Below, please find the latest articles to have appeared in print and electronic media about CSIS and its experts. For your reference, there is also a link to archived media coverage of CSIS.
The CSIS Report Embassy of the Future was quoted by the Washington Post, "Suited for the New Diplomacy?"
But it's also possible to draw a different conclusion from recent years: that nation-building deserves the bad name it earned in Somalia, and that there should be no next time. One might even be forgiven for thinking that good old-fashioned diplomacy should be enjoying a renaissance now that military might has failed to set all things right. But sadly, according to a Center for Strategic and International Studies report entitled "The Embassy of the Future," diplomacy is still mistaken as "a tool for the weak, always about making concessions or appeasing our foes." That's too bad, because when Foreign Service officers describe their work in Iraq and Afghanistan, their best efforts sound suspiciously like old-hat diplomacy -- working to establish relationships of trust with key locals to influence them in favor of U.S. interests. Read more
June 12
James Lewis, director of the CSIS Technology and Public Policy Program, was quoted by the Los Angeles Times, "Chinese Suspected in Capitol Hacking Cases."
Hackers believed to be operating from China have broken into computers in Congress, apparently in search of information on Chinese dissidents, two GOP lawmakers said Wednesday. The hackers were not identified, but one of the lawmakers, Rep. Christopher H. Smith of New Jersey, a senior Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said he thought all signs pointed to the Chinese government. [...]"Congress would be an attractive target for any spy or hacker, especially if there was information on political dissidents and on U.S. policies," said James A. Lewis, technology program director at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. Lewis said that although China may be a logical suspect, good hackers are adept at hiding their tracks.
May 31
James Lewis, director of the CSIS Technology and Public Policy Program, was quoted by the Associated Press, "US State Sponsors of Terrorism List Used for Political Purposes."
WASHINGTON: North Korea has not been linked to a terrorist attack in more than two decades, but it is still on the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism. Now, it may be on the verge of its coveted goal of getting removed — but for reasons having little to do with terrorism.James Lewis, a former State Department official who worked on sanctions in the Bill Clinton administration, said the list gives the United States leverage on non-terrorism issues. The message is: "Do the right thing and we'll take you off the list," said Lewis, an analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank. Read more
James Lewis, director of the CSIS Technology and Public Policy Program, was quoted by Defense News, "General: EU, NATO, Need Better Tech Cooperation."
NATO and the European Union need to work more effectively toward defense technology cooperation because current military committee meetings aren't producing "much added value to the capability process," Norwegian Rear Adm. Jorgen Berrgrav of NATO's Allied Command Transformation said May 5. Berrgrav spoke as part of a trans-Atlantic teleconference in Washington and Brussels on the future of defense cooperation between the European Union and NATO. "The EU is under-investing across the board," said Jim Lewis of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. But many innovations that will become increasingly important - robotics, new power sources, sensor developments - come from European companies, he said. There is therefore a possibility for Europe "to speed up itself." Read the Article
April 29
The CSIS Commission on Cybersecurity for the 44th Presidency was the basis for an article in Government Computer News, "Experts Struggle with Cybersecurity Agenda."
Whoever becomes our next president will inherit a cyber infrastructure under almost constant attack and at greater risk than eight years ago, and a handful of experts and legislators have come together to ensure that cybersecurity has a high priority in his or her administration. The Commission on Cyber Security for the 44th Presidency, set up in November by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, held the second of five planned public meetings Monday to hear recommendations on issues of information security, identity theft and government leadership.Read more
March 19
James Lewis, director of the CSIS Technology and Public Policy Program, was quoted by the Washington Post, "White House Taps Tech Entrepreneur For Cyber Defense Post."
