The Prime Minister has asked me to reply. We are preparing for a review of the National Security Strategy in In the light of this, and without agreeing with every word, it was timely and valuable to have this input from your students on the current text. We believe that this is the area of the NSS with the most expansive potential.

Malicious activity in cyberspace is a transnational issue and, indeed, we contend that it should also be considered a human security issue. We therefore agree that cyber threats do qualify for Tier 1 status. As it currently exists, however, the cyber section of the NSS also demonstrates significant misunderstanding of the issue. We believe that a clearer definition of what constitutes a cyber threat is needed; currently there is not enough technical articulation of the threat with which to educate the British public.

Cyberspace is an arena of both state-perpetrated attacks and of widespread criminal activity. While GCHQ focuses primarily on the former, it is in fact the latter which has the greatest effect on British nationals and companies.

We must also remember that cyber attacks are perpetrated by real world actors; where legislation can impact the problem we must ensure that such provisions are in place, both internationally and domestically. The objective should be for the British population to become the most secure, educated, and aware users of cyberspace in the world, which would in turn enhance online business security. Education forms part of our proactive defence, as does the recruiting of the most skilled British individuals to work toward solutions.

We unanimously agree that terrorism represents a Tier 1 threat. We believe, however, that it overly dominates our foreign security policy. While our relationships with international partners are important, the NSS is, in the end, a national security document. Terrorism should thus hold priority only to the extent that it poses a threat to Britain and its interests. Foreign policy should react to terrorism, not be dictated by it. To present an effective strategy, the NSS should reflect the ways in which our international political and military actions can not only catalyse, but also precipitate, domestic tensions.

It should thus put more focus on non-militaristic, soft-power approaches and encourage more holistic policies. Prior to military solutions, we must use all of our available assets such as NGOs, foreign aid bodies, and avenues of economic integration to address the underlying causes of terrorism. The almost exclusive focus on Al-Qaeda, while politically expedient, contributes to a public misunderstanding of the nature of this complex threat.

Rhetoric such as that within the PREVENT strategy has the unintended effect of marking huge societal groups as outsiders and actively contributes to factionalism within our society.

The terminology used to describe terrorist actions must be consistently applied, whatever the identities or affiliations of the perpetrators. Using the lessons learned from Northern Ireland, we should differentiate between terrorist actors and the populations that they claim to represent in order to diminish the societal divides exemplified and exploited by the terrorist groups.

The NSS should differentiate between true independent actors, whose motives lie in the psychology of the individual, and members of connected groups. We bestow upon terror groups undue power when we label lone criminals with the same moniker as internationally linked domestic terrorists. We should tackle such incidents for what they are — acts of criminality. This was the most divisive issue in our inquiry because we believe there is a tension in the ambiguous wording of the NSS document.

Many of us see the existing ambiguity as a potential problem, while others also view it as potentially advantageous in the event of an unforeseen crisis. For our NSS to more accurately reflect the nature of our options, we recommend that direct threats to the nation be differentiated from crises that pose threats to our national values. Thus, we propose the current Tier 1 threat should be split into two different threats, one to be kept in Tier 1 and one to be moved to Tier 2.

Conflicts in which Britain would be de jure implicated from their outset: Conflicts in which our involvement would be a matter of real choice, however difficult that choice might be: These decisions should be directed both by a commitment to the values in which our country believes and a realistic assessment of their potential economic and international impact and, indeed, of our available military resources.

Our proposed change to the tier system would, we hope, reflect the real limits on the finite nature of our economic and military resources, the allocation of which is a fundamental purpose of the NSS. We believe that the NSS is based upon an underlying assumption — that Britain should exercise an influential global role. This assumption appears to be entrenched in the attitude and policy making of the British Government. While we do not dispute the notion of Britain playing a global role at this time, it is our contention that Britain must not take decisions based on an assumption that such a global role is there by default.

Instead, the British Government should take active, open, and public measures to regularly define exactly what our role in the world should be.

Having spent two months interning at the Strategy and Security Institute SSI of the University of Exeter UoEsaying that I have learnt a lot would be an immense understatement. During my time there, I had the unique opportunity to work alongside Dr Danny Steed, Lecturer in Strategy and Defence, who, having recently arrived to Exeter himself was more than enthusiastic to have me on board and give me the opportunity to get a lot more involved than I originally expected.

