1AC Advantages1ACPlantextThe United States federal government should substantially curtail its domestic surveillance through backdoors that bypass encryption technology.1AC Cyber Adv

NSA backdoors in encryption standards destroys cybersecuritymakes the US vulnerable to hackers Sasso, technology correspondent for National Journal, 14 (Brendan, "The NSA Isn't Just Spying on Us, It's Also Undermining Internet Security", April 29 2014, National Journal, www.nationaljournal.com/daily/the-nsa-isn-t-just-spying-on-us-it-s-also-undermining-internet-security-20140429)Bolstering the nations defenses against hackers has been one of the Obama administrations top goals. Officials have warned for years that a sophisticated cyberattack could cripple (decimate) critical infrastructure or allow thieves to make off with the financial information of millions of Americans. President Obama pushed Congress to enact cybersecurity legislation, and when it didnt, he issued his own executive order in 2013. The cyber threat to our nation is one of the most serious economic and national security challenges we face, Obama wrote in a 2012 op-ed in The Wall Street Journal. But critics argue that the National Security Agency has actually undermined cybersecurity and made the United States more vulnerable to hackers. At its core, the problem is the NSAs dual mission. On one hand, the agency is tasked with securing U.S. networks and information. On the other hand, the agency must gather intelligence on foreign threats to national security. Collecting intelligence often means hacking encrypted communications. Thats nothing new for the NSA; the agency traces its roots back to code-breakers deciphering Nazi messages during World War II. So in many ways, strong Internet security actually makes the NSAs job harder. This is an administration that is a vigorous defender of surveillance, said Christopher Soghoian, the head technologist for the American Civil Liberties Union. Surveillance at the scale they want requires insecurity. The leaks from Edward Snowden have revealed a variety of efforts by the NSA to weaken cybersecurity and hack into networks. Critics say those programs, while helping NSA spying, have made U.S. networks less secure. According to the leaked documents, the NSA inserted a so-called back door into at least one encryption standard that was developed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology. The NSA could use that back door to spy on suspected terrorists, but the vulnerability was also available to any other hacker who discovered it. NIST, a Commerce Department agency, sets scientific and technical standards that are widely used by both the government and the private sector. The agency has said it would never deliberately weaken a cryptographic standard, but it remains unclear whether the agency was aware of the back door or whether the NSA tricked NIST into adopting the compromised standard. NIST is required by law to consult with the NSA for its technical expertise on cybersecurity. The revelation that NSA somehow got NIST to build a back door into an encryption standard has seriously damaged NISTs reputation with security experts. NIST is operating with a trust deficit right now, Soghoian said. Anything that NIST has touched is now tainted. Its a particularly bad time for NIST to have lost the support of the cybersecurity community. In his executive order, Obama tasked NIST with drafting the cybersecurity guidelines for critical infrastructure such as power plants and phone companies. Because its an executive order instead of a law, the cybersecurity standards are entirely voluntary, and the U.S. government will have to convince the private sector to comply. The Snowden leaks werent the first to indicate that the NSA is involved in exploiting commercial security. According to a 2012 New York Times report, the NSA developed a worm, dubbed Stuxnet, to cripple Iranian nuclear centrifuges. But the worm, which exploited four previously unknown flaws in Microsoft Windows, escaped the Iranian nuclear plant and quickly began damaging computers around the world. The NSA and Israeli officials have also been tied to Flame, a virus that impersonated a Microsoft update to spy on Iranian computers. Vanee Vines, an NSA spokeswoman, said the U.S. government is as concerned as the public is with the security of these products. The United States pursues its intelligence mission with care to ensure that innocent users of those same technologies are not affected, she said. According to Vines, the NSA relies on the same encryption standards it recommends to the public to protect its own classified networks. We do not make recommendations that we cannot stand behind for protecting national security systems and data, she said. The activity of NSA in setting standards has made the Internet a far safer place to communicate and do business. But due to concern over the NSA damaging Internet security, the presidents review group on surveillance issues recommended that the U.S. government promise not to in any way subvert, undermine, weaken, or make vulnerable generally available commercial encryption. Encryption is an essential basis for trust on the Internet; without such trust, valuable communications would not be possible, the group wrote in its report, which was released in December. For the entire system to work, encryption software itself must be trustworthy. The White Houses cybersecurity coordinator said that disclosing security flaws "usually makes sense." In response to the report, the administration adopted a new policy on whether the NSA can exploit zero-daysvulnerabilities that havent been discovered by anyone else yet. According to the White House, there is a bias toward publicly disclosing flaws in security unless there is a clear national security or law enforcement need. In a blog post Monday, Michael Daniel, the White Houses cybersecurity coordinator, said that disclosing security flaws usually makes sense. Building up a huge stockpile of undisclosed vulnerabilities while leaving the Internet vulnerable and the American people unprotected would not be in our national security interest, he said. But Daniel added that, in some cases, disclosing a vulnerability means that the U.S. would forego an opportunity to collect crucial intelligence that could thwart a terrorist attack, stop the theft of our nations intellectual property, or even discover more dangerous vulnerabilities. He said that the government weighs a variety of factors, such as the risk of leaving the vulnerability un-patched, the likelihood that anyone else would discover it, and how important the potential intelligence is. But privacy advocates and many business groups are still uncomfortable with the U.S. keeping security flaws secret. And many dont trust that the NSA will only exploit the vulnerabilities with the most potential for intelligence and least opportunity for other hackers. The surveillance bureaucracy really doesnt have a lot of self-imposed limits. They want to get everything, said Ed Black, the CEO of the Computer & Communications Industry Association, which represents companies including Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Sprint. Now I think people dealing with that bureaucracy have to understand they cant take anything for granted. Most computer networks are run by private companies, and the government must work closely with the private sector to improve cybersecurity. But companies have become reluctant to share security information with the U.S. government, fearing the NSA could use any information to hack into their systems. When you want to go into partnership with somebody and work on serious issuessuch as cybersecurityyou want to know youre being told the truth, Black said. Google and one other cybersecurity firm discovered Heartbleeda critical flaw in a widely used Internet encryption toolin March. The companies notified a few other private-sector groups about the problem, but no one told the U.S. government until April. Information you share with the NSA might be used to hurt you as a company, warned Ashkan Soltani, a technical consultant who has worked with tech companies and helped The Washington Post with its coverage of the Snowden documents. He said that company officials have historically discussed cybersecurity issues with the NSA, but that he wouldnt be surprised if those relationships are now strained. He pointed to news that the NSA posed as Facebook to infect computers with malware. That does a lot of harm to companies brands, Soltani said. The NSAs actions have also made it difficult for the U.S. to set international norms for cyberconflict. For several years, the U.S. has tried to pressure China to scale back its cyberspying operations, which allegedly steal trade secrets from U.S. businesses. Jason Healey, the director of the Cyber Statecraft Initiative at the Atlantic Council, said the U.S. has militarized cyber policy. The United States has been saying that the world needs to operate according to certain norms, he said. It is difficult to get the norms that we want because it appears to the rest of the world that we only want to follow the norms that we think are important. Vines, the NSA spokeswoman, emphasized that the NSA would never hack into foreign networks to give domestic companies a competitive edge (as China is accused of doing). We do not use foreign intelligence capabilities to steal the trade secrets of foreign companies on behalf ofor give intelligence we collect toU.S. companies to enhance their international competitiveness or increase their bottom line, she said. Jim Lewis, a senior fellow with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, agreed that NSA spying to stop terrorist attacks is fundamentally different from China stealing business secrets to boost its own economy. He also said there is widespread misunderstanding of how the NSA works, but he acknowledged that there is a trust problemjustified or not. He predicted that rebuilding trust with the tech community will be one of the top challenges for Mike Rogers, who was sworn in as the new NSA director earlier this month. All the tech companies are in varying degrees unhappy and not eager to have a close relationship with NSA, Lewis said.

The risk of a cyber-attack is high nowtheyll target critical infrastructureBurg, Principal US & Global Cybersecurity Leader, 14 David, Michael Compton Principal, Cybersecurity Strategy & Operations, Peter Harries Principal, Health Industries, John Hunt Principal, Public Sector, Mark Lobel Principal, Technology, Entertainment, Media & Communications, Gary Loveland Principal, Consumer and Industrial Products & Services, Joe Nocera Principal, Financial Services, Dave Roath Partner, Risk Assurance, "US cybercrime: Rising risks, reduced readiness Key findings from the 2014 US State of Cybercrime Survey", June 2014, co-sponsored by The CERT Division of the Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, CSO magazine, United States Secret Service, www.pwc.com/us/en/increasing-it-effectiveness/publications/assets/2014-us-state-of-cybercrime.pdfThe risks and repercussions of cybercrime In this 12th survey of cybercrime trends, more than 500 US executives, security experts, and others from the public and private sectors offered a look into their cybersecurity practices and state of risk and readiness to combat evolving cyber threats and threat agents. One thing is very clear: The cybersecurity programs of US organizations do not rival the persistence, tactical skills, and technological prowess of their potential cyber adversaries. Today, common criminals, organized crime rings, and nation-states leverage sophisticated techniques to launch attacks that are highly targeted and very difficult to detect. Particularly worrisome are attacks by tremendously skilled threat actors that attempt to steal highly sensitiveand often very valuableintellectual property, private communications, and other strategic assets and information. It is a threat that is nothing short of formidable. In fact, the US Director of National Intelligence has ranked cybercrime as the top national security threat, higher than that of terrorism, espionage, and weapons of mass destruction.1 Underscoring the threat, the FBI last year notified 3,000 US companiesranging from small banks, major defense contractors, and leading retailersthat they had been victims of cyber intrusions. The United States faces real [cybersecurity] threats from criminals, terrorists, spies, and malicious cyber actors, said FBI Director James B. Comey at a recent security conference.2 The playground is a very dangerous place right now. Nation-state actors pose a particularly pernicious threat, according to Sean Joyce, a PwC principal and former FBI deputy director who frequently testified before the US House and Senate Intelligence committees. We are seeing increased activity from nation-state actors, which could escalate due to unrest in Syria, Iran, and Russia, he said. These groups may target financial services and other critical infrastructure entities. In todays volatile cybercrime environment, nation-states and other criminals continually and rapidly update their tactics to maintain an advantage against advances in security safeguards implemented by businesses and government agencies. Recently, for instance, hackers engineered a new round of distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks that can generate traffic rated at a staggering 400 gigabits per second, the most powerful DDoS assaults to date.

Cyber-attack causes military lash out and leads to nuclear warRobert Tilford 12, Graduate US Army Airborne School, Ft. Benning, Georgia, Cyber attackers could shut down the electric grid for the entire east coast 2012, http://www.examiner.com/article/cyber-attackers-could-easily-shut-down-the-electric-grid-for-the-entire-east-coa ***we dont agree with the ableist languageTo make matters worse a cyber attack that can take out a civilian power grid, for example could also cripple (decimate) the U.S. military. The senator notes that is that the same power grids that supply cities and towns, stores and gas stations, cell towers and heart monitors also power every military base in our country. Although bases would be prepared to weather a short power outage with backup diesel generators, within hours, not days, fuel supplies would run out, he said. Which means military command and control centers could go dark. Radar systems that detect air threats to our country would shut Down completely. Communication between commanders and their troops would also go silent. And many weapons systems would be left without either fuel or electric power, said Senator Grassley. So in a few short hours or days, the mightiest military in the world would be left scrambling to maintain base functions, he said. We contacted the Pentagon and officials confirmed the threat of a cyber attack is something very real. Top national security officialsincluding the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the Director of the National Security Agency, the Secretary of Defense, and the CIA Director have said, preventing a cyber attack and improving the nations electric grids is among the most urgent priorities of our country (source: Congressional Record). So how serious is the Pentagon taking all this? Enough to start, or end a war over it, for sure. A cyber attack today against the US could very well be seen as an Act of War and could be met with a full scale US military response. That could include the use of nuclear weapons, if authorized by the President.Cyber-attacks could shut down the power grid for yearsDaly, columnist @ The Daily Beast, 13 Michael, "U.S. Not Ready for Cyberwar Hostile Hackers Could Launch", Feb 21 2013, www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/02/21/u-s-not-ready-for-cyber-war-hostile-hackers-could-launch.htmlIf the nightmare scenario becomes suddenly real ... If hackers shut down much of the electrical grid and the rest of the critical infrastructure goes with it ... If we are plunged into chaos and suffer more physical destruction than 50 monster hurricanes and economic damage that dwarfs the Great Depression ... Then we will wonder why we failed to guard against what outgoing Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has termed a cyberPearl Harbor. An aggressor nation or extremist group could use these kinds of cybertools to gain control of critical switches, Panetta said in a speech in October. They could derail passenger trains or, even more dangerous, derail passenger trains loaded with lethal chemicals. They could contaminate the water supply in major cities or shut down the power grid across large parts of the country. And Panetta was hardly being an alarmist. He could have added that cybersecurity experts such as Joe Weiss of Applied Control Solutions suggest a full-on cyberattack would seek not simply to shut down systems, but wreck them, using software to destroy hardware. Some believe we could then be sent into chaos not just for days of even weeks, but for months. The mother of all nightmare scenarios would see electric, oil, gas, water, chemical, and transit, our entire essential infrastructure, knocked out as we sought to replace equipment that can take more than a year to manufacture and is in many cases no longer made in the U.S. Lights would stay out. Gas stations would be unable to pump and would have nothing to pump anyway. There would be no heat, no fuel, in many places no running water, no sewage treatment, no garbage, no traffic lights, no air-traffic control, minimal communication, and of course, no Wi-Fi. Neighborhoods around chemical plants could become Bhopals.A long-term loss of electrical power would cause nuclear reactor meltdownsguarantees extinctionHodges 14 Dave, an established award winning psychology, statistics and research professor as he teaches college and university classes at both the undergraduate and graduate level, an established author as his articles are published on many major websites, citing Judy Haar, a recognized expert in nuclear plant failure analyses, "Nuclear Power Plants Will Become America's Extinction Level Event", April 18 2014, www.thelibertybeacon.com/2014/04/18/nuclear-power-plants-will-become-americas-extinction-level-event/Fukushima is often spoken of by many, as a possible extinction level event because of the radiation threat. Fukushima continues to wreak havoc upon the world and in the United States as we are being bathed in deadly radiation from this event. Because of Fukushima, fish are becoming inedible and the ocean currents as well as the prevailing ocean winds are carrying deadly radiation. Undoubtedly, by this time, the radioactivity has made its way into the transpiration cycle which means that crops are being dowsed with deadly radiation. The radiation has undoubtedly made its way into the water table in many areas and impacts every aspect of the food supply. The health costs to human beings is incalculable. However, this article is not about the devastation at Fukushima, instead, this article focuses on the fact that North America could have a total of 124 Fukushima events if the necessary conditions were present. A Festering Problem Long before Fukushima, American regulators knew that a power failure lasting for days involving the power grid connected to a nuclear plant, regardless of the cause, would most likely lead to a dangerous radioactive leak in at least several nuclear power plants. A complete loss of electrical power poses a major problem for nuclear power plants because the reactor core must be kept cool as well as the back-up cooling systems, all of which require massive amounts of power to work. Heretofore, all the NERC drills which test the readiness of a nuclear power plant are predicated on the notion that a blackout will only last 24 hours or less. Amazingly, this is the sum total of a NERC litmus test. Although we have the technology needed to harden and protect our grid from an EMP event, whether natural or man-made, we have failed to do so. The cost for protecting the entire grid is placed at about the cost for one B-1 Stealth Bomber. Yet, as a nation, we have done nothing. This is inexplicable and inexcusable. Our collective inaction against protecting the grid prompted Congressman Franks to write a scathing letter to the top officials of NERC. However, the good Congressman failed to mention the most important aspect of this problem. The problem is entirely fixable and NERC and the US government are leaving the American people and its infrastructure totally unprotected from a total meltdown of nuclear power plants as a result of a prolonged power failure. Critical Analyses According to Judy Haar, a recognized expert in nuclear plant failure analyses, when a nuclear power plant loses access to off-grid electricity, the event is referred to as a station blackout. Haar states that all 104 US nuclear power plants are built to withstand electrical outages without experiencing any core damage, through the activation of an automatic start up of emergency generators powered by diesel. Further, when emergency power kicks in, an automatic shutdown of the nuclear power plant commences. The dangerous control rods are dropped into the core, while water is pumped by the diesel power generators into the reactor to reduce the heat and thus, prevent a meltdown. Here is the catch in this process, the spent fuel rods are encased in both a primary and secondary containment structure which is designed to withstand a core meltdown. However, should the pumps stop because either the generators fail or diesel fuel is not available, the fuel rods are subsequently uncovered and a Fukushima type of core meltdown commences immediately. At this point, I took Judy Haars comments to a source of mine at the Palo Verde Nuclear power plant. My source informed me that as per NERC policy, nuclear power plants are required to have enough diesel fuel to run for a period of seven days. Some plants have thirty days of diesel. This is the good news, but it is all