Richard Clarke
More info
- Born
- 1950
- Role
- Special Advisor to the US President for Cybersecurity (2001–2003)
- Book
- Cyber War (2010, with Robert Knake)
The American official who warned about al-Qaeda before 9/11 and about cyberwar long before the word was common currency.
Clarke served on the White House National Security Council under three presidents and was counterterrorism coordinator when the 2001 attacks came. Before the 9/11 Commission he opened by apologising to the families — "your government failed you" — something few officials had done before. He was also early to listen to hackers: when Bill Clinton gathered the industry after a wave of denial-of-service attacks in February 2000, Mudge of L0pht had a seat at the table.
As cybersecurity adviser to President Bush he wrote the National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace (2003), and Cyber War (2010) described state attacks on power grids and banks before NotPetya made it concrete. After Snowden he sat on Obama's 2013 review group, which advised the government not to weaken encryption.