As I write, Lt. Gen. Keith Alexander is giving Senate testimony about why he’s qualified to lead Department of Defense’s new Cyber Command. He undoubtedly fits the bill and is probably about the most qualified senior-level military man in the country to serve in this capacity. He’s led the National Security Agency for the last four and half years, and has 35 years of experience within the ranks of Army Intelligence.

That’s why the issue isn’t with Lt. Gen Alexander’s qualifications, but whether the structure of the whole cyber defense enterprise is the right one. The Pentagon stands up its new Cyber Command to coordinate all cyber activities under its umbrella, but he’ll also remain in his job at the NSA. He believes his new organizational mission is to integrate:

[C]yberspace operations and synchronizing warfighting effects across the global security environment; providing support to civil authorities and international partners; directing global information grid operations and defense; executing full-spectrum military cyberspace operations; serving as the focal point for deconfliction of DOD offensive cyberspace operations; providing improved shared situational awareness of cyberspace operations, including indications and warning.

… which sure sounds a lot like his old organizational mission at Ft. Meade.

And Alexander is christened with his new duties as Noah Shachtman has actually proposed to separate powers within the cyber community:

There’s the signals-intelligence directorate, the Big Brothers who, it is said, can tap into any electronic communication. And there’s the information-assurance directorate, the cybersecurity nerds who make sure our government’s computers and telecommunications systems are hacker- and eavesdropper-free. In other words, there’s a locked-down spy division and a relatively open geek division. The problem is, their goals are often in opposition. One team wants to exploit software holes; the other wants to repair them. This has created a conflict — especially when it comes to working with outsiders in need of the NSA’s assistance. Fortunately, there’s a relatively simple solution: We should break up the NSA.

While it would seem that these two actions — elevating the NSA’s director to oversee the whole kit-and-caboodle while keeping him entrenched in his old job and thus creating overlapping bureaucracies — are working at cross-purposes, it’s quite possible that perhaps we’re moving in that direction, albeit in measured fashion.

Sounds crazy? Think of it this way — in order to separate the NSA’s directorates, there would have to be political breathing space within the cyberspy bureaucracy to break them up. So instead of appearing like Alexander is getting a demotion by only controlling whichever half his old agency he ends up with, he gets a new title and the current directorate heads get elevated to new positions.

This surely isn’t gospel, but remains an interesting possibility.

For the last decade, leaders from both parties have agreed that the gravest danger facing the U.S. is the threat of the use of a nuclear bomb by a terrorist group or rogue state. But while nonproliferation has long been the provenance of governments, there is a clear role for industry to play as well.

Many of the components used to build a nuclear bomb — including the technology to create a uranium enrichment program — are inherently dual-use. This means that the same technology used for innocuous industrial purposes can also be used to help build a nuclear weapon. Some of these items, such as high-quality steel and bearings for centrifuges, are now well-known to be dual-use. Others, such as “triggered spark gaps” or very high-speed switches with medical purposes, are somewhat less well-known.

The U.S. and other countries use a series of restrictions on the export of certain goods — very high-speed computers, for example — to prevent adversaries from developing better weapons. But too often, both state and industry are slow to realize the dual-use nature of some products. When Iran started its centrifuge program, it was unable to acquire the ultra-high grade maraging steel typically used to build the rotors due to export controls. Instead, it purchased the highest quality steel it could buy — and that turned out to be good enough.

Further, there is little to no sharing of information among companies about who is trying to purchase what from whom. While some individual companies have internal compliance programs, a broader approach is required to share information among companies and industries. The sharing of information would ultimately prevent those who shouldn’t have access to such items from shopping around to find a company that will sell the technology with little concern for who the final customer may be. Some claim that Iran was able to use a series of front companies to eventually purchase the maraging steel that it needed, in addition to the “good enough” stuff.

Fixing this problem will not be easy. Companies exist to generate profit, and denying potential customers never makes shareholders happy. And one could imagine that some customers would lodge discrimination complaints. Further, information about sales, both actual and potential, is naturally considered commercial proprietary information.

How can this problem be solved? Two models spring to mind. In the first, government collects and analyzes information from applications for export licenses. In the second, industry leads the effort. From my perspective, the latter is preferable.

Government leadership on this problem would probably raise more concerns than it would solve: Which government would collect the data? How would governments share data? How would government gain access to information not contained in export license applications — especially for rejected sales? And how could industry be guaranteed that commercial secrets would not be leaked?