downhill from here. The Unresolved Power Blackout Problem A long-term loss of outside electrical power will most certainly interrupt the circulation of cooling water to the pools. Another one of my Palo Verde nuclear power plant sources informed me that there is no long term solution to a power blackout and that all bets are off if the blackout is due to an EMP attack. A more detailed analysis reveals that the spent fuel pools carry depleted fuel for the reactor. Normally, this spent fuel has had time to considerably decay and therefore, reducing radioactivity and heat. However, the newer discharged fuel still produces heat and needs cooling. Housed in high density storage racks, contained in buildings that vent directly into the atmosphere, radiation containment is not accounted for with regard to the spent fuel racks. In other words, there is no capture mechanism. In this scenario, accompanied by a lengthy electrical outage, and with the emergency power waning due to either generator failure or a lack of diesel needed to power the generators, the plant could lose the ability to provide cooling. The water will subsequently heat up, boil away and uncover the spent fuel rods which required being covered in at least 25 feet of water to remain benign from any deleterious effects. Ultimately, this would lead to fires as well and the release of radioactivity into the atmosphere. This would be the beginning of another Fukushima event right here on American soil. Both my source and Haar shared exactly the same scenario about how a meltdown would occur. Subsequently, I spoke with Roger Landry who worked for Raytheon in various Department of Defense projects for 28 years, many of them in this arena and Roger also confirmed this information and that the above information is well known in the industry. When I examine Congressman Franks letter to NERC and I read between the lines, it is clear that Franks knows of this risk as well, he just stops short of specifically mentioning it in his letter. Placing Odds On a Failure Is a Fools Errand An analysis of individual plant risks released in 2003 by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission shows that for 39 of the 104 nuclear reactors, the risk of core damage from a blackout was greater than 1 in 100,000. At 45 other plants the risk is greater than 1 in 1 million, the threshold NRC is using to determine which severe accidents should be evaluated in its latest analysis. According to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the Beaver Valley Power Station, Unit 1, in Pennsylvania has the greatest risk of experiencing a core meltdown, 6.5 in 100,000, according to the analysis. These odds dont sound like much until you consider that we have 124 nuclear power generating plants in the US and Canada and when we consider each individual facility, the odds of failure climb. How many meltdowns would it take in this country before our citizens would be condemned to the hellish nightmare, or worse, being experienced by the Japanese? The Question Thats Not Being Asked None of the NERC, or the Nuclear Regulatory tests of handling a prolonged blackout at a nuclear power plant has answered two critical questions, What happens when these nuclear power plants run out of diesel fuel needed to run the generators, and What happens when some of these generators fail? In the event of an EMP attack, can tanker trucks with diesel fuel get to all of the nuclear power plants in the US in time to re-fuel them before they stop running? Will tanker trucks even be running themselves in the aftermath of an EMP attack? And in the event of an EMP attack, it is not likely that any plant which runs low on fuel, or has a generator malfunctions, will ever get any help to mitigate the crisis prior to a plethora of meltdowns occurring. Thus, every nuclear power plant in the country has the potential to cause a Chernobyl or Fukushima type accident if our country is hit by an EMP attack. CAN YOU EVEN IMAGINE 124 FUKUSHIMA EVENTS IN NORTH AMERICA HAPPENING AT THE SAME TIME? THIS WOULD CONSTITUTE THE ULTIMATE DEPOPULATION EVENT. And There Is More The ramifications raised in the previous paragraphs are significant. What if the blackout lasts longer than 24 hours? What if the reason for the blackout is an EMP burst caused by a high altitude nuclear blast and transportation comes to a standstill? In this instance, the cavalry is not coming. Adding fuel to the fire lies in the fact that the power transformers presently take at least one year to replace. Today, there is a three year backlog on ordering because so many have been ordered by China. This makes one wonder what the Chinese are preparing for with these multiple orders for both transformers and generators. In short, our unpreparedness is a prescription for disaster. As a byproduct of my investigation, I have discovered that most, if not all, of the nuclear power plants are on known earthquake fault lines. All of Californias nuclear power plants are located on an earthquake fault line. Can anyone tell me why would anyone in their right mind build a nuclear power plant on a fault line? To see the depth of this threat you can visit an interactive, overlay map at this site. Conclusion I have studied this issue for almost nine months and this is the most elusive topic that I have ever investigated. The more facts I gather about the threat of a mass nuclear meltdown in this country, the more questions I realize that are going unanswered. With regard to the nuclear power industry we have the proverbial tiger by the tail. Last August, Big Sis stated that it is not matter of if we have a mass power grid take down, but it is a matter of when. I would echo her concerns and apply the not if, but when admonition to the possibility of a mass meltdown in this country. It is only a matter of time until this scenario for disaster comes to fruition. Our collective negligence and high level of extreme depraved indifference on the part of NERC is criminal because this is indeed an Extinction Level Event. At the end of the day, can anyone tell me why would any country be so negligent as to not provide its nuclear plants a fool proof method to cool the secondary processes of its nuclear materials at all of its plants? Why would ANY nuclear power plant be built on an earthquake fault line? Why are we even using nuclear energy under these circumstances? And why are we allowing the Chinese to park right next door to so many nuclear power plants?

Three internal links

1. Backdoorssurveillance means a dangerous cyber attack is inevitableits only a matter of timeSeneque, ICT professional with a particular focus on UNIX Architecture & Design, 14 Gareth, holds a degree in Philosophy/Politics from the University of Sydney, Alex Comninos, an independent researcher focusing on information and communications technology and politics, a Doctoral Candidate at Justus-Liebig University in Giessen, Germany at the Department of Geography, where he is conducting doctoral research on the challenges and constraints of the use of user-generated geographic information systems in Egypt, Libya, and North and Sudan in 2010 to 2011, "Cyber security, civil society and vulnerability in an age of communications surveillance", 2014, Justus-Liebig University Giessen and Geist Consulting, giswatch.org/en/communications-surveillance/cyber-security-civil-society-and-vulnerability-age-communications-surThe relevance of Snowdens disclosures to cyber security The scope and reach of the NSAs surveillance is important. The NSAs surveillance posture is as has been repeated by General Keith Alexander, and is reflected in the NSA slide in Figure 1 to "collect it all":32 from undersea cable taps, to Yahoo video chats, to in-flight Wi-Fi, to virtual worlds and online multiplayer games like Second Life and World of Warcraft. The NSA has at least three different programmes to get Yahoo and Google user data. This shows that they try to get the same data from multiple mechanisms.33 With the GCHQ under the MUSCULAR programme it hacked into the internal data links of Google and Yahoo34 for information that it could mostly have gotten through the PRISM programme. In addition to highlighting the NSAs massive institutional overreach and global privacy invasion, Snowdens disclosures also highlight the many points at which our data is insecure, and the vast numbers of vulnerabilities to surveillance that exist throughout our digital world. However, while the NSA is the largest threat in the surveillance game, it is not the only threat. Governments all around the world are using the internet to surveil their citizens. Considering the rate of technological change, it is not unforeseeable that the methods, tools and vulnerabilities used by the NSA will be the tools of states, cyber criminals and low-skilled hackers of the future. Regardless of who the perceived attacker or surveillance operative may be, and whether it is the NSA or not, large-scale, mass surveillance is a growing cyber security threat. It has also been disclosed that the NSA and GCHQ have actively worked to make internet and technology users around the world less secure. The NSA has placed backdoors in routers running vital internet infrastructures.35 The GCHQ has impersonated social networking websites like LinkedIn in order to target system administrators of internet service providers.36 The NSA has been working with the GCHQ to hack into Google and Yahoo data centres.37 The NSA also works to undermine encryption technologies, by covertly influencing the use of weak algorithms and random number generators in encryption products and standards.38 The NSA in its own words is working under the BULLRUN programme to "insert vulnerabilities into commercial encryption systems, IT systems, networks, and endpoint communications devices used by targets" and to influence policies, standards and specifications for commercial [encryption] technologies.39 The NSA is also believed to hoard knowledge about vulnerabilities rather than sharing them with developers, vendors and the general public,40 as well as even maintaining a catalogue of these vulnerabilities for use in surveillance and cyber attacks.41 None of these activities serve to make the internet more secure. In fact, they do the very opposite. As US Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren commented: When any industry or organisation builds a backdoor to assist with electronic surveillance into their product, they put all of our data security at risk. If a backdoor is created for law enforcement purposes, its only a matter of time before a hacker exploits it, in fact we have already seen it happen."42