The Bush administration is planning to tap a Silicon Valley entrepreneur to head a new inter-agency group charged with coordinating the federal government's efforts to protect its computer networks from organized cyber attacks. Sources in the government contracting community said the White House is expected to announce as early as Thursday the selection of Rod A. Beckstrom as a top-level adviser based in the Department of Homeland Security. Beckstrom is an author and entrepreneur best known for starting Twiki.net, a company that provides collaboration software for businesses. "Here you have a group that's allegedly in charge of cyber for DHS, and then we see another group being set up outside that in a structurally new way," said Lewis, whose employer is spearheading a group of industry and government cyber experts called the "Commission on Cyber Security for the 44th Presidency," which is expected to present the next president with a series of actionable recommendations he or she can take to tackle some of most pressing cyber security problems facing the government, industry and consumers. "We still don't know what [Beckstrom's] relationship will be to all of the other bits of cyber bureaucracy lying around."Read the article
March 14
James Lewis, director of the CSIS Technology and Public Policy Program, was cited by United Press International, “Is a New Space Race in the Making?"
The shooting down of a U.S. satellite by U.S. navy forces late last month raised concern from other satellite-owning countries, particularly China and Russia, despite the official explanation that the move was essential to prevent the malfunctioning satellite from crashing and spreading toxic materials on the Earth. Some analysts gave other reasons for the preemptive action, saying the United States was worried that data or instruments from the satellite could fall into the hands of potential space opponents, especially China and Russia. James Lewis, a satellite expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C., indicated to the media that the official explanation of wanting to prevent the spacecraft's fuel tank from spilling its contents on the ground might not be the whole story. Thus critics from around the world have speculated about ulterior motives, ranging from a desire to test U.S. ballistic missile defenses to a desire to poke China in the eye.Read the article
March 10
James Lewis, director of the CSIS Technology and Public Policy Program, was quoted by McClatchy Newspapers, "U.S. Looks into Terror Listing for Venezuela."
The Bush administration has launched a preliminary legal inquiry that could land Venezuela on the U.S. list of nations that support terrorism, following reports of close Venezuelan links with Colombian rebels, a senior government official has confirmed. The investigation is the first step in a process that could see Venezuela join North Korea, Cuba, Sudan, Syria and Iran as countries designated by the State Department as supporters of terrorism. [...] Such a designation "immediately imposes restrictions on the abilities of U.S. companies to work in Venezuela," said James Lewis, a former State Department arms trafficking expert now with the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. "It would make it very hard for Venezuela to sell oil to the U.S."Read the article
James Lewis, director of the CSIS Technology and Public Policy Program, was quoted by the Washington Times, "Reputed Global Arms Dealer Arrested."
Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout was usually a careful man, dealing with customers through intermediaries and ordering subordinates to throw away cellphones, receipts and anything else that could be traced. After two buyers claiming to be Colombian guerrillas approached him last November, Bout tried to double-check their identities using photographs of known leaders of the group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, court documents say. [...] "He took his Soviet military experience and used that to build a very lucrative business operation," said James A. Lewis, a former State Department expert on arms smuggling now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "His reputation was that he could deliver large quantities of weapons anywhere in the world. That was his competitive edge."Read the article
March 4
James Lewis, director of the CSIS Technology and Public Policy Program, was quoted by the Miami Herald, "Documents Show FARC Ties to Venezuela, Ecuador."
A mysterious ''Belisario'' who offers FARC rebels radioactive uranium that terrorists can use for a ''dirty bomb.'' A spat between Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez and Cuba. An odd Chávez proposal to move FARC hostages to Venezuela — and hold them there. Those are just some of the items in 15 documents released Tuesday by Colombian police, who said they had been found in the captured laptop of slain FARC leader Raúl Reyes. [...] ''In a lot of cases involving uranium deals, somebody's usually getting snookered,'' said James Lewis, a former State Department expert on arms smuggling now with the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. Read the article
February 29
James Lewis, director of the CSIS Technology and Public Policy Program, was quoted by the Washington Post, "House Lawmakers Question Privacy in Cyber-Security Plan."
