Our weekly SRI Seminar Series welcomes Jon Lindsay, an associate professor at the School of Cybersecurity and Privacy at the Georgia Institute of Technology, with a joint appointment in the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs and a courtesy appointment in the School of Public Policy. Lindsay’s research explores the role of advanced technologies in the context of international relations, intelligence studies, and the sociology of technology. He has published widely, including Information Technology and Military Power (2020), Cross-Domain Deterrence: Strategy in an Era of Complexity (2019), and China and Cybersecurity: Espionage, Strategy, and Politics in the Digital Domain (2015).

In this talk, Lindsay will explore how techniques of cybersecurity update forms of covert political behaviour which he terms “secret statecraft.” Defining the information age as “the age of deception,” Lindsay notes that contemporary interest in cybersecurity is due to its ubiquity and proliferation, resulting from the prominence of digital technologies, and that these challenges cannot be solved by engineering techniques alone, but require political strategies of cooperation and coordination.

Talk title: “Age of deception: The paradox of cooperative conflict in cyberspace”

Abstract:
This talk is about the political essence of cybersecurity. Cybersecurity is the art of inventing and reinventing information systems in the presence of an adversary. From the signet ring to quantum computing, every innovation in the technology of information offers new ways to collect, affect, and protect it. The techniques of espionage, subversion, and counterintelligence change constantly, but the underlying political logic is timeless. Cybersecurity is essentially a new manifestation of a very old form of political behaviour that I call secret statecraft.

Unlike overt diplomacy or open warfare, secret statecraft works in the shadows of cooperation. Shared practices, collective institutions, and common protocols provide the operating environment for intelligence collection and covert action. The means of cooperation become the means of exploitation. Indeed, the information age is the age of deception. Because cyberspace is the largest experiment in cooperation that humanity has ever attempted, deception is having a heyday.

The reason why governments, companies, and even private citizens care so much about cybersecurity today is that secret statecraft has burst forth from historical obscurity. Espionage and subversion are as old as politics, to be sure, but they are more prominent today because we rely on digital technology for everything. Ubiquitous tools of information enable pervasive deception. Thus, foreign spies infiltrate our networks, saboteurs probe our systems, and disinformation floods our media. Cybercrime is ubiquitous, cybersecurity is big business, and cyberwarfare is open policy.

The insecurity of cyberspace is not the result of a design oversight. Better architecture will not fix it, and more regulation will not correct it. The basic problem is that cybersecurity is not just an engineering challenge, but a strategic interaction. People build information systems because they want to improve coordination and control, and hackers exploit the same systems to steal data or disrupt functionality. All information systems are built on shared assumptions, and these same assumptions enable deception. Network intrusions may encourage technologists to implement safeguards, but better safeguards encourage the innovation of more subtle hacks. As the use of technology invites its abuse, more extensive use leads to more pervasive abuse. If we choose to use tech, then we choose to be exploited.

This renaissance of deception conceals an important paradox. Peace is the root cause of cyber conflict. Secret statecraft is flourishing in the infrastructure of liberal order as political actors subvert common rules for uncommon advantage. Conversely, and ironically, the exploitation of institutional weaknesses can also make institutions more robust. The spread of cyber conflict can clarify what is not worth fighting for, and the insecurity of cyberspace can make war less attractive. Thus, cooperation leads to conflict, while uncertainty leads to information. The dynamics of secret statecraft are paradoxical indeed.

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About the SRI Seminar Series
The SRI Seminar Series brings together the Schwartz Reisman community and beyond for a robust exchange of ideas that advance scholarship at the intersection of technology and society. Seminars are led by a leading or emerging scholar and feature extensive discussion.

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