Dr. Erica D. Lonergan is no longer with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Dr. Erica D. Lonergan was a senior fellow in the Technology and International Affairs Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Erica also continues to serve as a senior director on the U.S. Cyberspace Solarium Commission, a Congressional commission established to develop a comprehensive national strategy to defend the United States in cyberspace.
Prior to that, Erica was a senior fellow with the New American Engagement Initiative at the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security in the Atlantic Council. Previously, Erica was an assistant professor in the Army Cyber Institute at the United States Military Academy at West Point. Erica was also a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow, with placement at JPMorgan Chase and U.S. Cyber Command. Before that position, Erica served as an assistant professor and executive director of the Rupert H. Johnson Grand Strategy Program in the Department of Social Sciences at West Point.
Erica has published on topics ranging from grand strategy, cyber strategy and policy, coercion and deterrence, and international crisis bargaining. Her academic work has appeared in numerous journals, including American Political Science Review, Security Studies, Strategic Studies Quarterly, Orbis, the Cyber Defense Review, and Survival. Erica has also published opinion pieces in outlets such as WIRED, the Washington Post, Lawfare, War on the Rocks, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the National Interest. Erica’s co-edited book volume, US National Security Reform: Reassessing the National Security Act of 1947, explores the evolution of American grand strategy and offers policy recommendations for the contemporary environment. Erica’s co-authored book, Escalation Dynamics in Cyberspace, forthcoming in 2021 with the Bridging the Gap series at Oxford University Press, presents a novel theory of escalation and signaling in cyberspace. She is also currently editing a book volume on the research behind the Cyberspace Solarium Commission’s work, as well as writing a book on proxy warfare.
Erica holds a PhD in political science from Columbia University. She is a term member at the Council on Foreign Relations and an adjunct research fellow at the Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies at Columbia University. Erica also serves on the board of directors of the Cyber Conflict Studies Association and is a member of the New York Cyber Task Force.
Please join Carnegie and the U.S. Cyberspace Solarium Commission for a conversation featuring leaders from the US government, and the energy and financial services sectors as they asses what comes next in securing domestic and global infrastructure in cyberspace.
The recent spate of ransomware attacks in the United States, including against critical infrastructure in the case of the Colonial Pipeline attack, raises questions about U.S. Cyber Command’s role in responding to this type of malicious behavior.
Cyber deterrence frameworks that draw from the traditional nuclear deterrence literature and the logic of deterrence by punishment are mismatched to deterrence challenges in cyberspace. Instead, a better approach would be deterrence by denial.
U.S. allies have joined Washington in voicing concerns about Chinese cyber behavior after the Microsoft Exchange hack. But lingering differences between the partners could still blunt an effective response.
A U.S.-Russian bilateral agreement on cyberattacks against financial integrity would be an important first step that could help build confidence to make progress on other, more challenging areas that affect the financial sector, such as collaboration around reigning in cyber-enabled financial crime.
During the U.S.-Russia summit, President Biden met with the press following the summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin that included discussions focused on cybersecurity.
Failure to proactively and systematically address cyber threats and vulnerabilities to critical weapons systems, and to the DOD enterprise, has deleterious implications for the U.S. ability to deter war, or fight and win if deterrence fails
The professional military education system faces several challenges in how it teaches future leaders practicing the profession of arms in the cyber domain.
A discussion of the decision by NATO to elevate cyber to an Article V mutual defense issue, cyber deterrence, improving alliance cyber resilience as well as defense and offense, and stepping up the security of member nation’s commercial networks.
While there has been a great deal of recent debate about the respective roles of offense and defense in cybersecurity, the Colonial Pipeline episode highlights that a core policy challenge remains cultivating the resilience of U.S. critical infrastructure.