The Homeland is bringing you a series of candid, intimate interviews with former Secretaries of the Department of Homeland Security throughout October.
DHS was born out of 9/11, when 23 different agencies were pulled into one department in an effort to provide greater oversight and communication to help better address threats to the homeland. Since it was created, however, DHS has had its share of challenges, not only in combining multiple agencies into one, but at the same time, managing a mission that is changing rapidly with the advance of cyber threats.
The Cipher Brief’s Senior Editor for The Homeland, Todd Rosenblum, talked with former Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, who now serves as President of the University of California.
We asked the former Secretary about lessons learned since 9/11, how the threats have changed, and what her experiences tell her about where we are today.
The Cipher Brief: How do you define homeland security now and has this definition changed for you since you were secretary?
Napolitano: I think of it much like the revised mission statement we crafted for the department when I was secretary, which was something along the order of, “To provide for the safety and security of the American people so that the American way of life can continue to thrive.” And what that means, is thinking about security not necessarily as an absolute guarantee, but that it’s a pledge to use our best efforts to secure air, land, and sea borders of the United States, to make sure that transportation is, and remains safe, that we protect our nation’s critical infrastructure, that we build a resilient capability throughout the American people whether we’re responding to a terrorist incident or Mother Nature.
The Cipher Brief: In your time at the department, is there a way in which you were able to rack and stack between the issues that you had to deal with that included cyber, natural disasters, border integrities, Presidential protection, investigations, critical infrastructure protection, transportation security, I could go on…but as you looked at the overall mission, was there a method for prioritizing certain issues or was the key to success planning across the board and then reacting to what was in front of you at that moment?
Napolitano: You have to be thinking across all those mission areas, but any given day, you can also be reacting to a current threat stream or an earthquake, a hurricane. The challenge of homeland security is to make sure that you are doing the planning and working through lots of “what if” scenarios, but at the same time, being able to react in a timely and effective way to whatever is on your plate that day.
The Cipher Brief: Current DHS Secretary Kirstjen Secretary Nielsen announced recently that she was directing a shift in the department from a traditional counterterrorism posture to a wider counter threat posture, in her words, to make sure, “We are doing everything possible to guard against nation-state interference,” and I felt this was pretty significant. What's your reaction to, at least, this rhetorical shift in priorities?
Napolitano: I would be interested in knowing what her intention is. The way it sounds, it’s focusing on not so much on the various Al-Qaeda spinoffs, or domestic terrorism groups, and focusing more on things like cyber attacks, that can possibly be attributed to Russia, Iran, or any one of several other countries. I think that DHS needs to be nimble and agile in terms of whatever the current threat environment is, so if the current threat environment dictates a preference for nation state activities, then that's where the department needs to go.
The Cipher Brief: So sticking on the foreign influence operations challenge, what do you see as the best role for the federal government in this, and is DHS the most logical federal lead for this mission space? We’re talking about a foreign influence operation inside the homeland. So the Russian campaign to influence our elections would fall into that space.
Napolitano: In a way, it’s difficult to know where in the federal government those countervailing efforts should be centered. But I think given DHS’s role in infrastructure protection, particularly with respect to cyber, that it’s as good a place as any to centralize those efforts.
The Cipher Brief: Is there more that the federal government should consider doing – or maybe even at the state level - in terms of educating or assisting the American people to become more discerning critics of what they read online?
Napolitano: There’s a difference between dealing operationally with active interference in the electoral process and educating. I think DHS needs to work with the private sector, with Facebook, and the other major social media purveyors, versus educating the American people on how to be more discriminating consumers from what they get on social media. I think that’s a role for education and that should really begin in primary schools, teaching Americans how to be critical consumers of information and critical analysts regarding data and other information that comes their way.
The Cipher Brief: Let’s talk about that relationship between the tech sector and the government. There have been a number of issues that have posed challenges for the government, from Apple’s decision not to cooperate on unlocking terrorist cell phones for the FBI, to Google's decision to pull out of a data correlation project with DoD. While there is a real difference in perspective, in the end, it seems that government and the tech sectors, need each other. Where do you see this relationship heading and where will it be in five years?
Napolitano: I think it requires greater cooperation. I think the incentives for cooperation align from the government side; it’s the safety and security of things like electoral process. From the private sector side, they want to be viewed as having integrity and providing good and useful information. I think that it important for both public and private sector leaders to reach out to each other and knit together that relationship as closely as they can.
The Cipher Brief: Do you think the non-federal stakeholders have a big enough seat at the table, both during steady times and during crises? Thinking back to the Sony hack, how do you think we can do better as a whole nation in terms of managing crises that impact the private sector so directly?
Napolitano: It’s interesting, in cyber that’s one area of security where we’ve essentially in a way, outsourced it to the private sector. We’ve made compliance with safety and security standards to be voluntary with the private sector. I think that it remains to be seen whether a purely voluntary regime will work. I think in the end, the insurance industry may have something to do with this because there could be some massive economic losses associated with some of these breaches. They, too, have an interest in compliance and setting good standards.
The Cipher Brief: What do you think about those who are arguing that we are too diffused in terms of the number of federal stakeholders involved in cyber security writ large, and that the longer term answer, is some sort of consolidated department or agency that has the vast majority of this mission space?
Napolitano: I think that is an idea that is worth serious consideration because you’re right, cyber is at the NSA, it’s at Commerce, it’s at the FBI, it’s at DoJ, it’s at DHS, and all those sub agencies at those departments, plus some other independent regulatory bodies. So I think that if there were a way to create a national department of cyber defense or something of that sort, that could better prepare the United States for the cyber age in which we exist.
The Cipher Brief: Looking at where DHS is today, overall, what do you say to those who continue to believe that the portfolio of DHS is just too large, the synergies too small, for keeping all the components together? When you look at it retrospectively in the mission space now, do we have it about right?
Napolitano: Yeah, I actually think we do. DHS was created with 23 previous agencies and departments, etc. We were able to put those into basically a structure of five major mission spaces and build synergies from there. Having spent 15 years building a DHS, it takes a while to unite it. It took the Department of Defense something like 40 years until it really became a unified department. So DHS is still in its early adolescence. I just think it needs more time to continue to grow and mature.
The Cipher Brief: Do you have any sense of how it will look differently in ten years?
Napolitano: I do think one area that’s going to need to be given greater prominence though, is the whole relationship between security and the DHS mission and climate. These big climatic events are becoming more frequent. Climate affects immigration patterns, it affects world food security, and those things that tie into the destabilization of government, and the rise of different kinds of terrorism, so I think that’s an area that should be occupying a greater focus from that holistic point of view.
The Cipher Brief: One more question. It’s an issue you've got such deep experiences with and that's on immigration border security: do you think there's more that we can be doing to deter illegal entry, without compromising our national character in the way that critics say we are doing today?
Napolitano: I think one approach to focus on is: what are the push factors for illegal migration from Central America and then investing in activities that would support greater stability in those countries, greater policing ability, better judicial systems, and so forth. I think we need to look at the source as well as the symptom.
The Cipher Brief: Any final observations?
Napolitano: Whatever little drop of wisdom I have, you’ve got it.
