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Security as written in the czars

The story of Google Wave will unfold over the next few months, and down the road we'll all know whether Google's baby is bloatware or the next big revolution in how we compute. Up next, though, you're about to watch the tip of a very large iceberg float by.

Sometime today, the White House will reveal the results of Melissa Hathaway's (more or less) 60-day examination of the current state of federal cybersecurity, and it's believed that today President Obama will name his long-awaited cyberczar. (Your reporter's money is on Hathaway, as long as promptness isn't in the job description.)

If certain agencies of our federal government had applied as much effort to actually doing national cybersecurity as they've put toward fighting over jurisdiction over it, we'd be several orders of magnitude safer today. The two main battlers have been the military and the NSA, in part because the latter agency is forbidden to do spying on US soil but in part because this is Washington and that's what people do.

Neither Mr. Obama's announcement nor the Pentagon's announced plans for a military cyberspace command are going to terminate this turf war, unfortunately. The White House effort is primarily concerned with certain forms of government and civilian infrastructure -- the networks that are too big to fail, if you like. There's no thought that the White House post will involve itself in any sort of offensive cyber-actions.

Which leaves us, again, with the uniforms and the spooks slapping each other around. A concerned observer can't help but be conflicted here. On the one hand, cyberwar is going to operate a lot more like spies do and a lot less like soldiers do, or at least like soldiers have done in the past. A functional cybercommand needs to be light on its feet and flexible in its structure. On the other hand, American spy agencies shouldn't be conducting large-scale warfare; that isn't who we are as a country (note to self: if you believe that, it may be time to re-read A Legacy Of Ashes). And I'm not in favor of the Gordian-knot idea of subsuming the NSA into the military; the prospect reminds me, oddly, of the old Prodigy online service, which wags held to have combined the tech acumen of Sears and the consumer-friendliness of IBM, its two not-so-proud parents.

The NYT article linked above points out that the NSA has most of the current expertise on digital warfare, but the military's becoming extremely serious about wargaming its way to understanding. Today you'll see the tip of that political iceberg float by as the White House nominates its cyberczar, but be aware that a sustained, complex, and bitter struggle for power glides just below the waterline.