2. Norm Building curtailing backdoor encryption allows the US to create cyber-security normsSasso 4/30/14 (Brendan, technology correspondent for National Journal, "How The NSA Undermines Cybersecurity to Protect You", www.nextgov.com/cybersecurity/2014/04/how-nsa-undermines-cybersecurity-protect-you/83482/, accessed: 8/25/15)Bolstering the nations defenses against hackers has been one of the Obama administrations top goals. Officials have warned for years that a sophisticated cyberattack could cripple critical infrastructure or allow thieves to make off with the financial information of millions of Americans. President Obama pushed Congress to enact cybersecurity legislation, and when it didnt, he issued his own executive order in 2013. The cyber threat to our nation is one of the most serious economic and national security challenges we face, Obama wrote in a 2012 op-ed in The Wall Street Journal. But critics argue that the National Security Agency has actually undermined cybersecurity and made the United States more vulnerable to hackers. At its core, the problem is the NSAs dual mission. On one hand, the agency is tasked with securing U.S. networks and information. On the other hand, the agency must gather intelligence on foreign threats to national security. Collecting intelligence often means hacking encrypted communications. Thats nothing new for the NSA; the agency traces its roots back to code-breakers deciphering Nazi messages during World War II. So in many ways, strong Internet security actually makes the NSAs job harder. This is an administration that is a vigorous defender of surveillance, said Christopher Soghoian, the head technologist for the American Civil Liberties Union. Surveillance at the scale they want requires insecurity. The leaks from Edward Snowden have revealed a variety of efforts by the NSA to weaken cybersecurity and hack into networks. Critics say those programs, while helping NSA spying, have made U.S. networks less secure. According to the leaked documents, the NSA inserted a so-called back door into at least one encryption standard that was developed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology. The NSA could use that back door to spy on suspected terrorists, but the vulnerability was also available to any other hacker who discovered it. NIST, a Commerce Department agency, sets scientific and technical standards that are widely used by both the government and the private sector. The agency has said it would never deliberately weaken a cryptographic standard, but it remains unclear whether the agency was aware of the back door or whether the NSA tricked NIST into adopting the compromised standard. NIST is required by law to consult with the NSA for its technical expertise on cybersecurity. The revelation that NSA somehow got NIST to build a back door into an encryption standard has seriously damaged NISTs reputation with security experts. NIST is operating with a trust deficit right now, Soghoian said. Anything that NIST has touched is now tainted. Its a particularly bad time for NIST to have lost the support of the cybersecurity community. In his executive order, Obama tasked NIST with drafting the cybersecurity guidelines for critical infrastructure such as power plants and phone companies. Because its an executive order instead of a law, the cybersecurity standards are entirely voluntary, and the U.S. government will have to convince the private sector to comply. The Snowden leaks werent the first to indicate that the NSA is involved in exploiting commercial security. According to a 2012 New York Times report, the NSA developed a worm, dubbed Stuxnet, to cripple Iranian nuclear centrifuges. But the worm, which exploited four previously unknown flaws in Microsoft Windows, escaped the Iranian nuclear plant and quickly began damaging computers around the world. The NSA and Israeli officials have also been tied to Flame, a virus that impersonated a Microsoft update to spy on Iranian computers. Vanee Vines, an NSA spokeswoman, said the U.S. government is as concerned as the public is with the security of these products. The United States pursues its intelligence mission with care to ensure that innocent users of those same technologies are not affected, she said. According to Vines, the NSA relies on the same encryption standards it recommends to the public to protect its own classified networks. We do not make recommendations that we cannot stand behind for protecting national security systems and data, she said. The activity of NSA in setting standards has made the Internet a far safer place to communicate and do business. But due to concern over the NSA damaging Internet security, the presidents review group on surveillance issues recommended that the U.S. government promise not to in any way subvert, undermine, weaken, or make vulnerable generally available commercial encryption. Encryption is an essential basis for trust on the Internet; without such trust, valuable communications would not be possible, the group wrote in its report, which was released in December. For the entire system to work, encryption software itself must be trustworthy. In response to the report, the administration adopted a new policy on whether the NSA can exploit zero-daysvulnerabilities that havent been discovered by anyone else yet. According to the White House, there is a bias toward publicly disclosing flaws in security unless there is a clear national security or law enforcement need. In a blog post Monday, Michael Daniel, the White Houses cybersecurity coordinator, said that disclosing security flaws usually makes sense. Building up a huge stockpile of undisclosed vulnerabilities while leaving the Internet vulnerable and the American people unprotected would not be in our national security interest, he said. But Daniel added that, in some cases, disclosing a vulnerability means that the U.S. would forego an opportunity to collect crucial intelligence that could thwart a terrorist attack, stop the theft of our nations intellectual property, or even discover more dangerous vulnerabilities. He said that the government weighs a variety of factors, such as the risk of leaving the vulnerability un-patched, the likelihood that anyone else would discover it, and how important the potential intelligence is. But privacy advocates and many business groups are still uncomfortable with the U.S. keeping security flaws secret. And many dont trust that the NSA will only exploit the vulnerabilities with the most potential for intelligence and least opportunity for other hackers. The surveillance bureaucracy really doesnt have a lot of self-imposed limits. They want to get everything, said Ed Black, the CEO of the Computer & Communications Industry Association, which represents companies including Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Sprint. Now I think people dealing with that bureaucracy have to understand they cant take anything for granted. Most computer networks are run by private companies, and the government must work closely with the private sector to improve cybersecurity. But companies have become reluctant to share security information with the U.S. government, fearing the NSA could use any information to hack into their systems. When you want to go into partnership with somebody and work on serious issuessuch as cybersecurityyou want to know youre being told the truth, Black said. Google and one other cybersecurity firm discovered Heartbleeda critical flaw in a widely used Internet encryption toolin March. The companies notified a few other private-sector groups about the problem, but no one told the U.S. government until April. Information you share with the NSA might be used to hurt you as a company, warned Ashkan Soltani, a technical consultant who has worked with tech companies and helped The Washington Post with its coverage of the Snowden documents. He said that company officials have historically discussed cybersecurity issues with the NSA, but that he wouldnt be surprised if those relationships are now strained. He pointed to news that the NSA posed as Facebook to infect computers with malware. That does a lot of harm to companies brands, Soltani said. The NSAs actions have also made it difficult for the U.S. to set international norms for cyberconflict. For several years, the U.S. has tried to pressure China to scale back its cyberspying operations, which allegedly steal trade secrets from U.S. businesses. Jason Healey, the director of the Cyber Statecraft Initiative at the Atlantic Council, said the U.S. has militarized cyber policy. The United States has been saying that the world needs to operate according to certain norms, he said. It is difficult to get the norms that we want because it appears to the rest of the world that we only want to follow the norms that we think are important. Vines, the NSA spokeswoman, emphasized that the NSA would never hack into foreign networks to give domestic companies a competitive edge (as China is accused of doing). We do not use foreign intelligence capabilities to steal the trade secrets of foreign companies on behalf ofor give intelligence we collect toU.S. companies to enhance their international competitiveness or increase their bottom line, she said. Jim Lewis, a senior fellow with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, agreed that NSA spying to stop terrorist attacks is fundamentally different from China stealing business secrets to boost its own economy. He also said there is widespread misunderstanding of how the NSA works, but he acknowledged that there is a trust problemjustified or not. He predicted that rebuilding trust with the tech community will be one of the top challenges for Mike Rogers, who was sworn in as the new NSA director earlier this month. All the tech companies are in varying degrees unhappy and not eager to have a close relationship with NSA, Lewis said.3. Trustthe plan rebuilds trust with the private-sector key to cyber-securityZezima, reporter @ The Washington Post, 15 Katie, "Obama signs executive order on sharing cybersecurity threat information", Feb 12 2015, www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2015/02/12/obama-to-sign-executive-order-on-cybersecurity-threats/PALO ALTO, Calif. President Obama signed an executive order Friday that urges companies to share cybersecurity-threat information with one another and the federal government. Obama signed the order, which is advisory in nature, at the first White House summit on Cybersecurity and Consumer Protection at Stanford University here. The summit, which focused on public-private partnerships and consumer protection, is part of a recent White House push to focus on cybersecurity. Obama said the prospect of cyberattacks are one of the nation's most pressing national security, economic and safety issues. The specter of a cyberattack crippling the nation's air traffic control system or a city with a blackout is real, and hacks such as the one on Sony Pictures last year are "hurting America's companies and costing American jobs." He also said they are a threat to the security and well-being of children who are online. "Its one of the great paradoxes of our time that the very technologies that empower us to do great good can also be used to undermine us and inflict great harm," Obama said before a cheering, friendly audience here at Stanford's Memorial Auditorium. The order the president signed here encourages the development of central clearinghouses for companies and the government to share data and creation of centers where data can be shared across specific geographic regions. Obama pushed for collaboration between the public and private sectors. "Theres only one way to defend America from these cyber threats, and that is through government and industry working together, sharing appropriate information as true partners," he said. MasterCard chief executive Ajay Banga praised Obamas executive action but said that eventually we need a real legislative solution. An executive action can only take you this far. Rather than fight this in individualized groups, theres some merit in joining hands and doing it together, Banga said. Obama's order is part of a broader White House effort to beef up the nation's cybersecurity infrastructure, something the administration wants to push on Capitol Hill. Last month Obama proposed legislation that would shield companies from lawsuits for sharing threat data with the government. Last month he proposed legislation that would shield companies from lawsuits for sharing threat data with the government. Obama said shortly after he took office he realized that cybersecurity is "one of the most serious economic national security challenges that we face as a nation" and made confronting them a priority. Obama has signed other executive orders, including one that calls for the creation of voluntary standards to bolster the security of computer networks in critical industries and a framework for cybersecurity and another last year to protect