed the international scene. A few months ago, Iranian President Hasan Rouhani was prompted to assume a diplomatic posture of a mediator offering its “government’s readiness to help facilitate dialogue between the Syrian government and the opposition.” Since Iran has been a strong supporter of the Assad regime, it seemed presumptuous that Iran could play the role of a peacemaker in a devastating civil war.

Iran’s major challenge has been whether it can keep up its nuclear identity despite the choking economic sanctions. Some time ago, in a Washington Post op-ed piece, Rouhani brought up a point that his Holocaust-denying predecessor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was never able to do succinctly. He said, “The centrality of (Iran’s) identity extends to the case of our peaceful nuclear energy program. To us, mastering the atomic fuel cycle and generating nuclear power is as much about diversifying our energy resources as it is about who Iranians are as a nation, our demand for dignity and respect and our consequent place in the world.” In an earlier interview with NBC, Rouhani had asserted that Iran has “never pursued or sought a nuclear bomb and we are not going to do so. We solely are looking for peaceful nuclear technology.”

It seemed to some of us that with his smiling face and reasonableness, Rouhani had opened new possibilities for dialogue and diplomacy. Consequently the rhetoric of war against Iran has become rather muffled in the U.S., though hardheaded realists wouldn’t take the Iranian leader’s word for it. The real power lies somewhere else, with the Supreme leader Ali Khamenei and the National Guard and its brutal elite branch the Quds Force, as Dexter Filkins reported in the New Yorker magazine. Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called Rouhani “a wolf in sheep’s clothing.” Israel is a very powerful factor in American foreign policy. There is some movement in Congress to slap new and tougher sanctions on Iran, which President has threatened to veto.

The Obama administration is scrambling to come up with new policy postures toward Iran, whom it continues to regard as an unfriendly country, albeit not an evil one that could provoke war and take over the region. Europeans have been reluctantly cooperating with the United States. Russia and China are back to their cozy commercial relations with Iran.

The 2007 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) concluded “with high level of confidence” that Iran was not engaged in the development of nuclear weapons. Iran halted the nuclear weapons program in 2003, though it continues to pursue nuclear energy development for civilian energy purposes. The report said, “Our assessment that Iran halted the program in 2003 primarily in response to international pressure indicates Tehran’s decisions are guided by a cost-benefit approach rather than a rush to a weapon irrespective of the political, economic, and military costs.” Subsequent reports reaffirmed the finding that Iran was not actively engaged in nuclear weaponization program, though it has developed capacities to do so.

Of course, the national interest calculus includes both short- and long-term cost-benefit analyses. Apart from four rounds of economic sanctions imposed since 2006 by the UN Security Council that have been hurting the economy severely, Iran must have taken into account the determination of the Obama administration in supporting uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Syria. Iran also knows that only the U.S. can hold back Israel from bombing its nuclear facilities. Obama reaffirmed America’s engagement with the Middle East in his speech at the UN General Assembly without giving up on the pivot toward Asia.

Iran’s recent song-and-dance with the American media seems to be following the map projection given by the National Intelligence Estimate that “some combination of threats of intensified international scrutiny … and goals for regional influence in other ways, might — if perceived by Iran’s leaders as credible — prompt Tehran to extend the current halt to its nuclear weapons program.”

Iran, long isolated and under crippling sanctions, is looking for a workable strategy that would enable it to pursue nuclear research as its fundamental right as a sovereign nation and have sanctions lifted to empower its moribund economy. Iran’s sweet reasonableness, however, needs to be tested through a strict international inspection regimen.

With its enormous oil and natural gas reserves and nuclear potential, Iran is not an insignificant geopolitical power in the region. No single power should be allowed to control the Gulf region, through which millions of barrels of oil flow every day to fuel the global economy.

Last year Iran shocked India by detaining its oil tanker MT Desh Shanti in international waters, accusing it of an oil spill for which it presented no evidence. What would have been the consequences if Iran had detained a U.S. oil tanker? Or a Chinese oil tanker? Diplomacy without economic and military leverage is an exercise in futility, as India should have known. Iran knows this too well.

But the U.S. is ready to give diplomacy a chance. As Obama said on Sunday, on January 20 the clock would start ticking on a six-month deal with Iran to prevent it from enriching uranium in exchange for lifting limited amount of economic sanctions. “I have no illusions about how hard it will be to achieve this objective, but for the sake of our national security and the peace and security of the world, now is the time to give diplomacy a chance to succeed.”