Upon arrival to SSI for my first day as an Intern, I was more than intimidated knowing that the Institute I was about to involve myself with was home to people having experience in unique fields, with CVs that would intimidate even the most well-read PhD and with a profound military presence throughout the Institute.

So as a second year student with no real work experience in politics as such, I was determined not to be overwhelmed. To my great surprise the atmosphere in the Institute was relaxed and welcoming, but having talked to Dr Steed before my arrival, I knew that beyond my initial impressions, my time there would involve a lot of challenging work, thinking outside the box, and hair pulling dilemmas.

And so, I was introduced to the ideas behind the simulations I would be helping Dr Steed in bringing to life and with the help of a big map we started brainstorming and plotting. I was trusted enough to be given the opportunity to get heavily involved in planning one such simulation based in Libya.

The students participating were split into three teams and spread across three different locations throughout the University immersing the participants in the way conferences are held during real life crises and for the first time since starting my degree, I was able to apply what I had spent so much time learning in a classroom to a life-like situation. A situation which, were it to actually occur would be a tough challenge even for senior politicians and civil servants.

Despite the simulation only lasting an afternoon, the preparation of it took much longer. What started as a dot on a map became an identification of a reoccurring crisis, which then became the involvement of third parties and finally, the creation of documents, podcasts and media packages to support the simulation before it was presented to the students.

Planning the simulation not only challenged the knowledge I had already learnt in my studies but was also very fulfilling in watching our ideas match the development of events on the news, and the stress on the students faces as they argued over the best solution.

Having carried out three simulations already this year, and having hosted a multitude of high ranking officials to talk to the students, SSI has already made a prominent name for itself among the student body at Exeter.

But what an average student does not hear about however, are the perks of the job. I had the unique and incredibly eye opening opportunity of attending closed seminars with people including Jon Day, the Chairman of the JIC; a working lunch with former Secretary of State for Defence Bob Ainsworth; and an academic trip to the Royal Marines Commando Training Centre Lympstone.

This as well as the treat of meeting individuals such as Dr Stephanie Blair, Andrew Rathmell, Major General Jerry Thomas, Professor Mike Clarke and Robert Fox. Firstly, the Director of SSI, General Sir Paul Newton, is medical billing and coding jobs from home in florida man whose reputation and experience precedes him.

Katherine Felstead and Roo Haywood-Smith are the women who comprise the administrative driving force behind the immaculate executions of SSI appointments.

Along with recently joined Dr Catarina Thomson and Dr Sergio Catignani, the four of them will be leading modules on the Masters course come September.

The students were tasked with exploring what the UK currently deems a Tier 1 threat, and discussing whether, with the pending re-assessment of the document, the classification of some of the current Tier 1 threats should be altered. On a more personal note, my involvement in Grand Challenges was more on the administrative side, making sure the programme ran on time and aiding the Institute in any way I could, however, upon being invited to participate in certain activities throughout the two weeks, I can honestly say that even though I am not a first year student, I was impressed with the level of the discussion on behalf of the students, along with the quality of the talks and level of input the guest speakers provided.

Overall, I feel privileged in saying that I have had a wonderful experience working in SSI and as Dr Steed would rightly say, it is a department that makes the impossible, possible. There was never of moment of lull within the office, and the small pieces of knowledge and tricks I have picked up along the way are both priceless and incomparable.

So, I would like to say a big thank you to everyone in SSI for welcoming me and giving me such a fantastic opportunity. I shall definitely be attending all further programmes and simulations the Institute organises; a great experience for those of you who have not yet had the opportunity to attend one. Following our exams in June, Exeter University ran a project called Grand Challenges. After two weeks of lounging about on Exmouth beach, I felt that it was time to do something a little more productive so I signed up to be part of the project.

The inquiry group I took part in looked into Re-setting the UK National Security Strategy, focusing primarily on issues classified as Tier One threats: In this post, I hope to provide an insight into the work we did during Grand Challenges by discussing some of the activities we undertook and the outputs we produced.

The canton tx trade days vendor info activity we took part in focused on interstate conflict and, being ever-present in the news, we were asked to look at Syria through an activity daily forex rate citibank Red Teaming.

At the start of the session I thought that I knew my feelings towards Syria, however Sir Paul wanted us to do a deeper analysis of the situation and introduced us to a SWOT analysis Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats. Through the SWOT analysis, we began to look at make money poker affiliate programs without a website situation in a completely different way and it became clear to me that my previous views on Syria were far too simplistic for such a complex scenario.

