Say what you will about John McAfee. If you’ve been following the media stories on him over the past several years, then you may say that he runs with a dangerous crowd. Mcafee is the first one to say that he may have laughed a bit too loud, but he says that he’s never hurt anyone.
John McAfee is running for President under the Cyber Party ticket. He has told the media that his candidacy is driven less by any long held desire to become President, and more by a calling to protect the U.S. against cyber threats from hostile anti-American nations including China and Russia.
McAfee has a cyber tune that we should all listen to. It is his Cyber Security Doctrine, and like any great song it has a very powerful message. The message is that the American people, the Presidential candidates, and the media who follow the candidates, should all be thinking long and hard about cybersecurity.
What’s more likely? An airplane carrying U.S. passengers gets hijacked. Or an airplane carrying U.S. passengers gets cyber-attacked. If you’re a cyber expert, then you’d probably say the latter. Point is, we are just not hearing a whole lot out of the Presidential candidates on cyber security… and the moderators have been strangely quiet on the topic when questioning the candidates during the televised debates.
Forget about whether or not you’d vote for McAfee, or your opinion of him. Read his Cyber Security Doctrine, then see if cyber registers on your voting criteria. Hopefully the Republican and Democratic front runners will read McAfee’s doctrine and offer up one of their own. Whoever gets elected will head up the U.S. cyber military, a daunting task.
The official McAfee 16 Cyber Security Doctrine is published on the Cybersecurity Ventures website.
McAfee 16 Cyber Security Doctrine:
- The U.S. Government is largely illiterate in the digital sciences and lags Russia and China by a substantial margin in cyber security.
- We are in a cyber war with China, and have been for more than 5 years. The Chinese attacks on Homeland Security, the Department of Defense and the FBI went nearly undetected and the massive attack against the Office of Personnel Management was ongoing for two years before it was even noticed. Our response to these acts of war was to hire consultants to make OPM personnel feel better about themselves. This sole response indicates a paralysis within our government and a need for massive change.
- This change must happen immediately. The Chinese are already capable of the mass destruction of the infrastructure of the U S. entirely without the use of arms.
- The overwhelming majority of the firmware used in US communications and digital processing was written by Chinese companies under Chinese Government direction and can be fully co-opted by the Chinese, using hidden back doors, at any time of their choosing. This would mean the total collapse of all digital communications in the US, including the collapse of our Internet.
- The Chinese have secretly commandeered many of our satellites that are used for communications and are using these hijacked satellites in order to hide their entry into our critical control systems.
- The U.S. Government, at the Executive level, must immediately create an Office of Digital Transformation, with the imperative to develop cyber defense systems and procedures within every department of the Executive branch. The development of these systems and procedures must be given the highest priority.
- We must recognize that National Defense cannot be achieved through defensive systems only. Deterrent is a necessary element, and this can only be achieved through the creation of offensive cyber warfare tools.
- These offensive tools must be developed hand-in-hand with our defensive tools, and therefore must fall under the full control of the office of digital transformation.
- The staffing for the Office of Digital Transformation must come from outside of the current government personnel pool. This is of extreme importance. Our current problems are a direct result of our ossified personnel structure and personnel influences. We cannot have the most critical office within the government tainted by our past weaknesses.
- The U.S. currently possesses the the largest and most talented pool of cyber security specialists in the world. These specialists congregate multiple times each year in various locations, culminating in the annual Defcon conference, comprised of upwards of 50,000 specialists. These specialists compose our Hacker Community.
- Our Hacker Community is overwhelmingly composed of White Hat hackers. These hackers perform the critical function within our industrial complex of hiring themselves out, in teams, to corporations in order to improve corporate cyber security.
- Red Teams develop strategies, procedures and systems to attempt to break into their clients’ data and operations centers with the intent of accessing information critical to the functioning of the corporation.
- Blue Teams take over the responsibility of securing the corporation’s digital assets and implement systems and procedures to attempt to block the Red Teams.
- At the end of each project, the Red Teams and Blue teams jointly advise the corporation of action plans that must be implemented in order to create a more secure environment.
- The U.S Government, in order to staff the Office of Digital Transformation, must immediately begin active recruiting within our Hacker community. This recruiting must focus at least 75% on specialists with heavy Red
Team experience. Red Team talents can be used for the development of both Defensive and Offensive systems. Many specialists are experienced in both talent sets.
- The ODT must be divided into two branches: Cyber Security Defense Systems, and Cyber Warfare Weapons Development.
- Cyber Security Defense systems must be structured in a manner that mirrors the existing structure of government program offices. ODT staff will be assigned to each program office to immediately analyse and re-structure the digital systems with each department in order to elevate each department with highest possible level of cyber security.
- Cyber Warfare Weapons Development will be staffed by Red Team specialists capable of attaining a Top Secret Security Clearance and must be directed by a seasoned cyber security executive recruited from within the corporate cyber security world. It must have an advisory board established by the Pentagon.
- The ODT can be funded in a variety of ways. My suggestion is to disband the TSA in its entirety. It has been been well established that it is ineffective. Bolstering the on-board armed Marshall program will provide real security. The TSA budget is close to 8 billion dollars per year. The salaries for the nearly 50,000 screeners is less than 2 billion dollars. If we sent them all home but continued to pay their salaries we would not burden the unemployment rolls and we would still save nearly $6 billion per year in overhead. Even if only 50% of the overhead could be saved, that would still be an annual savings of $3 billion. With $3 billion per year we could hire 10,000 of the World’s top cyber security specialists and possibly save this great nation of ours.
Is John McAfee a Cyber Security Saint? If he’s the one who runs cybersecurity up the American flagpole and forces voters, candidates, and the media to take the issue more seriously, then he may be.
