Go Lean Commentary
Cyber Security has been all the rage in the news as of late, affecting governments (both sides of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans), corporations and regular citizens. Consider these recent headlines*:
It is therefore not surprising that governments are ramping up their cyber-security defenses. The following news story relates a bilateral effort by the US and the UK. This is of importance to Caribbean stakeholders as there are 2 US Territories in the region (Puerto Rico & Virgin Islands) and 18 British affiliates (Overseas Territories and Commonwealth nations). The article is as follows:
Title: UK and U.S. intelligence agencies to up cyber security cooperation
Reporting by: Kylie MacLellan; Editing by: Dominic Evans
LONDON (Reuters) – Britain and the United States will increase cooperation on cyber security, Prime Minister David Cameron said, setting up “cyber cells” to share intelligence and conduct simulated attacks to test the defences of organisations such as banks.
Cameron is on a two-day visit to Washington focused on the economy and security, and is due to have a second meeting with President Barack Obama on Friday at the White House.
“We have got hugely capable cyber defences, we have got the expertise and that is why we should combine as we are going to, set up cyber cells on both sides of the Atlantic to share information,” Cameron told the BBC in an interview aired on Friday.
The cooperation between Britain’s GCHQ eavesdropping agency and the U.S. National Security Agency will include joint war games, with the first exercise later this year to involve the Bank of England and commercial banks in both the City of London and Wall Street, the BBC reported.
“This is a real signal it is time to step up the efforts and to do more,” said Cameron.
The British leader said he also planned to discuss with Obama how the two countries could work more closely with big Internet companies such as Facebook and Google to monitor communications between terror suspects.
The overriding theme of the foregoing news article is the cyber-security is not automatic; it takes heavy-lifting on behalf of stakeholders to ensure the appropriate protections.
Reuters News Wire Service (Posted January 16, 2015; retrieved January 23, 2015) –
http://news.yahoo.com/uk-u-intelligence-agencies-cyber-security-cooperation-090538081–finance.html
What are the Caribbean protections? Are we prepared?
These questions are being considered in connection of the new book Go Lean…Caribbean. The book calls for the elevation of Caribbean society by means of economic optimizations, security provisions and enhanced governance. The issues in the foregoing article are all security related; but this cyber-security is a new battleground, so everything is different: the weapons, tools, and even the enemies are different. This is a changed, scary world!
But this new world must be embraced and mastered. The Go Lean book hails the advantages that technology can bring to small countries. The book relates (Page 127) how Internet & Communications Technologies (ICT) can be a great equalizer in competition with the rest of the world. This embrace of ICT must include e-Government and e-Delivery (outsourcing and in-sourcing for member-states systems), Mobile, Social Media, Postal/Electronic Mail, e-Learning and wireline/wireless/satellite initiatives. Technology brings good, bad and ugly repercussions.
The book Go Lean…Caribbean posits that the region must prepare its own security apparatus for its own security needs, including cyber-security. So the request is that all 30 Caribbean member-states confederate and create the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU), complete with the authority to establish and execute a security apparatus. In fact, this Go Lean book serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the CU and 3 prime directives:
- Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion & create 2.2 million new jobs.
- Establishment of a security apparatus, authorized by a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA), to protect the resultant economic engines.
- Improve Caribbean governance, including a separation-of-powers between CU federal agencies and member-states’ governments, to support these engines.
The book contends, and the recent news reports confirm, that bad actors will also emerge to exploit any economic successes in the world. This point is pronounced early in the book with the Declaration of Interdependence (Page 12) that claims:
x. Whereas we are surrounded and allied to nations of larger proportions in land mass, populations, and treasuries, elements in their societies may have ill-intent in their pursuits, at the expense of the safety and security of our citizens. We must therefore appoint “new guards” to ensure our public safety and threats against our society, both domestic and foreign. The Federation must employ the latest advances and best practices … to assuage continuous threats against public safety.
xvi. Whereas security of our homeland is inextricably linked to prosperity of the homeland, the economic and security interest of the region needs to be aligned under the same governance. Since economic crimes, including piracy and other forms of terrorism, can imperil the functioning of the wheels of commerce for all the citizenry, the accedence of this Federation must equip the security apparatus with the tools and techniques for predictive and proactive interdictions.
So while the CU is set to optimize Caribbean society through economic empowerment, with a heavy emphasis of technology, the Go Lean roadmap posits that the security dynamics (and cyber-security) of the region must be linked to this same endeavor.
The strategy is to confederate under a unified entity made up of the Caribbean to provide homeland security and intelligence gathering-and-analysis for the Caribbean. But this Homeland Security for the Caribbean will have a different meaning than for our American and British counterparts. Though we must be on defense against military intrusions like terrorism and piracy, we mostly have to contend with threats that may imperil the region’s economic engines, like tourism. This includes online fraud scheme and breaches that may undermine the integrity of our institutions and establishments. Imagine a “hack” that harvests credit card account numbers used at area hotels; if those fall into the wrong hands, the experience could tarnish the goodwill of the Caribbean brand.
There is also the need for vigilance against natural and man-made concerns like hurricanes, earthquakes, oil/chemical spills, enterprise corruption and narco-terrorism. These episodes create the need for intelligence gathering-and-analysis to manage the right resource for the right time and right place. All in all, the goal of CU intelligence must be public safety and economic security!
The Go Lean roadmap thusly calls for permanent professional Naval and Marine expeditionary forces, plus a robust Intelligence Agency (including Cyber-security). The CU Trade Federation will lead, fund and facilitate these entities. This effort will be “Step One, Day One” in the Go Lean roadmap, with the full facilitation and accountability.
