Name: Karim Farhat

Title: EXPLAINING US CYBERSECURITYPOLICY INTEGRATION THROUGH
A NATIONAL REGIME LENS

Time/Date/Location: November 17th at 12:00 pm ET via Zoom

Committee members: Drs. Milton Mueller (chair), Juan Rogers, and Nadiya Kostyuk from the School of Public Policy. 
Dr. Marget Kosal from the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs and Dr. James Lewis from the Center for Strategic and International Studies. 

Abstract

This research uses the Policy Regime Framework to analyze which of two policy problems, US-China rivalry or IT/OT convergence, better explain degrees of coherence and integration in the US cybersecurity regime. It explains how regime actors address and negotiate these problems across the ICT and energy sectors. A process-tracing methodology was used to track outcomes and explanatory factors, linking causal mechanisms through an analysis of the Congressional record and in-depth stakeholder interviews. The results indicate how the idea of Chinese ICTs as a Trojan horse for the Chinese Community Party’s strategy was more effective than IT/OT convergence at mobilizing interests and advancing coherent cybersecurity policy. Trade and ICT policies were successfully integrated to achieve cybersecurity goals as regime interests bargained to 'weaponize' critical trade interdependencies through the US competitive advantage in the semiconductor industry. This research lends further validity to the Policy Regime Framework in researching cross-sector-spanning policy problems in the ICT space especially given recent calls for whole-of-government approaches to address emerging strategic technologies.