House lawmakers yesterday raised concerns about the privacy implications of a Bush administration effort to secure federal computer networks from hackers and foreign adversaries, as new details emerged about the largely classified program. The unclassified portions of the project, known as the "cyber initiative," focus on drastically reducing the number of connections between federal agency networks and the Internet, and more closely monitoring those networks for malicious activity. Slightly more than half of all agencies have deployed the Department of Homeland Security's program. [...] But Jim Lewis, director of the technology arm of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank, called the privacy concerns premature and overblown. "There's a big difference between intercepting and reading e-mail and reacting to suspicious traffic going across your network," said Lewis, whose employer is working with Congress and the private sector on a set of cyber security policy recommendations for the next president.Read the article
February 27
James Lewis, director of the Technology and Public Policy Program at CSIS, was quoted by The New York Times, "Backgrounder: The Evolution of Cyber Warfare."
In the spring of 2007, when Estonian authorities moved a monument to the Red Army from the center of its capital city, Tallinn, to the outskirts of town, a diplomatic row erupted with neighboring Russia. Estonian nationalists regard the army as occupiers and oppressors, a sentiment that dates to the long period of Soviet rule following the Second World War, when the Soviet Union absorbed all three Baltic states. Ethnic Russians, who make up about a quarter of Estonia’s 1.3 million people, were nonetheless incensed by the statue’s treatment and took to the streets in protest. Estonia later blamed Moscow for orchestrating the unrest; order was restored only after U.S. and European diplomatic interventions. But the story of the “Bronze Statue” did not end there. Days after the riots the computerized infrastructure of Estonia’s high-tech government began to fray, victimized by what experts in cybersecurity termed a coordinated “denial of service” attack. A flood of bogus requests for information from computers around the world conspired to cripple (Wired) the websites of Estonian banks, media outlets, and ministries for days. Estonia denounced the attacks as an unprovoked act of aggression from a regional foe (though experts still disagree on who perpetrated it—Moscow has denied any knowledge). Experts in cybersecurity went one step further: They called it the future of warfare. [...] Other cyber tactics are less sophisticated. The attack that temporarily brought down Estonian networks began with a flood of bogus messages targeting government servers, called a “denial of service” attack. The approach harnesses “botnets”—massive networks of interconnected computers—to bombard targeted networks with information requests while masking the location of the primary attacker. James Lewis, a security expert with the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), says hackers in the Estonia example likely took control of tens of thousands of computers around the world without the knowledge of their owners and directed them at the government’s servers. The result, he says, was a relatively minor attack that was nearly impossible to trace (PDF).Read the article
February 26
James Lewis, director of the CSIS Technology and Public Policy Program, was quoted by Forbes, "Bush’s Double-Edged Cyber-Security Plan."
Since January, the Bush administration has committed to spending billions to keep the government's computer networks safe from cyber-spies and other malicious hackers. But to keep digital intruders away from sensitive government information, some worry the government will have to do some spying of its own--on the U.S. private sector. . . The questions about the initiative's privacy policies also apply to its role in surveying government networks, says Jim Lewis, a former foreign service official and director of the Technology and Public Policy Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He worries about private citizens interacting with federal systems. "When John Q. Citizen visits the Department of Agriculture Web site, what are the guarantees on his privacy?" Lewis asks. "We're moving into an arena of monitoring that hasn't been covered by existing privacy rules." Read More
February 24
James Lewis, director of the CSIS Technology and Public Policy Program, was quoted in Parade magazine, "The Move Toward a National ID."
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is headed for a showdown this spring with several states over national identification cards. The Real ID Act—establishing a tamper-proof ID system—was passed in 2005 in response to the finding that 18 of the 9/11 hijackers held fake driver’s licenses and IDs under 364 aliases. Last month, the DHS issued final regulations and a warning to states: Say you’ll participate or in May your residents may not be able to use their driver’s licenses to board planes or enter federal buildings. At least 17 states, including Illinois and Georgia, have passed laws opposing Real ID. They object to the projected $11 billion cost, and privacy advocates are waving red flags. “It makes people anxious because of the domestic-surveillance programs that have sprung up in recent years,” says James Lewis of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. The DHS believes the concerns are unfounded and stresses the need for secure national ID standards. “People assume that every state checks for valid documents when someone applies for a driver’s license,” says DHS spokesperson Amy Kudwa. “This is not true, but Real ID will ensure this happens.” Read the article
February 21
James Lewis, director of the CSIS Technology and Public Policy Program, was quoted by the Christian Science Monitor, "U.S. Missile Shoots Down Satellite – But Why?"
