The most difficult fact for any nation to accept, is the fact that it may be totally outmatched, in some critical field, by some foreign agency or organization.
Under the administration of Harry Truman, "Operation Paperclip" was instituted. This controversial program—designed to bring thousands of Nazi scientists into the U.S. after World War II—was the result of Truman's recognition of U.S inferiority in the realm of the then critical rocket and space sciences. Wernher von Braun—the developer of Germany's V2 rocket, and later, our Saturn V rocket, and even later, head of our National Aeronautics and Space Administration— was one of those scientists. Without Truman's recognition and acceptance of U.S. inferiority in this critical science, the world today would be radically different. Our current domination of space—our manifest satellites—is the cornerstone of our military dominance and is based on the science brought to the U.S. by Nazi scientists.
My hope is that President-elect Donald Trump is both smart enough and strong enough to ignore the U.S. internal propaganda and accept our extreme vulnerability in the current critical science of cybersecurity . Today, that is far more critical than rocket science was at the end of World War II.
The U.S. Government constantly proclaims that the U.S. leads the world in cybersecurity—but is this actually just propaganda? Let's look at the facts:
We live in a world where teenagers hack the Pentagon and NASA, or even shut down government networks around the world. The full personnel records of every employee of the U.S. Government, including every employee with 'top secret' clearance, for the past 50 years, were scooped up by an unknown agent in 2015, and virtually every covert agency and even Homeland Security are routinely hacked.
It is absurd to believe that our government can keep any secrets at all from nation states or organized hacking groups. Yet we have no coherent plans, policies or practices to counter this growing threat.
Which brings me to one of the most frightening aspects of Trump's published cybersecurity platform: "Instruct the U.S. Department of Justice to create Joint Task Forces throughout the U.S. to coordinate Federal, State, and local law enforcement responses to cyber threats.
Of all the Agencies of the Department of Justice, such as the Asset Forfeiture Division, the Environment and Natural Resources Division, the Office of Juvenile Justice, and so on, it is clearly the Federal Bureau of Investigation to which this obligation will fall.
And how competent in cybersecurity is the FBI? Judge for yourself:
Not only are computing devices owned by individual agents hacked, but critical files have been taken, with regularity, from central FBI databases by the Chinese, by the hacking group Anonymous, by hackers as yet unnamed, and by numerous others.
But perhaps the most telling is a hack of the FBI by a 15-year-old boy early in 2016 in which the personnel records of 75 percent of all FBI employees, including undercover agents, were published on the dark web.
If the above is insufficient for an indictment of cybersecurity incompetence, then consider that the FBI has had to turn to a hacking organization in order to break into the iPhone that was in FBI possession after the San Bernardino attack in December 2015.
Is this really the agency that should play a central role in a nationwide task force in charge of structuring and implementing cybersecurity systems for all local, state and national law enforcement agencies? If you believe so then save yourself some time and read no further.
Of greater concern than the obvious incompetence of the FBI in regards to cybersecurity, is the FBI's attitude toward how cyber science should be utilized.
Read more: Donald Trump wants to replace email with couriers
I have no small experience in confronting the FBI about its covert plans for the use of cyber science, as indicated in a recent CNN debate between myself and Steve Rogers, the nationally-recognized FBI representative in cyber science.
The FBI views the concept of cybersecurity as the use of cyber science in a manner that more easily allows the FBI to monitor American citizens so that the U.S. can be more "secure." This is a perversion of the fundamental intent and productive use of cybersecurity.
That the FBI uses cyber tools for surveillance of U.S. citizens is undeniable. A quick web search will uncover hundreds of incidences of how the FBI applies cyber science to monitor the American public. Yet it is unable to use that same science in order to protect itself. It seems like a willful misuse to me.
The question we need to ask about the loss of privacy as a result of the FBI's use of cyber science is: Can democracy function in a system in which the government knows everything about the people, but the people know virtually nothing about the secret inner workings of the government?
We begin to self censor when we know we are being watched. We lose our freedom of action and speech. It's just a matter of time before the loss of all freedoms follows.
John McAfee is a cybersecurity pioneer who developed the first ever commercial anti-virus software.
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
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