A weekly digest of the latest news and research related to the work of the Technology, Economics, and Governance Working Group. Topics covered in the digest include cybersecurity, domestic regulation, innovation, international competition, social media disinformation, and the California exodus.
Cyber
Justice Department says Russians hacked federal prosecutors | AP News
The Justice Department announced Friday that the SolarWinds cyberattack that occurred last year breached the email accounts of department employees across several federal prosecutors’ offices across the country. The breach appears to have been most significant in New York state, where hackers accessed up to 80% of department email accounts across the four different U.S. attorney offices. The accounts are believed to have been compromised for a period of over 8 months. The accounts contained information such as the names of confidential informants and prosecutors’ strategies for major cases.
U.S. Taps Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Others to Help Fight Ransomware, Cyber Threats | The Wall Street Journal
The U.S. is asking several major tech companies to help bolster the nation’s cyber defense under a new initiative called the Joint Cyber Defense Collaborative. The focus of the program will be on preventing cyberattacks against cloud-computing providers, before expanding to cover more areas of cyber infrastructure. Cloud-computing has been the focus of cyberattacks in recent years as more sensitive information has been moved to the cloud and the U.S. government hopes to leverage the experience major firms bring to the table to improve cyber defenses.
Responsible Cyber Offense | Lawfare
This piece compares two recent cyberattacks, the SolarWinds hack in 2020 and the Microsoft Exchange breach carried out in 2021, and uses these as examples to discuss a broader philosophy of offensive cyber operations. The authors offer a set of cyber norms that would be more diplomatically palatable. These norms are designed to avoid irresponsible techniques like discriminate targeting and haphazard backdoors which could cause more widespread collateral damage. The authors lay out responsible offensive behavior and advance several principles that make up responsible behavior including: testing cyberweapons before use, avoiding indiscriminate targeting, constrain the use of automation as part of attacks, prohibit targets throughout the operational cycle, and to maintain responsible operational design, engineering, and oversight.
Industrial Policy, International Competition, and Cooperation
Cable, Internet Companies Stand to Gain From Broadband Funding in Infrastructure Bill | The Wall Street Journal
The infrastructure bill currently moving through the Senate contains over $65 billion for improved internet access in poor and isolated communities. These funds would bankroll the expansion of fiber optic networks run by companies like AT&T into millions of new locations. The bill would also continue an emergency fund for broadband service for millions of Americans that was created during the pandemic. The broadband portion of the bill is also more palatable for broadband companies, who had opposed earlier attempts to raise minimum operating speeds and provide incentives for new telecom firms.
Senators Propose Change to New Crypto Rules For Tax Reporting | Forbes
As part of negotiations over how to pay for the proposed $1 trillion infrastructure package making its way through Congress, legislators have considered the idea of increasing the IRS’ ability to track large cryptocurrency sales within the United States. Currently, the IRS largely lacks the ability to track large cryptocurrency payments effectively, providing a workaround to reporting requirements which state that any transaction greater than $10,000 must be reported to the IRS. Some cryptocurrency experts feared that the move could dissuade large cryptocurrency miners and intermediaries from setting up shop in the United States. To address these concerns, the Senate Banking Committee proposed explicitly excluding several classes of cryptocurrency facilitators from the amendment.
Domestic Regulation
The Invisible Tech Behemoth | The Atlantic
This opinion piece argues that Microsoft will be an interesting test for the Biden administration’s commitment to anti-trust regulation. Last month, President Biden signed an executive order aimed at monopolies in various industries. At the same time, there’s been a recent fervor on Capitol Hill to reign in “Big Tech.” However, Microsoft – despite its brush with anti-trust regulation decades ago – has in recent years remained relatively unscathed. The author argues a few reasons why Microsoft has evaded public scrutiny: 1) the sense that it already paid its dues; 2) it’s relatively boring when compared to the likes of Apple, Facebook, and Google; and 3) it has failed at most of its exciting consumer products. And yet its size and behavior make it ripe for anti-trust scrutiny.
Innovation
DoD pledges militarywide alignment on electromagnetic spectrum ops | Defense News
This week, the Department of Defense released its highly anticipated plan outlining its electromagnetic spectrum operations superiority strategy. This strategy is a critical component to the success of the Pentagon’s Joint All-Domain Command and Control concept, which aims to better connect sensors from each of the military services into a single network. So far, each service has had its own tactical network that cannot communicate with those of the other services. Long-term planners believe success against adversaries in future military operations may rely on the ability to fully control that network. The implementation plan establishes a new entity within Strategic Command to evaluate and assess the readiness of EMS operations and prioritizes investment in the technology.
Freedom of Speech, Domestic Democracy, and Extremism
AP, Reuters to help Twitter elevate more credible info | AP
After getting into a trouble more than few times this past year because its “trending topics” feature amplified misinformation, Twitter announced this week a new partnership with the Associated Press and Reuters to help verify information in real time around trending conversations. The news agencies will also provide context on topics garnering widespread attention and help debunk misinformation. AP and Reuters are also fact-checkers for Facebook, but the partnership with Twitter appears to be a step further.