We were split into groups and together formulated a plan of action which we then presented back to the other groups. Luckily my group were broadly in agreement over how we should prioritise the issues that we had identified during the SWOT analysis, and we quickly decided that intervention was simply not an option. Even humanitarian intervention carried far greater risk than reward. As this was a Red Team activity, each presentation was followed by a harsh critique from other groups, and surprisingly each team had decided on a different plan on action.

This really demonstrated to me that there was no right answer and that if you put an idea forward, you really had to be willing to defend it tooth and nail among both peers and experts. This was an interesting task because, unlike the Red Team activity, we were forced to agree on how the next NSS to be published in should be improved.

By solely focusing on Islamic terrorism, we felt that the NSS ran the risk of exacerbating the isolation often felt by vulnerable societal groups, which can actually contribute rather than prevent home-grown terrorism and radicalisation. When we moved on to interstate conflict, however, the task became significantly harder. Whilst we all recognised that the wording of the NSS was vague, there was a fifty-fifty split in our group as to whether this was good or bad.

Our solution to the group divide was simply to sit in a exeter university it strategy for forty minutes and thrash out our dispute and, after a heated debate, we concluded that clarification was necessary for the sake of any future NSS. We proposed that the threat should be salary of stock traders in two, with one to remain in Tier One and the other to be lowered to Tier Two status.

Remaining in Tier One should be situations in which the UK is de jure implicated from number 1 best way to make money in runescape f2p start, and demoted to Tier Two would be situations where Britain is not obliged to intervene, regardless of the amount of pressure being put on us.

I really enjoyed being able to argue my views with fellow students and felt that it was incredibly refreshing to be able to decide amongst ourselves which direction we should be taking in our letter. Finally we discussed the approach taken in the NSS to cyber warfare.

Once again we were all in agreement that the document, and subsequent actions based on this document, showed a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of cyber security. Currently over sixty per cent of the cyber budget is sent to GCHQ and we felt that this completely overlooks the personal level of cyber security.

We decided that investment in education should be the key message of the NSS; computer programming should be taught in every school just as other languages are, and we should be aiming to make British citizens the most secure users of cyberspace, whilst producing world-class programmers to protect our national interest. The letter to the Prime Minister was one of the most exciting outputs we created because it has the potential to generate tangible impact.

We have now received confirmation that our letter to the Prime Minister has been received, read, and will be passed onto the team who will create the NSS.

I am very much looking forward to its publication as it will be interesting to see whether our critique has actually been listened to and acted stock market unitech. In addition to the letter to the Prime Minister, we created a series of podcasts on the topics previously discussed.

I was interviewed by one of the lecturers working with us, Dr Danny Steed, about my opinions on cyber warfare and why I thought it was so important to national security. It was a great experience to be able to openly discuss cyber security, a topic I find very interesting, and these podcasts should be available on the SSI website shortly.

Our strategy - University of Exeter

The final outputs stock market dhaka bangladesh produced were two presentations: A team member and I created and presented the second presentation, summarising our task and findings.

Personally I found trade in binary options on japanese candlesticks task very enjoyable and interesting and I hope that the people watching felt equally as interested. Grand Challenges proved to be an incredibly interesting and informative two weeks and I can honestly say that the experience has sparked new interests and made me rethink future career paths.

I would like to thank everyone involved in Grand Challenges and, in particular, those who helped create and run the programme. This was quickly followed by an intimate, closed seminar with the current head of the Joint Target stock price marketwatch Committee JICMr.

The SSI had thrown two huge actors in the world of strategy and security at us, and promised more of the same to come during the GC programme. This, I deemed, was worth getting out of bed for on June 3 rd. At the core of our inquiry group was an investigation into a document imaginatively entitled the UK National Security Strategy NSS.

Strategy and Security Institute | Strategy & Security Institute

In order to allow us to do this, the SSI facilitated a huge range of external speakers — all more than living up to the exceptionally high standard that had been set previously by Sir John Scarlett and Jon Day. The idea was to expose us students to a broad selection of experts in the field of strategy and security policy, in order to allow us to see how strategy was applied in the real-world, away from academic debate and examination, which, in turn, would aid us in our quest to assess the utility of the NSS.

I must confess, however, that in some sessions I simply forgot the purpose of the inquiry group, as I became caught up by some fascinating talks. A particular highlight for me from the GC speaker set was a visit by the former Director of the National Security Secretariat at the Cabinet Office, Mr. Nye also currently holds the position of Principle Private Secretary to HRH The Prince of Wales, so commands much respect.

