Critical infrastructure protection

DISAM Journal, Summer, 2002 by Lincoln P. Jr. Bloomfield

[The following remarks were presented at the American Embassy, New Delhi, India, April 30, 2002.]

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining me here at the American Embassy this afternoon. I would like to make a few brief remarks before I answer your questions. I wish to first thank my Indian hosts for their hospitality, and for the seriousness of purpose that they shared with me and with my colleagues during two days of meetings here in New Delhi.

As you may have seen in this morning's newspapers, yesterday, I took part in the inaugural session of the Indo-U.S. Cyber Security Forum, which is an outgrowth of the Indo-U.S. Cyber-Terrorism Initiative launched by Prime Minister Vajpayee and President Bush at their November 9, 2001, Summit meeting in Washington. My host at these talks was Shri Arvind Gupta, Joint Secretary for the National Security Council Secretariat. Today, I participated in the first Indo-U.S. Political Military Dialogue. I was hosted by Mr. Jayant Prasad, Joint Secretary, Americas, MEA. I wish to thank both of these gentlemen and their impressive respective teams for the very warm hospitality and well-organized structure of these two sets of discussions.

As Assistant Secretary for the State Department's Political-Military Bureau (PM), I am Secretary Powell's principal advisor on matters where the Department of State supports the mission of the Department of Defense, and am an active participant in the management of America's security relationships worldwide. My bureau's mission includes advising the Secretary of State on U.S. security assistance programs such as the International Military Education and Training (IMET) program, Foreign Military Financing (FMF), and Peacekeeping Operations (PKO) assistance. Additionally, I am responsible for U.S. government arms sales policy and for commercial defense trade controls, including licensing. Other areas of PM's responsibility include contingency planning and peacekeeping policy, the small arms/light weapons United Nations Program of Action, humanitarian demining, and mine action, base access and burden sharing, and international consequence management coordination, as well as critical infrastructure protection coo peration internationally.

It is in this last capacity that I held meetings yesterday, April 29, 2002 with Joint Secretary Gupta and the members of his Cyber security team. The U.S. delegation in these talks represented the full range of U.S. government agencies as well as university representatives, working on critical infrastructure protection (CIP). This U.S. team is the most comprehensive and senior delegation we have ever assembled for a bilateral CIP discussion with any country.

We presented our assessment of the global threat and described the measures we have taken to minimize the vulnerability of our critical information systems. The two sides began the dialogue on possible ways in which India and the United States can address these problems. These talks marked the start of what will be a regular relationship between India and the U.S. on cyber security. Indeed, the professional-level dialogue from here on will be continuous. Members of our respective delegations will be in touch as often as needed in order to protect both India's and America's critical infrastructure from cyber attack.

The purpose of today's political-military dialogue was to set the stage for a closer and even more productive bilateral security relationship. I had the opportunity to hear in detail India's strategic perspectives, priorities, and visions for the future in the context of the regional and international security environment. I was also able to present American perspectives on Operation Enduring Freedom and the Global War on Terrorism. The discussions included Indian military modernization and India's perspectives on the U.S. as a potential defense supplier. I was able to share with my hosts the progress of current defense procurement requests and explain in detail the U.S. defense trade licensing process and U.S. arms transfer policy.

I will return to Washington tonight with what I know will be good news for Secretary Powell: political-military relations between the United States and India are strong and growing. I consider it an honor and a privilege to be able to play a role in deepening the transformation of our bilateral relationship.

Question: Mr. Bloomfield, I am Aditi Phadnis, the Business Standard Newspaper. Do you have an ongoing dialogue on cyber security with other nations of the world, and if so, what are the areas that they encompass? This is not a subject that we know too much about here.

Answer: Yes, we do. Cyber security is a relative newcomer to the bureaucratic environment in Washington and it is clearly an outgrowth of the phenomenal proliferation of computers and information technology and the internet. The organizations represented on the U.S. delegation in the last two days in the main did not exist a few years ago. Now we find that our own government bureaucracy, our defense and intelligence establishments, must guard its information infrastructure against all manner of cyber threats.