This effort is defined in the book and blog commentaries as Unified Command-and-Control (UCC). The Go Lean book details a series of community ethos, strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies necessary to establish and succeed with UCC structures in the Caribbean region:
| Economic Principle – Consequences of Choices Lie in Future | Page 21 |
| Community Ethos – Privacy –vs- Public Protection | Page 23 |
| Community Ethos – Intelligence Gathering | Page 23 |
| Community Ethos – “Crap” Happens | Page 23 |
| Community Ethos – Cooperatives | Page 25 |
| Community Ethos – Ways to Foster Genius | Page 27 |
| Community Ethos – Ways to Improve Sharing | Page 35 |
| Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Greater Good | Page 37 |
| Tactical – Confederating a non-sovereign union | Page 63 |
| Tactical – Fostering a Technocracy | Page 64 |
| Tactical – Separation of Powers – Homeland Security | Page 75 |
| Tactical – Separation of Powers – Emergency Management | Page 76 |
| Implementation – Ways to Pay for Change | Page 101 |
| Implementation – Start-up Foreign Policy Initiatives | Page 102 |
| Implementation – Start-up Security Initiatives | Page 103 |
| Implementation – 10 Trends in Implementing Data Centers | Page 106 |
| Implementation – Ways to Impact Social Media – www.myCaribbean.gov | Page 111 |
| Implementation – Ways to Foster International Aid – Military Aid | Page 115 |
| Implementation – Ways to Benefit from Globalization | Page 119 |
| Planning – 10 Big Ideas – #3: Homeland Security Pact | Page 127 |
| Planning – 10 Big Ideas – #8: Cyber Caribbean Efforts | Page 127 |
| Planning – Ways to Model the EU – Sharing | Page 130 |
| Planning – Ways to Make the Caribbean Better | Page 131 |
| Planning – Ways to Improve Failed-State Indices – Intelligence | Page 134 |
| Planning – Lessons from East Germany – Regional Security | Page 139 |
| Planning – Lessons from the American West – Law & Order | Page 142 |
| Advocacy – Ways to Grow the Economy | Page 151 |
| Advocacy – Ways to Improve Governance | Page 168 |
| Advocacy – Ways to Better Manage the Social Contract | Page 170 |
| Advocacy – Ways to Improve Leadership | Page 171 |
| Advocacy – Ways to Impact Justice | Page 177 |
| Advocacy – Ways to Reduce Crime | Page 178 |
| Advocacy – Ways to Improve for Gun Control | Page 179 |
| Advocacy – Ways to Improve Homeland Security | Page 180 |
| Advocacy – Ways to Mitigate Terrorism | Page 181 |
| Advocacy – Ways to Improve Intelligence Gathering/Analysis | Page 182 |
| Advocacy – Ways to Improve for Natural Disasters | Page 184 |
| Advocacy – Ways to Protect Human Rights | Page 220 |
| Appendix – Failed-State Definition: Security Apparatus Oversight | Page 273 |
Other subjects related to security empowerments and UCC for the region have been blogged in other Go Lean…Caribbean commentaries, as sampled here:
| http://www.goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3713 | NEXUS: Facilitating Detroit-Windsor Border Security & Commerce |
| http://www.goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3662 | Migrant flow from Caribbean spikes and threaten US Border Security |
| http://www.goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2684 | Role Model for Justice-Intelligence-Security: The Pinkertons |
| http://www.goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1965 | America’s Navy – 100 Percent – Model for Caribbean |
| http://www.goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1554 | Status of Forces Agreement = Security Pact |
| http://www.goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1531 | A Lesson in History: 100 Years Ago – World War I |
| http://www.goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1487 | Here come the Drones … and the Concerns |
| http://www.goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1076 | Trinidad Muslims travel to Venezuela for jihadist training |
| http://www.goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=960 | NSA records all phone calls in Bahamas, according to Snowden |
| http://www.goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=809 | Muslim officials condemn abductions of Nigerian girls |
| http://www.goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=789 | America’s War on the Caribbean |
| http://www.goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=535 | Remembering and learning from Boston |
| http://www.goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=392 | Jamaica to receive World Bank funds to help in crime fight |
| http://www.goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=273 | 10 Things We Want from the US: #4 – Pax Americana |
Cyber-security is now en vogue; everyone understands the complexity and necessity to secure personal data, data centers and online privacy. “Art is now imitating life” in this regards, as a new television show is about to be launched in the US on the CBS network; see VIDEO below.
This fact mandates that the Social Contract between Caribbean citizens and their governments now automatically assumes that data protections are in place. Yet, the foregoing article helps to appreciate the cutting-edge advances being promulgated on both sides, benevolent and malevolent. The Go Lean roadmap posits that the challenges for the Caribbean to compete, even in the fields of cyber-security, may be too big for any one Caribbean member-state to tackle alone, rather, shifting the responsibility to a region-wide, professionally-managed, deputized technocracy will result in greater production and greater accountability. This deputized agency is the Caribbean Union Trade Federation.
Underlying to the prime directives of elevating the economics, security and governing engines of the Caribbean, is the desire to make the Caribbean homeland, a better place to live, work and play. We do not want a few “bad actors”, high-tech or low-tech, disrupting the peace and integrity of Caribbean institutions. Therefore all Caribbean stakeholders – residents, Diaspora, visitors, businesses and governments – are hereby urged to lean-in to the Go Lean roadmap, this plan for confederacy, collaboration and convention. 🙂
Download the book Go Lean … Caribbean – now!
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Appendix *Source Reference: http://www.telos.com/news-and-events/cybersecurity-news/
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APPENDIX VIDEO: Trailer of new CBS TV Show: CSI Cyber – https://youtu.be/cWMcSiRcbC8
Published on Jan 9, 2015 – CSI Cyber premieres March 4th, 2015 at 10pm on CBS.
Property of CBS ©. No copyright infringement intended or implied.