Having industry lead this effort would solve many of these problems. For starters, companies know about sales in progress and about sales denied, so they would be able to identify problems earlier. Industry also already collects much of this data to track sales, identify future markets and stay ahead of the competition. And it’s possible to come up with schemes where the information is not shared between companies until it’s needed. This would also reduce the role and intrusiveness of government, while probably being a cheaper regulatory regime than a government-run one.

Granted, industry leadership would also raise some questions — Who would fund the effort? How would information be protected? — but an important model already exists: Las Vegas casinos. This intensely competitive industry has learned how to share information about problem gamblers and cheaters between casinos in a way that helps them all earn more. No casino wants the competition to know how much profit it is making or how much money it is losing. But if an individual or a small group has found a way to beat the casinos and win large stakes, it helps all of the casinos to identify them and keep them from winning even more. What’s more, this is completely driven and funded by the industry, which realized that it could reduce losses through cooperation. Just as casinos can keep track of problem customers collectively, so can companies that supply dual-use materials.

The challenge, of course, is to convince those companies that they would serve themselves and their legitimate customers by working together to develop such an oversight system. After all, the promise of a nuclear-free world – a collective good – isn’t quite the same incentive as preventing cheaters from winning in your casino. While an industry-run regulatory system is the best solution, it may take the specter of an intrusive government regulatory scheme to spur companies to act in our shared interest and perhaps prevent the next Iran.

Photo credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/stuckincustoms/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

As the administration’s Nuclear Security Summit takes place in Washington this week, CNN has a new look at public opinion on a variety of issues related to nuclear weapons policy. And it’s safe to say that there is strong public support for what the President’s is proposing, if not always for the utopian-sounding goals he has articulated.

The latter problem is not new. In a May 2009 Democracy Corps survey that found remarkably strong support for Obama’s foreign policy and national security leadership — strong enough, in fact, to all but erase the traditional “national security gap” between Democrats and Republicans — Obama’s stated goal of eliminating all nuclear weapons got a decidedly lukewarm reaction, with 60 percent of Americans agreeing that “eliminating all nuclear weapons in the world is not realistic or good for America’s security.”

The DCorps question on this subject combined skepticism about a nuclear-weapons-free world with opposition to the idea on national security grounds. But CNN separates the two issues, and while respondents split right down the middle (with significant differences based on age, as over-50s who remember the Cold War tend to be negative) on the desirability of eliminating nuclear weapons, the percentage thinking this can actually happen has dropped from one-third in 1988 to one-fourth today.

But the big difference between May 2009 and today in terms of nuclear weapons policy is that the President is now taking concrete steps to address the “loose nukes” issue, to build-down nuclear weapons in conjunction with Russia, and to strengthen the international non-proliferation regime (in conjunction with efforts to isolate Iran’s defense of its nuclear program). And CNN finds strong support for Obama in every tangible area, even if his long-range goals still produce skepticism.

Most importantly, 70 percent of Americans — including 68 percent of independents and even 49 percent of Republicans — think the Senate should ratify the START Treaty with Russia, despite the predictable charges of “weakness” against Obama that have been emanating from many conservative circles since the treaty was signed. With a two-thirds Senate vote being required for ratification of the treaty, that’s probably just enough public support to keep Republican defense hard-liners (and/or obdurate Obama-haters) from launching a big Senate fight.

Moreover, by giving high-profile attention to the “loose nukes” issue, Obama is tapping a deep well of public anxiety about the possibility of nuclear terrorism. By a 7-to-1 margin, respondents to the CNN poll said “preventing terrorists from getting nuclear weapons” should be a high priority than “reducing nuclear weapons controlled by unfriendly countries.” One of the great ironies of the Bush years was that his administration constantly promoted fears about nuclear terrorism while making nuclear security a very low priority, even in bilateral relations with Russia. Dick Cheney, in particular, treated truculent and unilateral behavior towards potential adversaries as the sole means of preventing nuclear terrorism. By unpacking nuclear security from other issues and making it a focus of bilateral and multilateral initiatives, Obama is linking diplomacy with a national security concern that Americans care about passionately.

Public support for the president’s nuclear weapons policies will get its strongest test beginning next month with the beginning of a scheduled review of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. As Steven Clemons notes in an excellent overview of Obama’s “nuclear wizardry” at Politico today, that’s where the rubber will need to start meeting the road in terms of the administration’s efforts to round up the world community for an effective united front towards Iran’s nuclear program. But it’s clear the president’s nuclear initiatives are off to a very good start despite generic conservative carping.

This item is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist.