On June 1, the Atlantic Council’s Cyber Statecraft Initiative hosted “Cyber 9/12 Project: The Role of the Media During a Cyber Crisis.”

The event launched an issue brief containing key recommendations stemming from the Cyber 9/12 Project, and continued the discussion with Robert J. Giesler and Tom Gjelten on the role the media plays during a cyber crisis. Jason Healey, director of the Council’s Cyber Statecraft Initiative, moderated the discussion.

This event is a follow-up to “The Cyber 9/12 Project” held in December 2011. Sponsored by SAIC, the conference was an all-day, scenario-driven, interactive exercise to discuss the day-after response to a transatlantic cyber incident. The conference involved representatives from the US and foreign governments, and information and communication technology companies, and discussed the impact of the incident, the potential response, and the greater national security implications.

Robert J. Giesler is the special adviser on irregular warfare at Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory. Prior to this, he was vice president and corporate executive agent for Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC)’s cyber program, where he was responsible for developing corporate-wide strategies, programs, and investments in all facets of the cyber domain. Mr. Giesler has also served as the director for Information Operations and Strategic Studies in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. He is a retired Army officer, with contributions to the information operations (IO) and cyber operations fields beginning in 1980 with development and management of unique capabilities directed against strategic targets. Mr. Giesler participated in the first Information Warfare Net Assessment panel in 1995 and continuously participated in Joint IO Campaign Plans as either a planner or capabilities provider between 1990 and 2007.

Tom Gjelten covers a wide variety of global security, US diplomacy and military affairs, and economic issues for National Public Radio (NPR). He brings to that assignment many years covering international news from posts in Washington and around the world. His overseas reporting experience includes stints in Mexico City from 1986 to 1990 and in Berlin from 1990 to 1994. During those years, he covered the wars in Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Colombia, as well as the Gulf War of 1990-1991 and the wars in Croatia and Bosnia. His reporting from Sarajevo from 1992 to 1994 was the basis for his book Sarajevo Daily: A City and Its Newspaper Under Siege. He is also the author of Professionalism in War Reporting: A Correspondent’s View (Carnegie Corporation). Mr. Gjelten’s most recent book is Bacardi and the Long Fight for Cuba: The Biography of a Cause, a unique history of modern Cuba, told through the life and times of the Bacardi rum family. The New York Times selected it as a “Notable Nonfiction Book,” and the Washington Post, Kansas City Star, and San Francisco Chronicle all listed it among their “Best Books of 2008.”

MEDIA MENTIONS