The co-chairs of a new commission that will make recommendations next spring to help the U.S. cope with strategic challenges from a wide range of cyber threats on Monday outlined its objectives and questions it hopes to answer and asked the public to chime in.
"To find effective and actionable answers to these questions, the commission and its staff will be casting a wide net," Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) and Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.), said in a column in Lawfare. "We are already consulting with academics, engaging policy experts, learning from businesses large and small, and leaving no stone unturned in our search for innovative ideas."
King and Gallagher, who are leading the Cyberspace Solarium Commission (CSC), then asked for everyone's ideas, perspectives and "informed insights," and that they be sent to the email address info@solarium.gov.
The CSC was established in the fiscal year 2019 National Defense Authorization Act to make recommendations on future strategic cyber policy and includes lawmakers, senior government officials and former government officials. The commission is named in part after an effort by former President Eisenhower in 1953 to establish three teams under Project Solarium to develop competing strategies for dealing with nuclear, military and other threats and risks from the Soviet Union.
"The recommendations this commission will issue in the spring of 2020 will be forward looking and prescriptive, rather than a snapshot report that sits on a shelf" and the CSC will push for the execution of its recommendations, according to King and Gallagher.
Some of the questions the commission plans to answer include the roles and responsibilities of the public–including the Department of Defense–and private sectors in protecting "U.S. information, innovation and critical infrastructure," how should DoD think about its mission when the U.S. economy and national security are at risk if use of force thresholds for response haven't been met, and how the U.S. and its allies should further appropriate behavior in cyberspace for everyone.
"Today, the United States faces a new and rapidly evolving threat from cyberspace–not one defined by a single nation, as in the 1950s, but rather by a dynamic and far-reaching scope," King and Gallagher said. "The stakes, however, are no less expansive: the future of the U.S. economy and national security."