Managing Partner Michèle Flournoy appeared on Meet the Press alongside Michael Bloomberg, Governor Jerry Brown, Craig Fugate, and others to discuss the impact of climate change on national security. Watch the full Meet the Press interview: Full Article
In the span of a week, our nation experienced a torrent of hate-fueled attacks: the slaying of two African Americans in a Kentucky supermarket , the mail-bomb assassination attempts and the mass slaying in a Pittsburgh synagogue . These attacks tragically demonstrate that domestic terrorism is on the rise as political polarization and hateful echo chambers on social media radicalize people. As we mourn those who died in Kentucky and Pittsburgh, we should recognize that such tragedies highlight a dangerous counterterrorism [...]
Foreign Affairs | November/December 2018 In a little under three decades, nuclear weapons have gone from center stage to a sideshow in U.S. defense strategy. Since the 1990s, the United States has drastically reduced its stockpile and concentrated on its conventional and irregular warfare capabilities. Nuclear weapons policy has focused overwhelmingly on stemming proliferation to countries such as Iran and North Korea, and prominent political and national security figures have even called for abolishing nuclear weapons altogether. What was once the [...]
September 28, 2018 | By Lisa Monaco, Vin Gupta There are plenty of security threats that could keep a former homeland security advisor awake. There is the possibility of a terrorist attack, a cyber-cataclysm, or any number of natural disasters—all threats that are capable of visiting destruction on entire communities in a matter of hours. Right at the top of that list is the threat of a deadly pandemic—an outbreak of infectious disease that rapidly crosses international borders. In January 2017, [...]
September 17, 2018 | Opinion For the first time since the end of the Cold War, the Pentagon has a genuinely new strategy: Focus on our rivals — Russia and, in particular, China — and maintain a competitive advantage over them. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis warns in his 2018 National Defense Strategy that if we fail to do so, we may lose the next big war against these nations. If that happens, say goodbye to the free and open international order [...]
September/October 2018 | By Michèle Flournoy and Michael Sulmeyer Cyberspace has been recognized as a new arena for competition among states ever since it came into existence. In the United States, there have long been warnings of a “cyber–Pearl Harbor”—a massive digital attack that could cripple the country’s critical infrastructure without a single shot being fired. Presidential commissions, military task force reports, and congressional investigations have been calling attention to such a risk for decades. In 1984, the Reagan administration warned [...]
On Wednesday, British Attorney General Jeremy Wright delivered public remarks titled "Cyber and International Law in the 21st Century.” This unilateral move marks an important step by states in developing and defending interpretations of existing international frameworks as applied to cyber. It will take a long time to cultivate strong international consensus on such interpretations, but even in the absence of new agreements, statements like these help show that cyberspace need not be “lawless.”
How should law enforcement officials deal with digital data that happens to be stored in a different country? If FBI agents, pursuing a subject who committed a crime in the United States, serve a valid court order on an American company, the government shouldn’t have to wait a year because the company happens to store the information overseas. Likewise, if the London police are investigating a local murder, the fact that they are seeking phone records from a communications provider located in the United States should not block them from doing their job.