The challenge of cyber security: “1984,” a Cold War legacy, and the friction of changing paradigms

Richard Harkner

12 May

14:00 12th May 2017 ( Trinity Term 2017 )

Tony Hoare Room, Robert Hooke Building

In the realms of national cybersecurity strategy and national cybersecurity public policy, the United States does not have the fundamentals correct (which means most western democracies do not as well). Two dominant paradigms – Deterrence and the Orwellian view of the State—have distorted thinking and despite considerable empirical evidence that suggests a different set of dynamics are dominating, neither is giving way (as Lakatos and/or Kuhn would predict). This talk will walk through those paradigms, the implications of getting fundamentals wrong for both technology/capabilities and policy development and what alternatives to both actually should be.

Speaker bio

Dr. Richard J. Harknett is US-UK Fulbright Scholar in Cybersecurity, University of Oxford, United Kingdom and Professor and Head of the Department of Political Science at the University of Cincinnati. He is the author of over fifty publications in the area of international relations theory and international security studies. He served as scholar-in-residence in the United States Department of Defense (2016) and he has provided invited lectures in seven countries and numerous presentations to government agencies, including the US Defense and State Departments and provided briefings to Congressional offices on Capitol Hill. He has testified on cybersecurity to the Ohio State Legislature and served as the Governor’s appointee on the State of Ohio’s Cybersecurity, Education, and Economic Development Council and contributed to the writing of Ohio’s Cybersecurity Strategy.

He was selected in 2001 as Fulbright Professor of International Relations at the Diplomatic Academy, Vienna, where he continues to hold a professorial lectureship. Prof. Harknett has been named the Boyd-Lubker Visiting Scholar at Western Kentucky University, the Edith C. Alexander Distinguished Teaching Professor and the Distinguished Service Professor in McMicken College, the Faculty Award for Exemplary Contributions in Service to the University, University of Cincinnati, and was the recipient of the State of Ohio Faculty Innovator award. He has served as Chair of the University Faculty and founding Chair of the Charles Phelps Taft Research Center at UC