consumers from identity theft. So far nothing has been able to stem the tide of attacks such as the one against Sony or others against retailers including Home Depot. Both privacy groups and Silicon Valley companies have said they would oppose the legislation Obama proposed last month unless reforms are first made to the NSA's surveillance program. In an interview with Re/Code, Obama acknowledged tensions with Silicon Valley after the NSA disclosures. "The Snowden disclosures ... were really harmful in terms of the trust between the government and many of these companies, in part because it had an impact on their bottom lines," Obama said. The president also said that there should be a "public conversation" about encryption and said he likely leans more toward strong data encryption than law enforcement, but is sympathetic to them because of the pressure they are under to keep people safe. U.S. government surveillance activities have been seen as a potential liability for tech companies that operate globally. Seventy to 80 percent of the user bases for a lot of these companies are the foreigners who get very little protection under our system, explained Julian Sanchez, a senior fellow focused on technology and civil liberties at the Cato Institute. If they dont display some push back, they know they wont do very well with those markets. In December of 2013, major tech companies including Apple, Google, Twitter, Facebook, Microsoft and Yahoo joined together in the Reform Government Surveillance coalition, urging the President and Congress to impose restrictions and oversight measures on U.S. spying programs. The President agreed in principle to some limits on spying programs, including the bulk collection of domestic phone records, during a speech last year. But progress on reforms has been too slow for some privacy advocates, as the administration urged for legislative action that has yet to succeed. Tech companies, meanwhile, have taken some measures into their own hands by strengthening and expanding their deployment of encryption to secure users' online activities setting up a conflict between the companies and law enforcement who warn that such actions may make it harder for them to pursue crime and terrorism which increasingly includes a digital component. I think its fair to say that changes on the technology front have outpaced governmental and legislative efforts, said Andrew Crocker, a legal fellow at civil liberties group the Electronic Frontier Foundation.1AC Tech Adv

The NSA is compelling US tech companies to build backdoors into their encryption standardsbecause consumers wont purchase insecure products, theyre switching to foreign markets Clark, economic scholar, 14 (Thomas G. Clark, economics scholar, blogger on economics, politics, and philosophy, university level English tutor, former administrator in public and private industries, How NSA overreach has done more damage to the US economy that Osama Bin Laden could ever have dreamed of, Thomas G. Clark, Another Angry Voice Blog, http://anotherangryvoice.blogspot.com/2014/01/nsa-overreach-worse-than-terrorism.html)//chiragjainEver since the Edward Snowden leaks started it has become more and more obvious that the NSA and their Five Eyes partners (the spooks in the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand) have been making a concerted effort to monitor and control the entire Internet. They've engaged in vast data stealing exercises designed to sweep up and store the private communications data of virtually everyone; the NSA have employed a team of some 850,000 NSA staff and private security contractors to trawl this ocean of stolen data for whatever they can find; they've damaged international relations by snooping on dozens of heads of state; they've used their snooping powers to spy on companies like the Brazilian oil company Petrobras (surely motivated by industrial espionage, rather than their stated justification of "fighting terrorism"); they've undermined encryption technology - endangering the security of financial transactions; and they've compelled countless US based technology companies to violate the privacy of their own customers and to build backdoors into their products to enable NSA snooping. In order to compress what they've been doing into a single paragraph, I've obviously left out a lot of the nefarious activities orchestrated by the NSA and carried out by their mercenary army of hundreds of thousands of private sector spooks and their Five Eyes collaborators. But even so, the above paragraph is more than enough to demonstrate that the security services in the US, and the other Five Eyes collaborator states, are running dangerously out of control. The fact that the NSA and their Five Eyes collaborators feel entitled to trawl the Internet for whatever they can find, which is then stored in vast data centres and subjected to algorithmic analysis without the need for any kind of judicial warrant, demonstrates that something fundamental has changed in the relationship between the state and the citizen. Due process has been abandoned, and as far as the security services are concerned, we are all assumed to be guilty. They don't have to be able to show probable cause, they don't have to apply for a warrant from a judge, they just steal our data and use it as they see fit, with no democratic oversight at all over many of their data stealing operations. The fact that the US state employs a staggering 850,000 NSA staff and private sector contractors to trawl this ocean of stolen data should be alarming to anyone with the brains to think through the logical implications of such a vast mercenary army. You would have to be a hopeless idealist to imagine that there are no "bad apples" at all amongst all these hundreds of thousands. If we assume that just 4% of them (one in every 25) are the kind of people that would use their access to enormous surveillance powers to do things like steal commercially confidential information to order, blackmail people, cyber stalk people, wage petty vendettas against old adversaries ... that would mean a rogue army of some 34,000 thieves, stalkers and blackmailers with access to the NSA's vast caches of stolen data and their extraordinary surveillance capabilities. The fact that the NSA have been using their powers to engage in industrial espionage against various countries such as Germany, Russia, China and Brazil illustrates that "the few bad apples" narrative, although useful from an illustrative point of view, isn't actually the main concern. The main concern is that the NSA itself is corrupt to the core. Instead of using their powers to maintain the rule of law and to "fight terrorism" they're actually intent on using their unprecedented espionage capabilities in order to undermine global competition for the benefit of US based corporations. One of the most worrying revelations is that the spy agencies have deliberately compromised the encryption technology used to keep our financial transactions safe, and that they have awarded themselves the power to hack into bank accounts anywhere in the world and simply erase money out of existence, or invent fictional transactions. They have undermined the integrity of the financial system in order to build themselves snooping capabilities that would have blown the minds of the East German Stasi or the Soviet KGB. Perhaps the most damning element of all (from an American perspective) is the extraordinary amount of damage the NSA have done to the reputation of US technology companies, by compelling them to breech the privacy of their own customers and infecting their products with spyware. This trashing of the reputation of countless US based technology companies comes with an enormous price tag. It has been estimated that the reputational damage inflicted on US technology companies by their own government could amount to $180 billion, as millions of customers are turned off the idea of investing in buggy, insecure and spyware laden products from US companies. If you add the estimated $180 billion in reputational damage to American companies to the staggering cost of running the NSA and employing an army of 850,000 spooks, the cost of this folly is absolutely enormous. One of the worst things about having trashed the reputation of their own technology sector, is the fact that the technology sector is one of the few parts of the US economy that is healthy and productive. The US financial sector is a gigantic, virtually unregulated and desperately unstable hotbed of corruption and reckless gambling and US manufacturing power has been in decline since the neoliberals came to power in the 1980s and allowed short-term profiteers to asset strip US productivity. The US economy is in decline, but that decline has been offset by a remarkable period of exponential growth in the US technology sector. Any American with a reasonably comprehensive view of how their economy is structured must be absolutely aghast at the damage inflicted on the technology sector by the power crazed spooks that considered their mission to infect everything they could with spyware as far more important than the long term success of the US technology sector. Not only does it look like the NSA's overreach is going to cost the US economy vastly more than any terrorist attack ever has, it also looks set to crush US ambition of controlling the Internet, as ever more people realise that the Americans can no longer be trusted to control the fundamental infrastructure of the Internet. Any non-US corporation with the slightest regard for data security is going to move away from reliance upon the US technology sector as soon as possible, and any nation that values its own industries is surely going to approve of efforts to wrest control of the Internet away from the US. The sheer scale of NSA data theft is driving the development of new highly encrypted technology. It is only a matter of time before spook proof browsers and encrypted communications become commonplace, because there is an undeniable market demand for such things. The most terrible thing from a US perspective is that US technology companies will be completely cut off from entry into this new market because everyone is now aware of how the US intelligence agencies have forced US technology companies to infect their own products with spyware and invade the privacy of their own customers. Nobody is ever going to believe US technology companies when they give assurances about privacy, meaning that the next wave of secure communications technology is going to arise outside the US. The NSA have been using their surveillance powers to engage in industrial espionage in order to benefit US corporations. This is a clear demonstration that they see it as their mission to help US corporations by fair means or foul. Given that this is one of their core objectives, the fact that they have inflicted such an extraordinary amount of damage on the most vibrant sector of the US economy must go down as one of the most spectacular own goals in history. They built a vast data stealing operation in order to help US corporations, but in doing so inflicted more damage on the US economy than Osama Bin Laden could ever have dreamed of. The NSA have used their scaremongering narratives about the threat of terrorism to justify the slaughter of their own golden goose, yet they would have us believe that they are not responsible. They would have everyone believe that Edward Snowden is the guilty party; that he alone is responsible for the damage to the US technology sector. But their case is a ludicrous one. There is clearly something dreadfully wrong with the way things are set up if just one man (out of some 850,000 spooks) can single handedly wipe an estimated $180 billion off the value of the US technology sector simply by telling the truth.

