Jane Lute

While security is typically something that modern societies assign to their governments — governments run the police, the military, make the laws, etc. — there have been no clear or consistent assignments to governments for security in cyberspace. Indeed, governments everywhere are struggling to define and assert their own proper role in cyberspace as the Internet expands at the rate of over 100 new users per minute. How well are nation-states, international institutions, or even the major multinational corporations coping with these developments? What lessons from the post-War decades of institution building and economic development endure and which have not made it out of the 20th Century intact? Drawing on experience in international, national, and homeland security, Lute offers a policy perspective on security in the Cyber Age. 

What exactly is happening in cyberspace? Is the Internet really changing everything? Just how reliant are modern societies on global connectivity, instantaneous access to seemingly limitless information, and deeply pervasive automation that runs everything? What are the social effects of this connectivity — or example, is all of cyberspace ‘public?’ What does it mean to speak of personal privacy or personally identifiable information? What are the most significant political implications of the worldwide ‘cyber awakening’ that is accompanying the ongoing, organic, and instantaneous expansion of the Internet? What is happening at the key intersection of technology, power, and wealth?  

Created a dozen years ago in the wake of 9/11, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has no problem with brand name recognition. It is continually challenged, however, with brand name understanding. Why do we have DHS? What does it do? How does it work? How will we know it’s succeeding? Is there a difference between National Security and Homeland Security? 

Pandemics, natural disasters, manmade crises, riots, organized crime, war. How do countries cope with challenges that seem to outsize the ability of any government to handle? Drawing on over three decades of operational and policy experience at the national and international level, Lute talks about how governments around the world work behind the scenes of military and diplomatic relations to solve problems every day. 

Why do wars end when they do? Why do some wars, it seems, never end? What factors combine to prevent wars from ending? How do events far removed from the battlefield often come to influence policymakers to prolong or preemptively conclude war? 

Given mankind’s history of warfare, is it possible to think realistically about how a war might be prevented? Why do certain factors combine to unleash widespread violence in one setting, while in another, war is avoided? How should we think about the outbreak, spread, or resumption of violence in order to preclude wholesale slaughter? Is there a role for civil society, the private sector, or even individuals in preventing the outbreak of violence? 

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