🔴 What Vision for French Cyber?

Today, this publication runs three activities:

1. A regular newsletter with a section reserved for members of the Digital Resilience Council (Become a member)
2. A continuous news feed reserved for members. (see the end of the newsletter)
3. An offering for professionals, still being fine-tuned, with strategic talks and support to help startups and large corporations prepare for the world that is coming.

Running for the presidency of Campus Cyber

I was surprised when I got a call a few days before the deadline inviting me to run for the presidency of Campus Cyber, France's national cybersecurity hub.

I wondered about my legitimacy to do so, but above all I saw a more fundamental problem: In the service of what vision?

Although I spent a lot of time in the world of computer security between 1984 and 1996, I dove back into it 15 years ago during a conversation, over dinner with my neighbor Eugene Kaspersky, who explained to me the inside story of the Stuxnet operation, and then with the collusion between the tech world and the world of geopolitics.

With hindsight, I have seen two visions clash:

• Those who understood that the world has changed violently and that a new strategy is needed.

• Those who think the recipes of the past can still work well enough to hold on to their positions, their networks and their past glories.

So on January 10, I wrote a vision document, but I decided not to run.

Now that the battle between the two remaining finalists has begun, I have decided to revisit it.

What place for Campus Cyber in France's strategy?

That is the question the two finalists will have to ask themselves:

• Benoît Thieulin, whom I know from the Conseil national du numérique (the National Digital Council). He is not from the cyber world, but he understands the political and economic environment.

• A second candidate, Joffrey Célestin-Urbain, whom I didn't know at all but who is said to be backed by one branch of the ecosystem.

One thing is certain: Campus Cyber cannot stand in for France's cyber strategy.

In principle, it should be a public-private space that catalyzes a vision defined by the state. But for that to work, the government has to define a cyber strategy around its own state ecosystem and together with the private sector.

As it happens, this document proposes one.

What French strategy for cyber in 2025

(version 1.2)