Episode 154: Richard Clarke on Defending the Fifth Domain

The Pentagon calls cyberspace “the fifth domain” of conflict. But what does that mean? And how do you defend a human-made space that’s everywhere and nowhere? In this episode of the podcast, Richard Clarke joins us to discuss his new book, The Fifth Domain: Defending Our Country, Our Companies, and Ourselves in the Age of Cyber Threats. 

 When we last spoke to Richard Clarke, he was on tour to promote his book Warnings: Finding Modern Cassandras to Stop Catastrophes. That book saw Clarke and a co-author: R.P. Eddy interviewing people who had warned fruitlessly about pending disasters like 9/11 and the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant melt-down. That book was a way to get everyone thinking about the Cassandras among us and who are warning about coming storms, including Cyber War.

The Fifth Domain by Richard Clarke and Robert Knake

In his latest book, The Fifth Domain co-written with Robert Knake, Richard goes deep on that very topic. The title, is reference to military parlance for cyber space, which has joined land, sea, air and space as a theater of warfare.

But cyber space is different from those theaters. In this conversation we talk about how it is different and how those differences warrant new thinking about how to secure and protect the Internet and everything in our lives that has come to depend on it.

To start off, Richard and I talk about his last book with Mr. Knake, Cyber War, which a decade ago predicted many of the trends we now see every day, including destructive cyber attacks launched by militaries – claims that at the time were considered “fiction.”

Richard Clarke is the CEO at Good Harbor Consulting. He’s a former National Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection and Counter-terrorism for the United States and a veteran of four administrations, from President Ronald Reagan through to President George W. Bush His new book, The Fifth Domain: Defending our Country, Our Companies and Ourselves in the Age of Cyber Threats.

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