Software-defined networks are key to future network infrastructure generationbut surveillance means organizations and individuals wont adopt US techEIU, February 2014, "Politics, cyber-security, trade and the future of ICT supply chains", The Economist Intelligence Unit, http://www.maxfeel.org/magazines-list/the-economist-intelligence-unit-politics-cyber-security-trade-and-the-future-of-ict-supply-chains-february-2014_2gsgo.htmlThe promise of software-defined networks (SDNs) is usually expressed in similar terms to most innovations in network technology: that is, they will allow network operators to improve speed and efficiency.16 In traditional networks, switches and routers are pre-set with instructions on how to forward data traffic, and must be manually altered or upgraded; in SDNs; by contrast, the instructions controlling traffic can be altered through software administered from a remote location. A parallel to the SDN is the software-defined radio (SDR), which performs a similar function for radio transceivers; remotely delivered software instructions can set, or alter, its operations, including its frequency range or power output. SDN and SDR are considered critical to any future network infrastructure generation, such as the discussions around 5G broadband mobile technology. The performance of a communications network in years to come will be determined not just during the physical construction of its infrastructure, but will be managed throughout its operational lifecycle by an ongoing connectivity to software instructions. The potential benefits of the SDN stem from its increased levels of automation and flexibility, which will allow networks to cope much more easily with fluctuations in traffic volumes, increasing bandwidth as and when required. It is considered a disruptive technological advance, and the main potential economic risk is to those companies that manufacture proprietary network gear, such as Cisco and Huawei. Many industry commentators now expect the commoditisation of network gear and increased use of generic, standardised hardware, while value increasingly accrues to software and service providers. As well as amplifying the existing need to suppress hardware costs, this will force many vendors of network infrastructure to move into software development. Little wonder, then, that Huawei showcased its own SDN technology in October 2013: Net Matrix, part of the SoftCom network architecture. Meanwhile, Cisco has announced its Open Network Environment (ONE) SDN strategy. The industry has not yet developed a full set of standardised protocols, so proprietary protocols are still in use in these SDN trial runs. However, it is very likely that such standards will be developed over the next few years, representing a significant shift in the telecoms sector. The advent of software-defined networks will bring new cyber-security challenges. There are advantages, including the possibility of responding faster and more flexibly to software-based attacks. Yet, the standardisation of network gear will also make it easier for malware, such as worms, to navigate across multiple networks, facing fewer barriers like those currently posed by the differing specifications of proprietary gear. Just as legitimate alterations to routers and switches can be remotely administered, so can an attack be managed from any location. Much work will need to be done to guarantee network security so that organisations and individuals feel comfortable adopting SDN technology, and this will require co-ordination among industry and government stakeholders. In terms of hardware-based threats, SDNs will not fundamentally change the risks: hardware could be compromised during design or at various points in the manufacturing process, and those in charge of final testing, as well as procurement of gear, will need to improve their ability to detect vulnerabilities and defend against attacks. Policy responses to SDNs are likely to focus on similar issues faced in cloud computing: data and communications privacy, standards and interoperability, and rules on cross-border data flows. As in cloud computing, there will be sensitivities around cross-border remote management through software, and how this relates to different countries legal intelligence activities.

Scenario 1 Econ

Tech sector innovation is necessary for economic growthcloud-computing affects all organizationsCoviello, Executive Vice President, EMC Corporation, 11 Art, "Can Cloud Computing Save The American Economy?", March 13 2011, Forbes, www.forbes.com/sites/ciocentral/2011/03/13/can-cloud-computing-save-the-american-economy/The American dream is in peril from the confluence of sky rocketing deficits, high unemployment, and the ticking time bomb of an aging baby boomer generation, with its coincident increase in the burden of entitlements as a percentage of GDP. For the first time, the next generation of Americans, our grandchildren, risk having a lower standard of living than we enjoyed. It is not a problem that can be remedied with tax increases and budget reductions. We will not save or cut our way back to economic prosperity. The way forward is innovation. America must innovate its way out of economic stagnation and back to economic growth. As has been the case for the last 150 years, Americans have always responded well in a crisis and yet again, we are well positioned to lead the world out of this one. Want proof? American businesses systemically and culturally react fast. Two years after the economic downturn began the United States was generating 97% of its economic output with only 90% of the labor. This sort of gain in productivity ultimately translates into increased economic activity, the ability to pay down debt and a higher standard of living for those of us who are employed. Unfortunately it does not directly address the issue of unemployment. The fact is that productivity gains from working harder can only take us so far. Innovation and technology can and must take us the rest of the way, creating new jobs and new industries. Our so called information economy, for example, is ripe for innovation. Today, all organizations are dependent on information technology. What makes me optimistic about the future is that we have not even begun to scratch the surface of all that can be accomplished by actually applying information technology pervasively. We have spent trillions of dollars worldwide for the computers to create and process information, networks to move it around and the hardware to store it. But we are at a point where we spend 60 to 70% of IT budgets just to maintain those systems and infrastructures. No wonder progress in applying IT is so slow. This is the technology equivalent of every organization in the world, big or small, investing the capital and human resources to build and operate their own electricity producing power plants. But instead, picture a world where software platforms are available online and easily customizable. Picture a world where compute power is generated off site, available in quantities when and where you need it. And picture a world where information is safely stored, efficiently managed and accessible, when and where you need it. These are cloud infrastructures. The economies of scale, flexibility and efficiency they offer will not only save organizations massive amounts of capital and maintenance costs but emancipate them to apply and use information as never before. An unbelievable opportunity to raise productivity while creating unprecedented opportunities for businesses and workers. Now picture a health-care system where a doctor has medical records at his fingertips, can see x-rays with the click of a mouse, is able to learn and apply the latest diagnostic and surgical technique from anywhere in the world. Think of the efficiencies in hospital supply chains, the delivery of prescription drugs, the processing of billing and insurance claims, reductions in fraud, and the application of best practices for cost controls. The capacity for improvement is endless. As a matter of fact, these innovations are already being applied in isolated pockets. But for us to seize the opportunity before us its imperative that we move from isolated centers of excellence to connected systems of excellence. Pick any industry and systemic improvements like these are available. A new age of innovation and technology advancement is within our grasp an opportunity for job creation, greater productivity and economic growth. The time for cloud computing is now. We need government and industry to accelerate broad scale adoption of cloud infrastructures so we can reap the rewards of a true information based economy. As I said at the outset, Americans respond well in a crisis. It is the nature of our society: egalitarian, free, open and competitive that make us the most adaptive, inventive and resilient country in the world. Time again for us to lead.

