If you care about freedom and prosperity, you ought to care about cybersecurity. That’s what Heritage’s James Carafano told an audience at the South by Southwest Interactive (SXSWi) conference in Austin, Texas, on Sunday.
Carafano said that the No. 1 target for the Chinese is not the U.S. government or other major entities, but foreign students studying abroad.
Through LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Reunion.com and more, cyber-soldiers home in on their victims—and most people just aren’t paying attention.
“I think it’s a fundamental responsibility for this generation to understand this space,” said Carafano.
In a recent article on the same issue, he pointed out that the FBI uses social network analytics tools in their investigations, “but many of their tools are no better than, say, Klout—a tool available for free, to anyone online.”
That means taking the “high ground” and being able to sense the environment around you better than your competitor, according to Carafano.
Because the government doesn’t understand or work well in cyberwarfare, Carafano believes it must be fought in other ways.
“Government is linear and social networks are non-linear,” he said. “That’s why we need a generation of leaders who can operate comfortably in the linear and nonlinear worlds.”
Carafano noted that the United States is not prepared for this digital war online—and that’s not a comforting thought.
Carafano’s speaking session, entitled “Wiki at War: Conflict in a Socially Networked World,” was based off his book of the same title. Carafano’s history of working in research on national security issues for most of his life was the genesis of writing a book on the ever-important issues of cyberwarfare.
Source material can be found at this site.
