Let's Get Excited About Thomas Rid's Book

Let's Get Excited About Thomas Rid's Book The other day, while stuck on an airplane, I began reading Cyber War Will Not Take Place by Thomas Rid. It's an expansion of this essay, which Rid discusses here. It's available on Kindle for $9.99. You can read a review of the book at Schneier on Security, here.

Rid presented at Nato Live in 2013, and you can download that speech here. Rid is a Professor of Security Studies at King's College London, was formerly associated with KCL's Department of War Studies, and has appeared on the department's War Studies Podcast thrice: here, here, and here.

So, why am I making such an effort to familiarize you with Dr. Rid and his work? Simple: I agree wholeheartedly with it. Having spent a great deal of my career working in "cyber security"*, I've become increasingly wary of the dire predictions about "cyber war", and I believe that those predictions make it harder to institute relevant and effective defenses against legitimate attacks. Digital security is a sufficiently complex challenge as it is, and trying to frame it unnecessarily in military terms confuses things like which authorities and methods should be employed for preventative and corrective measures.

At any rate, I'm looking forward to the rest of the book, because even if I end up having concerns about Rid's arguments, it's been great food for thought and provides a lot of grist for the intellectual mill.

* Dr. Rid dislikes the word "cyber", particularly when it's used as a noun by people who don't actually understand the issue. I dislike the word as well. A buddy of mine who (without having read any of the book) disagrees with Dr. Rid's conclusion, without prompting, mentioned that he "hates this term". I've tended to describe that work as "network security", and a few months ago I heard the term "tech risk", which I also prefer over "cyber security" or just plain "cyber".