Yet behind this pious diplomatic hope is Obama’s resolve never to allow Iran to develop the means to make a nuclear weapon. In the meantime, Israel waits in readiness.

Dr. Batra is author of The First Freedoms and America’s Culture of Innovation (Rowman & Littlefield, 2013) and a professor of communication and diplomacy at Norwich University.

Teaching commercial diplomacy

Indian business schools need to teach commercial diplomacy

 Narain D. Batra

Business and economic schools emphasize quantitative analysis and sophisticated computer modeling. But real life in the street cannot be enclosed in a Bell Curve. Events cannot be always predicted within varying margins of error.
   Modern tools of business and economics cannot capture outliers, for example, the rare and extreme event such as the current Indian financial crisis, the fall of the rupee, which has roiled India for some time. While one cannot prevent a tsunami from hitting a country, it’s certainly possible to imagine such an extreme event occurring and build enough reserve resources to reorganize and restructure.
   Nor do business and economic schools teach how to resurrect and rebuild the most invaluable human asset: trust and confidence.  How do you restore people’s faith in a system that has failed them? How do you bring the foreign investor back to India?
   Advocacy, negotiation, and campaigning should be central to every economic and business management program in India.
   Consider this: In 2008 when the CEOs of Detroit Big Three automakers went to Congress for a $25 billion bailout to avoid bankruptcy, members after members asked them why they should trust them for doing the right thing for taxpayers and consumers.  Show us your business plans before we give you the money, they said, after reproaching them for their extravagances.
   The best argument the CEOs could muster was that bankruptcy would put millions of people out of job, which was not only unpersuasive but also a dangerous half-truth. The foreign automakers, Honda, Toyota, Hyundai, BMW and Mercedes who run non-union auto plants in the South were after all doing not that bad in the bad times. No one wanted Detroit to disappear as a most important auto-manufacturing hub that energizes every walk of American life and directly and indirectly impacts the lives of 2.5 million people.
   But Detroit has been an example of failure in persuasion. It failed to persuade the American consumer that its cars are better than those made by Germans, Japanese and South Koreans. The fall of the rupee, similarly, is failure in persuasion that India can manufacture high quality goods for exports. India must compete or perish.
   Business schools claim that they create future leaders; but they don’t teach the fine art of how to become influential in a democratic society. They train technocrats who feel more comfortable with their smartphones rather than sitting across a hostile group of people or skeptical global investors and turn them into friends
    Doing business is about persuasion; therefore, what business schools need to do is to develop programs that prepare business students for developing and exercising soft power.  For want of a better term, some people call it lobbying, though I believe that “advocacy” is a better word.  Richard Hall and Alan Deardorff of the University of Michigan wrote in the American Political Science Review that “Professional lobbyists are among the most experienced, knowledgeable, and strategic actors one can find in the everyday practice of politics.”
    But lobbyists are sometime reviled as unethical because most people think lobbying as greasing, wining and dining—an unfortunate negative attitude about a socially useful activity.  
Lobbying is a multimillion-dollar global service industry.
   China, Israel, and many Arab countries, for example, have hired some of the best lobbyists to look after their interests in the United States. Chinese lobbyists want to ensure that Americans do not turn protectionists.  American lobbyist-diplomats prowl and troll throughout world wherever decision-making power is concentrated. They know how to negotiate with the powers that be and use the news media and other resources to protect their national interest. Lobbying substitutes the power of the gun with the power of the tongue.
   One of the most arduous tasks for anyone is to understand the labyrinthine activities of the US Congress; how it works and wields power through its committees, subcommittees and public hearings; how issues emerge in the public consciousness and how they are transformed into bills that become laws. It is important for us to understand and appreciate the role of lobbyists in the halls of power and how they facilitate legislative processes both at Capitol Hill and state capitals.
   Apart from being extremely knowledgeable and strategic thinkers, lobbyists put to use an indispensable tool of persuasion, which is negotiation. While it is said that most things in life are negotiable, the art of negotiation does not come easy whether one is dealing with friends or foes.
   Besides teaching negotiation skills, business schools should teach students how to work with the news media and use social networking for generating social and political capital. The learning focus could vary from how to attract foreign direct investment (FDI) to persuading Iran, for example, to sell its oil to India in rupees. Iran’s detainment of Indian oil tanker MT Desh Shanti was a failure in corporate diplomacy. It must not happen again. But now comes another test: whether Walmart, the global retailer with $466 billion gross revenue last year, will open its front-end retail door in India; or exit altogether.