Obviously the technologies that began to develop in the seventies and eighties have reached a point now where there is a new element. My Beta VCR flashes 12, so I really don't understand any of this stuff. But what I do understand is the capability, because we're seeing stories in the news all the time about the capabilities, and the capabilities are clearly not only to conduct espionage via the Internet but also to shut down operational capabilities and to very definitely influence the way militaries conduct operations.
I have two concerns. One is that there are too many.... I'm not an expert in this. I was once on the Advisory Council on National Security in Canada, and I remember at the time being very worried about the degree to which we were prepared for cyber-attack. I thought there were too many silos in this city. I still believe that. I don't know what's going on inside the closed doors of CSIS, CSE, and whatnot, but I know that bureaucracies tend to create silos, and intelligence bureaucracies no less than anybody else. The major issues in intelligence are really never in the gathering; they're in the analysis and the comparing of information. So I worry about that.
I also worry about our ability to stay current with our Five Eyes allies and I am told—this may be untrue, it may be a rumour—that they are less and less inclined to work with us because we eschew any desire to develop offensive cyber-capability, which they are all doing. The Brits are doing it, the Americans are doing it, and the Australians are doing it. The idea is that deterrence works. If you want these people to stop attacking your systems, they need to know you're going to attack theirs, and apparently, our country has decided this is not something Canadians do.
Now I don't know if it's true, but if it is true, that worries me as well. So in terms of the cyber, those are really the only two things I have to say about it.