The Internet is organized around “autonomous systems” — independently managed networks most of which are privately owned or, if public, managed at the agency or department level. The current institutional structure for public governance, on the other hand, is organized around nation-states.
That disjunction encourages some actors to construct Internet security as a national security issue. Political claims that invoke “national security” can inflate budgets and provide for more effective political mobilization within bureaucracies and the political class. A recent report from a “Commission on Cyberspace Security for the 44th Presidency” assembled by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a Washington DC-based think tank with longstanding roots in Cold War dialogue, exemplifies this problem. Written late in 2008, it urged the incoming President to proclaim that “cyberspace is a vital asset for the nation and…the United States will protect it using all instruments of national power.” This is a fundamentally misguided approach; this post explains why.