US economic growth is vital to prevent multiple scenarios for conflict escalation and extinctionHaas, CFR president, 2013(Richard, The World Without America, 4-30-13, http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/repairing-the-roots-of-american-power-by-richard-n--haass)Let me posit a radical idea: The most critical threat facing the United States now and for the foreseeable future is not a rising China, a reckless North Korea, a nuclear Iran, modern terrorism, or climate change. Although all of these constitute potential or actual threats, the biggest challenges facing the US are its burgeoning debt, crumbling infrastructure, second-rate primary and secondary schools, outdated immigration system, and slow economic growth in short, the domestic foundations of American power. Readers in other countries may be tempted to react to this judgment with a dose of schadenfreude, finding more than a little satisfaction in Americas difficulties. Such a response should not be surprising. The US and those representing it have been guilty of hubris (the US may often be the indispensable nation, but it would be better if others pointed this out), and examples of inconsistency between Americas practices and its principles understandably provoke charges of hypocrisy. When America does not adhere to the principles that it preaches to others, it breeds resentment. But, like most temptations, the urge to gloat at Americas imperfections and struggles ought to be resisted. People around the globe should be careful what they wish for. Americas failure to deal with its internal challenges would come at a steep price. Indeed, the rest of the worlds stake in American success is nearly as large as that of the US itself. Part of the reason is economic. The US economy still accounts for about one-quarter of global output. If US growth accelerates, Americas capacity to consume other countries goods and services will increase, thereby boosting growth around the world. At a time when Europe is drifting and Asia is slowing, only the US (or, more broadly, North America) has the potential to drive global economic recovery. The US remains a unique source of innovation. Most of the worlds citizens communicate with mobile devices based on technology developed in Silicon Valley; likewise, the Internet was made in America. More recently, new technologies developed in the US greatly increase the ability to extract oil and natural gas from underground formations. This technology is now making its way around the globe, allowing other societies to increase their energy production and decrease both their reliance on costly imports and their carbon emissions. The US is also an invaluable source of ideas. Its world-class universities educate a significant percentage of future world leaders. More fundamentally, the US has long been a leading example of what market economies and democratic politics can accomplish. People and governments around the world are far more likely to become more open if the American model is perceived to be succeeding. Finally, the world faces many serious challenges, ranging from the need to halt the spread of weapons of mass destruction, fight climate change, and maintain a functioning world economic order that promotes trade and investment to regulating practices in cyberspace, improving global health, and preventing armed conflicts. These problems will not simply go away or sort themselves out. While Adam Smiths invisible hand may ensure the success of free markets, it is powerless in the world of geopolitics. Order requires the visible hand of leadership to formulate and realize global responses to global challenges. Dont get me wrong: None of this is meant to suggest that the US can deal effectively with the worlds problems on its own. Unilateralism rarely works. It is not just that the US lacks the means; the very nature of contemporary global problems suggests that only collective responses stand a good chance of succeeding. But multilateralism is much easier to advocate than to design and implement. Right now there is only one candidate for this role: the US. No other country has the necessary combination of capability and outlook. This brings me back to the argument that the US must put its house in order economically, physically, socially, and politically if it is to have the resources needed to promote order in the world. Everyone should hope that it does: The alternative to a world led by the US is not a world led by China, Europe, Russia, Japan, India, or any other country, but rather a world that is not led at all. Such a world would almost certainly be characterized by chronic crisis and conflict. That would be bad not just for Americans, but for the vast majority of the planets inhabitants.

Scenario 2 Warming

US broadband leadership is fine now, but eroding competitiveness will stagnate innovation that collapse the economy and the internet of things Wilson et al 14Phil, Director, Technology, Media and Telecommunications @ Deloitte, United States expands global lead in mobile broadband How policy actions could enhance or imperil Americas mobile broadband competitiveness, http://www.deloitte.com/assets/Dcom-UnitedStates/Local%20Assets/Documents/TMT_us_tmt/us_tmt_mobile_index%20_090214.pdfPast performance is no guarantee of future success Thus far, the United States has benefited tremendously from its leadership position in mobile broadband. However, the future could be different from the past for better or worse. Deloittes Mobile Communications National Achievement Index can serve as a useful tool for estimating future rankings under different policy scenarios. Although the Mobile Communications National Achievement Index demonstrates a nations past and present positioning in mobile broadband, it can also be used on a forward-looking basis to help policymakers understand how mobile broadband performance might evolve under different policy scenarios. As illustrated in Exhibit 4, different policies are likely to affect U.S. performance in distinct ways, resulting in shifting key performance indicator (KPI) values that collectively result in a different index score. For example, policies that affect broadband supply will indirectly have an impact on pricing, affordability, and usage. Supply restrictions will necessarily lead to higher equilibrium pricing per unit of use and lower equilibrium usage. This in turn affects the potential for industry returns, reducing investment levels and innovation. Two contrasting index scenarios provide a useful picture of how U.S. supply policy can affect Americas ability to defend its mobile broadband leadership position By considering two supply scenarios a favorable scenario in which U.S. policy actions and timing are sufficient and supportive to meet Americas supply needs and an unfavorable scenario in which policy actions are insufficient or unsupportive we can project plausible outcomes in U.S. mobile broadband global competitiveness over the coming decade.29 A growing index score edge favoring the United States over other countries would indicate the United States is achieving exceptional global performance growth by innovating and capturing value from the growing consumer and business uses of mobile broadband. A declining edge would indicate just the opposite, reducing the motivation and incentive for mobile broadband investment to flow into the United States and into the mobile broadband industry. Even if Americas lead is reduced but not lost, other countries might be able to overtake the United States in certain mobile broadband segments by capitalizing on their inherent advantages. For example, a country with a strong public health system could use that advantage to lead innovation in the area of mHealth and capture a disproportionate share of performance growth in that segment. These two divergent policy directions would have substantial but opposite effects on the industrys ability to meet demand effects that can be quantified using the mobile broadband key performance indicators. By assuming other countries continue their current mobile broadband actions and trends, we can isolate the influence of U.S. policy actions and estimate Americas ability to fend off global competitors in mobile broadband under both scenarios. Scenario 1: A favorable and supportive policy approach enables sufficient mobile broadband supply In this first scenario, spectrum of suitable quantity and quality is made available to wireless carriers in a timely manner: Much or all available spectrum is auctioned off within the next three to five years, helping to ensure that the total amount of spectrum is sufficient to consistently meet demand over the decade. Spectrum bands are of sufficient quality, accounting for factors such as frequency range, block size, national coverage, and international alignment. Shared spectrum contribution to supply is properly accounted for, factoring in impairments from sharing constraints. Terms and conditions for spectrum access and use are market-oriented, with limited regulatory restrictions. Outcome: Mobile broadband spectrum supply matches demand, enabling the United States to strengthen and extend its mobile broadband lead Under these conditions, U.S. policy provides spectrum that responds to mobile broadband supply needs, creating commercial incentives and investment returns that promote continued innovation and expansion in the use of mobile broadband. The additional supply allows wireless carriers to continue offering robust and compelling service to consumers and businesses. Available performance levels (e.g., data speeds, capacity, reliability, coverage, and latency) spur additional investment and innovation by wireless carriers and across the broader mobile ecosystem. Many mobile ecosystem companies participate in and contribute to this growth opportunity, spanning areas such as network infrastructure and operational support systems, devices, operating systems, and applications. Consumer and business uses grow as service performance remains strong and ecosystem innovation creates compelling new offerings, manifested in new devices, applications, and services. The wireless ecosystem and industries with embedded wireless solutions (e.g., automotive telematics, mHealth, and mCommerce) gain from the strong home field advantage of U.S. mobile broadband leadership. The United States enjoys export advantages from the resulting innovations and new business models and is able to capture a growing share of global value in the respective market segments. As illustrated in Exhibit 5, these combined performance improvements would likely position the United States to sustain its lead in the near term and within a decade even extend its lead to nearly match the levels of the early 2000s. Scenario 2: An unfavorable or insufficient policy approach results in the mobile broadband market being throttled by supply shortages In this second scenario, sufficient spectrum is not made available to wireless carriers in a timely manner: The total amount of spectrum lags demand auctions are further delayed and allocated spectrum is insufficient. Spectrum bands are of lesser quality (e.g., higher frequencies, smaller blocks, limited national coverage, and less international alignment than in scenario 1). A substantial amount of new spectrum is shared, and the shared spectrum is incorrectly assumed to boost supply nearly as much as exclusive spectrum. Terms and conditions for spectrum access