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Earlier this year, the Belfer Center’s Cyber Project embarked on an ambitious project, but one we believe is achievable: to get a federal data privacy and security law passed. Such a law will have enormous benefits for consumers, businesses, and national security. In the absence of a federal law,  organizations are still free to collect, hold, process, use, and sell data however they wish.

In collaboration with the R Street Institute’s Cybersecurity and Emerging Threats Team, led by Tatyana Bolton, and Cyberspace Solarium Commission’s Senior Advisor Cory Simpson, the Cyber Project is taking a focused approach to the problem. 

In February and March, Belfer Center Student Fellow Winnona DeSombre and Environment and Natural Resources Program Director Henry Lee testified before the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission in Washington, D.C. During separate hearings on China’s capabilities and plans related to cyber and to energy, DeSombre and Lee recommended actions Congress should take for the U.S. to remain competitive with China.

Bruce Schneier warns that AIs are becoming hackers. They're able to find exploitable vulnerabilities in software code. They're still not very good at it, but they'll get better. It's the kind of problem that lends itself to modern machine learning techniques: an enormous amount of input data, pattern matching, and goals that permit reinforcement. We have every reason to believe that AIs will continue to get better at this task and will soon surpass humans. They'll even come up with hacks that we humans would judge creative.

In late September, more than 600 participants from across Harvard and the national security community convened for a two-day conference focused on building a more diverse and capable United States Intelligence Community (IC). Co-hosted by the Belfer Center’s Intelligence and Cyber Projects, the conference took place over two consecutive mornings and served as a kick-off to a year-long initiative focused on highlighting workforce diversity in the IC as a mission critical element to US national security.

Brief news and information on recent activities, special events, and recognitions at the Belfer Center.

This Spring, the COVID-19 pandemic laid bare the injustices and inequality across the nation, forcing the nation to really pay attention. The murders of Ahmad Arbury, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and many other Black men and women reverberated throughout homes and communities and people in cities across America took to the streets to protest racism and police brutality. For many, this was a time of reckoning, and together, the entire Belfer Center staff looked for ways to identify and dismantle systemic racism in their professional and personal lives.

From safeguarding elections - to engaging with China's cyber officials - to protecting user data, the Center's cyber initiatives are working to protect the public from digital dangers and make this technical arena more accessible. This fall, the Belfer Center named Lauren Zabierek, Maria Barsallo Lynch, and Julia Voo to head three of the Center’s growing cyber-related projects: The Cyber Project, Defending Digital Democracy Project (D3P), and China Cyber Policy Initiative (CCPI), respectively.

In April, the China Institute for International Strategic Studies (CIISS) joined the Belfer Center’s Cyber Project in hosting their second working group meeting, a Track II dialogue to facilitate discussions between the U.S. and China  on the risks of cyber conflict. The meeting, which included representatives from both countries’ tech sectors, explored existing and new tools for mitigating these risks and looking into possible areas for collaboration.