Project Solarium 1953 and the Cyberspace Solarium Commission 2019
The word ‘Solarium’ means different things to different people. To some, it evokes an era of global uncertainty with competing nuclear powers. To others, it brings to mind a threat so compelling that a US President formed a special project to reshape US policy rapidly. The word Solarium again inspires hope, optimism, and expectation that cybersecurity—one of the most critical challenges of the twenty-first century—can be addressed as successfully as challenges from the past. Will combining the name Solarium with the twenty-first-century threat’s gravity deliver similar results as it did in 1953? What exactly did Project Solarium 1953 provide? In what way is the global nuclear threat and spread of communism in 1953 comparable to the global cyber threat of the twenty-first century, and is there a risk that the comparison might either over-simplify a complex problem or, worse still, provoke an inappropriately exaggerated and perhaps even apocalyptic approach to cyberspace security? Are there other aspects of the 1953 Project Solarium that offer more useful insights into the human elements of policymaking? Does the naming of the 2019 Cybersecurity Commission as the Cybersecurity Solarium Commission provide little more than smart branding?