This guest post is written by Matt Rutherford, Web Strategist and technology producer for Charlie Rose. Matt focuses on the macro themes affecting the internet and the wider world. You can read Matt’s previous guest post, Larry Lessig Defends Copyright, Loves Charlie Rose Remixes, here.

Who protects the internet? In part, it’s this man – General Kevin Chilton, US STRATCOM commander and the head of all military cyber warfare. We’re broadcasting an interview tonight with General Chilton, in which he discusses the threat of cyber warfare, along with his other remits of space warfare and the US nuclear deterrent. Chilton is fascinating, and amongst other things has been a NASA space shuttle pilot, logging over 700 hours in space. You can watch the full interview here (and it is embedded below).

The discussion with General Chilton brings to light a crucial question, however. Is the internet actually protected? The military remit is to defend the .mil networks, prevent online espionage, and develop offensive strike capabilities. But who’s protecting the rest? Given its integration with every aspect of our lives and economy, it’s surprising just how little we know about who defends our electronic nervous system.

The Threat

There’s copious discussion about exactly how vulnerable the US is to online attack. The alleged Russian DoS attacks on Estonia in 2007, and on Georgia this summer, highlighted the potential damage of state sponsored attacks. China has also been developing cyber warfare capabilities for some time, mounting online intelligence operations against Taiwan, and almost certainly against the US. The Chinese military has openly stated that it plans to be able to win an “informationized war” by the middle of this century. Russia, Israel and Romania are also alleged to have high-level cyber warfare capabilities.

This developing threat from state actors led Sami Saydjari, CEO of Cyber Defense LLC, to testify (pdf) to the US House Committee of Homeland Security in 2007, saying: “The US is vulnerable to a strategically crippling cyber attack from nation-state-class adversaries.” Such an attack has the potential to turn the US “from being a superpower to a third-world nation practically overnight.”

I should point out that many have disputed the apocalyptic nature of Saydjari’s statement. Kevin Mitnick, the reformed hacker, noted in a recent phone call:

“Could we face a mass DOS attack, as in Georgia and Estonia? I don’t think so. I think it would be more of a surveillance operation to get intelligence. Technically you could have a mass attack against the thirteen root nameservers around the world. But as for cyber war, I don’t think we’re at that point yet, I think it’s over-stated.”

Regardless of the impact of an offensive cyber attack, everyone appears to agree on the insidious danger from online intelligence gathering. Former counter-terrorism chief Richard Clarke eloquently summarized this in Foreign Policy recently:

“People tend to think about attacks that change things—turn off power grids, or whatever. And while that’s possible, what is happening every day is quite devastating, even though it doesn’t have a kinetic impact and there are no body bags. What’s happening every day is that all of our information is being stolen. So, we pay billions of dollars for research and development, both in the government and the private sector, for engineering, for pharmaceuticals, for bioengineering, genetic stuff… and all that information gets stolen for one one-thousandth of the cost that it took to develop it.”

Who protects us?

The problem is that it isn’t clear who has the remit for comprehensive defense of the internet. The US military and intelligence agencies defend government networks and track targets online, both domestically and abroad. A new Bush-ordained funding boost in January this year will help them become more coordinated. However, as Richard Clarke goes on to note, “the problem is that much of what we need to protect is not in the U.S. government; it’s in our private companies and our private networks”.

The Department of Homeland Security’s National Cyber Security Division operates various public-private initiatives, such as the rather prosaic National Cyber Security Awareness Month. But beyond this, the general response appears highly fragmented with little grand oversight or public-private coordination. I emailed Jonathan Zittrain to ask his opinion on ‘who protects the internet’. He replied:

“Basically no one. At most, a number of loose confederations of computer scientists and engineers who seek to devise better protocols and practices — unincorporated groups like the Internet Engineering Task Force and the North American Network Operators Group. But the fact remains that no one really owns security online, which leads to gated communities with firewalls — a highly unreliable and wasteful way to try to assure security.”

Hackers to the rescue?

When Obama appoints a white house CTO, there will at least be an official figurehead in charge of this matter. Proposed candidates for the role currently include Eric Schmidt, Steve Ballmer, Jeff Bezos and Julius Genachowski from IAC.

However, perhaps the future of internet security really lies in the hands of the community. Indeed, Jonathan Zittrain talked about ‘good hackers’ on our show in May, and he argues the importance of community policing in The Future of the Internet. The last few years of the internet have been about empowering the masses, and removing intermediary apparatus – so why not leverage the community to defend its cyber territory? Indeed, this is already happening, to a certain extent. Just look at Dan Kaminsky, a computer consultant who discovered a fundamental flaw in DNS, allowing him control over any website online. This flaw was astounding in what it gave access to – yet Dan Kaminsky didn’t turn to a government agency or organization, or abuse the hack himself. Instead he made a phone call to Paul Vixie, one of the creators of the BIND9 DNS routing software, and they assembled a team of civilians and private companies to resolve this apocalyptic vulnerability.

It will be interesting to see what happens from here. And whilst it’s certainly entertaining to envision vigilante hackers and rag-tag groups of high school kids overcoming nation states, I think there’s more serious matters at stake. The way that the internet community reacts and operates with state apparatus in defending against cyber threats will be a crucial indicator of our future society. How reliant are we on the nation-state to protect us? Will it ever be possible for internet communities to erode the relevance of the nation state? Or will the internet turn out to be just as Hobbesian as the real world has been?

