The U.S. State Department launched a new bureau on April 4, which will introduce new bureaucracies to contend with emerging issues in cybersecurity through policy development and coordination.
The Bureau of Cyberspace and Digital Policy (CDP) will seek to “address the national security challenges, economic opportunities, and implications for American values associated with cyberspace, digital technologies, and digital policy,”
according to a statement by the State Department.
The CDP is divided into three policy units, each of which will ostensibly have its own head. The units are International Cyberspace Security, International Information and Communications Policy, and Digital Freedom.
The bureau will eventually be led by a new ambassador-at-large, whom will be confirmed by the Senate and serve as a top cyber diplomat for the United States.
To that end, The department and its top officer appear to be largely a recreation of the Obama-era Office of the Cyber Coordinator, which the Trump administration merged with another department in 2018 as part of its efforts to streamline the National Security Council.
“Streamlining management will improve efficiency, reduce bureaucracy, and increase accountability,”
said then-NSC spokesman Robert Palladino.
The new bureau on its website
claims that it will “encourage responsible state behavior in cyberspace and advance policies that protect the integrity and security of the infrastructure of the Internet, serve U.S. interests, promote competitiveness, and uphold democratic values.”
Likewise, the bureau says that it will “defend against efforts to legitimize and adopt repressive and authoritarian practices in cyberspace,”
The new bureau comes at a time of resurgent authoritarianism and mounting cyber threats from state-based actors including China and Russia. To that end, the CDP could feasibly assist in the Biden administration’s upcoming national security strategy, which is expected to continue the Trump-era strategy of prioritizing China’s communist regime as the most pressing national security threat.
The activation of the CDP also follows reports claiming that the Chinese Communist Party
launched a massive cyberattack on Ukrainian military and civilian infrastructure the day before Russia’s invasion, and amid a growing number of criminal cases
outlining the pervasiveness of Chinese communist espionage, including cyber hacking, in the United States.
Relatedly, experts have warned that China and Russia are increasingly
decoupling their internet architecture from the rest of the world, which could result in the growth of distinct technospheres, effectively eroding the possibility of free or open internet throughout the world and boxing in large segments of the globe into discrete, controlled areas.
