The Second Global Imperative focuses on CYBERSECURITY, an issue of salience everywhere. It is about security for the cyber domain and, by extension, for the global system as a whole.
Signaled earlier in LOGIC & THEORY is a view of the new fundamentals in security—for global and local, private and public, individual and aggregate—defined earlier in terms of three interconnected. Today, Geopolitical security for the social system, spanning the traditional arena remains dominant, but is not the only salient source of threat. Security of the natural system has become a major factor in the national security calculus, making the absence of a traditional “enemy” only one of the daunting features thereof.
Already consumed by such “normal” security issues, both public and private sectors—almost everywhere—are confronted with new sources of threat that appear increasingly challenging. We now appreciate that cyberspace, the constructed virtual system, harbors new forms of threat. Cybersecurity is now a concern for everyone and everywhere. No one was prepared for the avenue of interactions characterized by different notions of time and space, or the attendant cyber attributes of permeation, fluidity, diffusion, and ubiquity—to note some of the more critical features.
Here we introduce briefly the research initiatives focused on the cybersecurity, and then we shall present highlights of each.
Securing the Long Chain of Global Communication
The security of the entire global communication “long chain,” remains a source of concern for almost everyone everywhere. Over 90 percent of all internet traffic flows through undersea cable networks. Mapping the features of the long chain is a daunting challenge.
Control Point Analysis
The focus is on who controls what in different segments of the internet, and how. Two specific cases for China illustrated different modes of control.
DoD Cyber Acquisition
Cyber acquisitions are fundamental to cybersecurity. Here we focus on three issues of salience in the development of security science. Two directly address challenges related to cyber acquisitions. The third addresses functional capabilities of semantics reference attributes.
Cybersecurity Institutions
The expansion of cyberspace has been dramatic over the past two decades. Almost every location on the globe now has some degree of cyber access, outpacing even the most optimistic expectations of the early architects of the Internet. The introduction of cyber threats with disruptions and distortions of cyber venues came the emergent demand for institutions to manage the domain.
Perspectives on Cybersecurity
Research papers by students for the MIT course on Cybersecurity illustrate different facets of the challenges at hand. Jointly, they provide insights into the “boundary” for the issue of cybersecurity. The first essay is a co-authored introduction by the instructor and a visiting analyst.
What follows are highlights of each of these initiatives, with references and key links.