Doubling Down on America’s Cyber Diplomacy

By Jason Healey

Jason Healey is a Cipher Brief Cyber Advisor and Senior Research Scholar at Columbia University’s School for International and Public Affairs, and Visiting Scholar at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, specializing in cyber conflict and risk. He started his career as a U.S. Air Force intelligence officer, before moving to cyber response and policy jobs at the White House and Goldman Sachs. Healey was founding director for cyber issues at the Atlantic Council where he remains a Senior Fellow and is the editor of the first history of conflict in cyberspace, A Fierce Domain: Cyber Conflict, 1986 to 2012. He is on the DEF CON review board and served on the Defense Science Board task force on cyber deterrence.

The main loss from the departure of Chris Painter, America’s top cyber diplomat, will not be the loss of one of the top U.S. civil servants in the field, with 26 years in government. Nor will the biggest hit be to U.S. airlines, whose business models have increasingly been depending on the hundreds of thousands of miles he flew, pursuing America’s interests. The makers of Diet Coke will certainly feel the pain, now that Ministries of Foreign Affairs around the world no longer have to stock up on cases of the stuff for Painter’s unending thirst for the fizz. But they’ll survive.

No, those that will suffer most are likely to be American citizens, and indeed netizens in whatever country they live, who depend on an open, free, and secure internet. Painter has been a tireless advocate for these goals—American goals—around the world, and the best days of American cyber diplomacy may be behind us.

“The Cipher Brief has become the most popular outlet for former intelligence officers; no media outlet is even a close second to The Cipher Brief in terms of the number of articles published by formers.” —Sept. 2018, Studies in Intelligence, Vol. 62

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