Review of Open Lecture with Richard A. Clarke
World Wide War - The Next Threat to National Security and What to Do About It
 Thomas Fischermann with Richard A. Clarke |
He presented three phenomena of Internet crime to the 170 people listening at ESMT: cybercrime, cyber espionage and cyber war. Cybercrime and cyber espionage, Clarke argued, are very similar. Either money or information is stolen by criminal groups and sometimes governments are the ones doing the hiring. The most worrying prediction he gave was that more than 30 governments around the globe are preparing cyber war. And cyber war will ultimately lead to real war, so Clarke’s hypothesis.
Clarke demands international rules to regulate cyber activities and requested the German government do much more than simply install some 10 people in Bonn to address this topic. Thomas Fischermann from the German weekly, Die Zeit, eloquently moderated the discussion that followed, one that mirrored the worries of the audience.
Richard A. Clarke, born 1951, served the last three presidents as a senior White House Advisor. He has held the titles of Special Assistant to the President for Global Affairs, National Coordinator for Security and Counter-terrorism, and Special Advisor to the President for Cyber Security. After 9/11 he was head of the crisis committee of the White House. Prior, Clarke served for 19 years in the Pentagon, the Intelligence Community, and the State Department. Today, Clarke teaches as an adjunct lecturer in Public Policy at Harvard University.
About his book
Richard Clarke’s Cyber War is the first book about the war of the future ― cyber war ― and a convincing argument that the U.S. may already be in peril of losing it. Cyber War goes behind the "geek talk" of hackers and computer scientists to explain clearly and convincingly what cyber war actually is, how cyber weapons work, and how vulnerable the U.S. are as a nation and as individuals to the vast and looming web of cyber criminals. From the first cyber crisis meeting in the White House a decade ago to the boardrooms of Silicon Valley and the electrical tunnels under Manhattan, Clarke and co-author Robert K. Knake trace the rise of the cyber age and profile the unlikely characters and places at the epicenter of this battlefield. Cyber War was published under the title World Wide War: Angriff aus dem Internet by Hoffmann und Campe.
ESMT European School of