Charlie Rose’s discussions with General Kevin Chilton and Jonathan Zittrain are available at our website, charlierose.com. Matt Rutherford can be reached at matt@charlierose.com.

Angela Pacienza
November 05, 2008

Today’s youth are plugged into the world in more ways than one, according to the author of a new book that explores the so-called Internet generation.

Don Tapscott says those weaned on the Internet – people born roughly between 1977 and 1997 – are more politically savvy, socially engaged and family-centred than society gives them credit for.

“They are a generation with really strong values of integrity,” he said of the group, the members of which are between about 11 and 30 years of age.

With the eldest of this group making their way in the workforce and marketplace, Tapscott says it’s essential that politicians, CEOs, educators and marketers understand how “Net gen-ers,” as he calls them, think, act and feel because “they’re an unprecedented force of change.”

To that end, the Toronto-based consultant has written “Grown Up Digital: How the Net Generation Is Changing Your World” (McGraw-Hill).

Based on interviews with more than 10,000 young people in 12 countries including Canada and the U.S. done by his nGenera Innovation think tank, the book shows how technology has infiltrated their lives, and how it shapes their decision-making.

He estimates the Internet generation is 81 million people strong in the U.S., or 27 per cent of the country’s population. That’s nearly double the size of generation X.

“This is the first time in human history when children are an authority about something really important,” said Tapscott, author of a dozen books on the use of technology in society including “Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything” and “Paradigm Shift: The New Promise of Information Technology.”

“Today, the 11-year-old at the breakfast table is an authority on a digital revolution that’s changing every institution in society.”

He outlines eight “norms” of this generation, such as prizing freedom of choice and customization – adapting work stations, cellphones and so on – at work and play. Kids of this era are skeptics when presented with information online and elsewhere, and expect speedy responses when buying items on the web.

The book is chock full of anecdotes and case studies, including why Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes decided to join U.S. president-elect Barack Obama’s web team.

“The world has changed. The web has changed,” Tapscott said, explaining the stimulus for the book, a followup to his 1996 bestseller “Growing Up Digital.”

“Back then there was no broadband, no blogging, no social networks, or Twitter, MySpace or Facebook. The web was a very different beast.”

Tapscott said his latest research filled him with hope because “Net gen-ers are smarter, quicker and more tolerant of diversity than their predecessors.”

Still, he acknowledges there are widespread stereotypes and fears about this group. They’ve repeatedly been called lazy, unmotivated, dumb and narcissistic, said Tapscott.

“None of this is supported by the data,” he said, pointing to IQ scores and college graduation levels to support his thesis.

“We’ve always been uneasy about young people,” but the fact that today they are authorities on all things Internet is “a real formula for disruption, and for challenging many institutions. We fear what we don’t understand.”

Tapscott hopes the book will inspire people in positions of power to change business and teaching practices to take advantage of this group’s strengths.

He fears the opposite is happening. Instead of learning from youth, workplaces fight them and “do things like banning Facebook.”

“What happens is (Net gen-ers) bump up against Dilbert Inc. and they don’t like what they see,” he said, referring to the comic strip about cubicle culture.

“There’s a generational firewall that’s being created within our companies, and as a result there’s real friction and tension and conflict starting to emerge in workplaces all across North America.”

And it’s not the Internet’s fault. Blaming the web is “like blaming the library for ignorance,” he said.

ovember 3, 2008 – 12:03 pm PDT – by Andrew Warner 28 Comments

How to be internet famous from Andrew Warner on Vimeo.

by Paul Brent

October 09, 2008 02:24

Using technology is no longer just a young person’s game. In fact, several studies have shown older users get more out of the Internet by using it in more ways than teens and 20-somethings do. And since the biggest consumer group with money is the Baby Boomers, that generation has become the focus of a growing online effort to reach them.

HP Canada just released a survey on how the different age groups in the business world all view technology. The age groups are: Gen Y (under 30); Gen X (age 30 to 42); Baby Boomers (42 to 61); and Veterans (older than 62). HP was trying to understand how the various groups view technology and are motivated to make purchases.

Professor Linda Duxbury, at Carleton University Business School, tells me the survey brings up some key issues. The big one is that older people — that is, the Boomers and the Veterans — control 77 per cent of all companies and their view of tech is quite different from the people they need to hire, i.e., Gen Y and X.

This conflict of generations is not new, she says, but it could really hurt employers who don’t know what their employees want to use in technology, at a time when firms are competing for a shrinking talent pool.

Here are some interesting nuggets illustrating the difference between the ages, pulled from the survey:

• When it comes to learning how to use technology, 46 per cent of Gen Y are most likely to “just try to figure it out themselves.” On the other hand, Veterans prefer to read a manual or talk to other people.

• 84 per cent of Boomers prefer desktop computers, but 55 per cent of Gen Y prefer laptops.

• 32 per cent of Gen Y say that mobile technology is a priority in spending plans while  18 per cent of Gen X, 10 per cent of Boomers and only eight per cent of Veterans give priority to mobile.

• 39 per cent of Gen X use the Internet to find online marketing tools to help them, versus 25 per cent of Veterans.

There are some commonly held views on tech that span the ages, however. Ninety-four per cent of respondents said speed of technology is an important factor. However, younger people are clearly more concerned about energy use and the environment than older users.