Yes, the Pentagon can obliterate a broken satellite tumbling at the edge of space. The question is, why bother? That is the reaction of some experts to the successful destruction Feb. 20 of a dead US spy satellite 153 miles over the Pacific Ocean. The official explanation – that the US wanted to prevent the toxic contents of the spacecraft's fuel tank from hitting the ground – seems a bit thin, according to James Lewis, director of the technology and public policy program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Thus critics from around the world have speculated about ulterior motives, ranging from a desire to test US ballistic missile defenses to poking China in the eye. Read More
James Lewis, director of the CSIS Technology and Public Policy Program, was quoted by the USA Today, "U.S. to Shoot Down Falling Spy Satellite."
As early as next week, the Pentagon plans to lob a missile at a satellite falling toward Earth, in an unprecedented effort to keep the satellite's toxic fuel from inflicting public injury or death, federal officials said Thursday. The United States has never shot down a spacecraft with a missile, said Gen. James Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. However, satellites carrying the same type of toxic fuel fall to Earth all the time, said Jim Lewis of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank. Also, he added, no one has ever been hurt by falling satellite parts, mostly because so much of the Earth's surface is water or thinly populated. "The risk of this is very low, and that leads to the question, why bother?" Lewis said. "This isn't going to popular" with other nations. Read the article
February 14
James Lewis, director of the CSIS Technology and Public Policy Program, was quoted by the Associated Press, "U.S. Plans to Shoot Down Broken Satellite."
The Pentagon, under orders from President Bush, is planning to shoot down a broken spy satellite expected to hit the Earth in early March, the White House said Thursday. U.S. officials said that the option preferred by the administration will be to fire a missile from a U.S. Navy cruiser, and shoot down the satellite before it enters Earth's atmosphere. The military's Ballistic Missile Defense System, known as "Sea-Based Midcourse," could destroy the satellite just as it begins to re-enter the Earth's atmosphere, said James Lewis, a satellite expert at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, a conservative think-tank.Read the article
February 11
James Lewis, director of the CSIS Technology and Public Policy Program, was quoted by Reuters, "U.S. Sept. 11 Trial Could Reignite Rights Debate."
A trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, meant to exact justice for the Sept. 11 attacks, will also fuel debate over whether the United States violated human rights when it subjected prisoners to waterboarding and other harsh treatment in its war on terrorism, analysts said. [ . . .] "How will we not be embarrassed?" security analyst James Lewis of the Center for Strategic and International Studies said of any impending trials. He said a key to the verdicts' credibility would be how aggressively military defense lawyers represented the defendants. Read More
January 24
James Lewis, director of the CSIS Technology and Public Policy Program, was quoted by Government Executive, "IG: Energy Department Vulnerable to Cyberattacks."
An unorganized patchwork approach to information security leaves the Energy Department vulnerable to cyberattacks on its networks, according to a report released this week by Energy's inspector general. As many as eight organizations within Energy were involved in cybersecurity intrusion and analysis, according to the report. The organizations' "missions and functions were found to be, at least partially, duplicative and not well coordinated," the inspector general concluded, adding that Energy has no common format to follow when reporting a security incident. "Energy is a high-value target," said James Lewis, a senior fellow who specializes in information security issues at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "Foreign entities would love to steal, and probably have stolen, sensitive information from Energy. If they were [the Housing and Urban Development Department], for example, they wouldn't have three or four of the most skilled foreign governments trying to break into their systems every day.Read the article
January 21
The CSIS Commission on Cybersecurity for the 44th Presidency was quoted by Government Computer News, "Cyberadvice Awaits the Next President."
When the next president of the United States takes office in January 2009, he or she will be greeted with some advice on cybersecurity policy. The Center for Strategic and International Studies has put together a Commission on Cyber Security for the 44th Presidency and expects to have a set of recommendations ready by the end of the year. “We’re a think tank, and that’s what we do,” said James Lewis, senior fellow and director of the Technology and Public Policy Program at CSIS. “This is yet another CSIS commission.”Read the article
