I have been reading Columbia Magazine for years but this is the first time I have written a feedback to its editor. It was my reaction to a rather interesting interview with Jason Healy, a senior researcher Scholar at Columbia | SIPA (where I spent many hours studying in its library during my undergrad years). The entire interview is here.

My response to the article:

Your interview with Jason Healey couldn’t be more timely and spot on. As the rift between America and Iran continues to widen, the United States government now has more choices in its arsenal for attacking another nation. This was evident in Trump’s decision to call off a physical offense in June and replace with a cyber one against Iran’s missile systems.

However, the article would have been more interesting if it explored cyber attacks coming from domestic threats, rather than just from abroad. I can’t possibly imagine the type of collateral damages we would have to sustain if a domestic bad actor could use a ‘suicide bomber’ style cyber attacks to take down major infrastructures or to launch weapon systems even. This sort of domestic attacks are far more difficult to detect and intercept versus a foreign one. The Congress must allow more mass surveillance on US citizens if we were to build up our defenses domestically, which is a major blow on our privacy rights.

Cho-Nan Michael Tsai SEAS ‘01

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Feedback was published in Fall 2019 Columbia Magazine