and use are restrictive and prescriptive, limiting the ability of market mechanisms to alleviate supply shortages. Outcome: Demand exceeds supply, mobile broadband performance suffers, and the U.S. leadership position erodes In this scenario, the policies enacted and executed in the United States are not sufficient to meet mobile broadband supply needs, leading to a shortfall relative to rising demand. Mobile broadband becomes less robust and reliable as localized performance issues (e.g., reduced speeds, increased latency and outages) increase in both geography and time. Wireless carriers must focus their efforts and resources on alleviating the spectrum and supply shortfalls, siphoning investments away from new products and services. Prices rise in order to keep demand from exceeding supply, dampening consumer and business use of mobile broadband and limiting purchases of the latest generation devices and applications. Ecosystem investment and innovation in the United States are reduced as investors pursue opportunities in more attractive countries and industries. Wireless ecosystems and mobile-enabled industries in other countries gain advantages over U.S. companies in innovation and exports. U.S. exports suffer. As shown in Exhibit 6, the United States would likely maintain its leadership position for the next few years thanks to momentum from current capabilities and performance levels. However, mobile broadband supply and performance shortfalls would soon begin to take their toll, causing the U.S. lead to shrink over the latter half of this decade. By 2020 the U.S. lead would be modest at best, with increasing challenges from competing countries that are gaining ground with positive trends in their mobile broadband performance. The United States would become just one of several targets for global investment in mobile broadband and would risk losing its leadership position to other countries. Supply shortages leading to the Scenario 2 outlook are plausible, as U.S. government actions to avoid a shortage appear to be falling behind Significant progress has been made by the U.S. government to avoid a supply shortage, but the collective set of completed and planned actions appears to be falling behind relative to the objectives and timetable established in the 2010 National Broadband Plan.32 The FCC and NTIA continue to pursue a variety of initiatives to re-allocate commercial or federal spectrum on an exclusive or shared basis, with the most notable action being the pending auction to re-allocate broadcast TV spectrum. However, the United States appears to be substantially behind schedule in achieving the stated 2015 objective. As illustrated in Exhibit 7, current plans indicate that approximately 225265 MHz of spectrum will be newly classified, auctioned, or planned for auction for mobile broadband use through 2015, which at the lower range estimate is roughly three-fourths of the National Broadband Plan 2015 goal. As important, 100 MHz of spectrum or approximately one-fourth of the total 395435 MHz planned or identified to date is stipulated as shared-use, which due to the inherent nature of sharing will not be equivalent in supply value to exclusively licensed spectrum. It is also worth emphasizing the complexity of U.S. spectrum allocations, most of which reflect decisions made during the twentieth century, and the time delays that can result in making spectrum available after it has been designated for commercial use. Reclaiming or sharing spectrum for mobile use is especially difficult and time-consuming, with some federal agencies indicating that it will take up to a decade to move their operations out of the designated bands.37 Developing economies have fewer challenges in this regard, and thus have the potential to make progress at the expense of the United States. Whether viewed from the U.S. or global perspective, Scenario 2 is a disconcerting yet plausible outlook. U.S. mobile broadband leadership is by no means assured.How policy actions could enhance or imperil Americas mobile broadband competitiveness 17 If the U.S. lead in mobile broadband is eroded or lost, it could result in substantial damage to U.S. economic development and technology leadership Applying industry-specific multipliers to estimate the U.S. economic impact of reduced capital expenditure by carriers, a mobile broadband spectrum supply shortage could result in a direct loss of $67 billion in GDP and 344,000 jobs through 2022.38 However, the indirect and induced impacts of a mobile broadband supply shortage on other industries might be more significant. Mobile business applications are already used extensively in nearly every industry and are becoming increasingly indispensable for standard business activities. Further, even as human use of mobile data continues to expand, it pales in comparison to anticipated growth in the "Internet of Things much of which will be wirelessly enabled. Bullish industry forecasts include an estimate of 26 billion installed Internet of things units by 2020, impacting the global supply chain, and a prediction of 24 billion connected devices globally by 2016, resulting in a $1.2 trillion impact to North American economies from revenues, cost reductions, or service improvements.39 If the United States mobile broadband position becomes diminished and weak, it could create opportunities for other countries to gain traction in areas of the mobile-enabled Internet of Things. Other countries, by tapping into their unique assets or characteristics such as a higher population density or a leading public infrastructure could overtake the United States in specific industries or applications such as telematics. mHealth, mCommerce, or mLogistics. Scale this effect across all global competitors and industries and it is likely the collective impacts of conceded leadership in mobile broadband would be substantial for the United States and its economy. Should the United States relinquish its lead in mobile broadband and become just one of several global players, the economic consequences could be severe. On the other hand, if the United States retains its leadership position in mobile broadband, it could also become the market leader in a variety of new industry segments that sprout within the Internet of Things. In fact, it is not hard to envision a future in which the leading indicators of mobile broadband performance are also leading indicators of overall economic performance.

Internet innovation is key to solve climate change better than any kind of energy production Crowe 14 Taylor, writes for The Motley Fool focusing on the energy industry, The Internet of Things: Our Greatest Shot at Battling Climate Change, Feb. 15, 2014, http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/02/15/this-technology-is-our-only-real-shot-at-addressin.aspxMachine to machine communication, or the internet of things, is on the precipice of taking the world by storm. At its very core, machine to machine communication is the ability to connect everything, I mean everything, through a vast network of sensors and devices which can communicate with each other. The possibilities of this technological evolution span an immensely wide spectrum; ranging from monitoring your health through your smartphone, to your house knowing where you are to adjust lighting and heating.The way that the internet of things could revolutionize our lives can be hard to conceptualize all at once. So today lets focus on one place where machine to machine communication could have an immense impact: Energy consumption. Not only could this technology make turning the lights on easier, but it could be the key to us effectively managing anthropogenic carbon emissions.Regardless of your thoughts and opinions on climate change and the scope of how much carbon emissions affects the global atmosphere, we all can agree on one thing: Emitting less carbon is a good thing, especially if it can be done without impeding economic growth. For years, the battleground for the climate change debate has been on the energy generation side, pitting alternative energy options like wind and solar against fossil fuels. The problem with fixating on this side of the argument, though, is that even under the most ambitious outlooks for alternative energy growth, we will never be able to get carbon emissions below the threshold many think is required to prevent significant temperature changes over the next century. Does that mean there's no shot at significantly reducing carbon emissions? No -- we're just focusing on the wrong side of the energy equation, and that is where machine to machine communications comes into play. Lets look at how the internet of things can mean for carbon emissions, and how investors could make some hefty profits from it. Energy consumption's overdue evolutionWe humans are a fascinating study in inefficiency. We will sit in traffic on the freeway rather than take the alternative route on "slower" roads. We oversupply the electricity grid because we don't know precisely how much demand is needed at any given moment. It's not that we deliberately try to do things less efficiently; we just don't always have the adequate information to make the most efficient decision. When you add all of these little inefficiencies up, it amounts to massive amounts of wasted energy and, in turn, unnecessary carbon emissions. In the U.S. alone, 1.9 billion gallons of fuel is consumed every year from drivers sitting in traffic. That's 186 million tons of unnecessary CO2 emissions each year just in the U.S. Now, imagine a world where every automobile was able to communicate with the others, giving instant feedback on traffic conditions and providing alternative routes to avoid traffic jams. This is the fundamental concept of machine-to-machine communications, and it goes way beyond the scope of just automobiles and household conveniences.One of the added benefits of this technology is the impact it could have on our everyday energy consumption and the ultimate reduction in total carbon emissions. A recent report by the Carbon War Room estimates that the incorporation of machine-to-machine communication in the energy, transportation, built environment (its fancy term for buildings), and agriculture sectors could reduce global greenhouse gas emissions by 9.1 gigatons of CO2 equivalent annually. That's 18.2 trillion pounds, or equivalent to eliminating all of the United States' and India's total greenhouse gas emissions combined, and more than triple the reductions we can expect with an extremely ambitious alternative energy conversion program. How is this possible? Increased communication between everything -- engines, appliances, generators, automobiles -- allows for instant feedback for more efficient travel routes, optimized fertilizer and water consumption to reduce deforestation, real-time monitoring of electricity consumption and instant feedback to generators, and fully integrated heating, cooling, and lighting systems that can adjust for human occupancy. There are lots of projections and estimates related to carbon emissions and climate change, but the one that has emerged as the standard bearer is the amount of carbon emissions it would take to increase global temperatures by 2 degrees Centigrade. According to the UN's Environment Programme, annual anthropological greenhouse gas emissions would need to decrease by 15% from recent levels to keep us under the carbon atmospheric levels. Based on c