This session in particular stands out for me, because after giving a short talk on the NSS which he was responsible for commissioningMr.

Nye sat down in amongst the students, and took questions. Somewhat controversially, given his position as a lifelong expert in the field of UK National Security, I found myself disagreeing with some of what Mr.

Not so on this occasion. Nye gave me the chance to thrash out my own argument — contrary to his. He responded and asked for my opinion in return, he corrected me when some of my points were incorrect, and he gave me the chance to debate back.

Deliberating real UK National Security Policy, with a real National Security expert, gave me an insight that no lecture or conventional seminar could ever have provided.

By placing students into small, closed sessions with practitioners who were willing to engage in debate and discussion, the SSI and GC programme went beyond the realms of traditional university learning, and in turn, allowed us to hone and perfect our own views and arguments. And it is this aspect, fundamentally, that gave the inaugural Grand Challenges that added extra; that engaged students, that kept us coming back day after day for the two week programme, and which, if continued, will allow GC to grow and expand in future years.

The Strategy and Security Institute realized and embraced this, and went above and beyond in providing activities and speakers far-removed from traditional academia. It was this combination of expertise, stimulating debate, and engaging activity that gave the SSI the edge in facilitating this programme.

In an era of austerity there are hard choices to be made: In such times — and given the fact that institutional memory is short — it is easy to lose sight of where our experience provides a clear lesson.

Properly focused development assistance — when combined with appropriate security — can lay a firm foundation for stability in fragile states. Grand Challenges is an eleven-day programme designed to provide junior undergraduate students from a diverse disciplinary background with a broader learning experience than that which they typically receive during the course of the academic year. When Sir Paul Newton and myself were asked to deliver one of the inquiry groups as part of the Human Security versus Power Politics dilemma, we hungrily took the chance.

Sir Paul and I agreed that Grand Challenges presented not only an exciting opportunity to Exeter students, but also an opportunity for us to showcase our philosophy of teaching that we intend to take into our taught courses launching here at Exeter in October Here in SSI we seek to enthuse a highly interactive, collaborative learning environment that never leaves our students as passive and inactive in a classroom. We seek instead to foster an atmosphere of peer engagement, as well as exposure to our large network of highly experienced practitioners so that students will constantly benefit not only from academic expertise, but also face-to-face access with practitioners.

During our Grand Challenges inquiry our students will receive no less than seven external speakers across eleven days, ranging from the Department of International Development, the Royal Marines, active defence correspondents, the Director of the Royal United Services Institute, a former Secretary of State for Defence, and the former Director of the National Security Secretariat in the Cabinet Office.

Or as we here in SSI say, Applied Strategy. Throughout the inquiry students from a range of disciplinary backgrounds will be exposed to the thinking behind the UK National Security Strategy, as well as conduct a broad range of activities designed to engage group interaction and critical thinking. All of this is intended to assess the suitability of the current National Security Strategy of the UK with these questions guiding them throughout: Or does it need to be reset in ?

A Red Team session will be conducted by all on a current crisis of global significance to identify possible scenarios, as well as participating in joint activities with other inquiry groups. These will include looking at the role of the media in contemporary warfare, and a joint debate with the Nuclear Wars inquiry group into the question of whether or not the UK should renew the Trident nuclear deterrent.

Our students will not only reach a point where they can confidently answer the questions motivating our inquiry, they will also produce a series of outputs that we in SSI intend to make available for public access.

By the end of the inquiry, students taking part in our activities will have received a wealth of expertise, both academically and from practitioners, on the subject of British National Security Strategy.

Further to this though, these students will have experienced a different way of teaching, one that encourages maximum exposure to practitioners, fosters an atmosphere of peer engagement and critical analysis in the classroom, and generates tangible outputs. These students will develop the skills and the confidence to makes reasoned arguments and develop ways of communicating their thoughts to an audience beyond the University of Exeter. The Strategy Blog The official blog of the University of Exeter's Strategy and Security Institute Search Main menu Skip to primary content.

Home About the Strategy Blog. University of Exeter Post navigation. Posted on July 19, by Danny Steed. With my best wishes. Cyber attacks We believe that this is the area of the NSS with the most expansive potential. Terrorism We unanimously agree that terrorism represents a Tier 1 threat.

Interstate military crisis This was the most divisive issue in our inquiry because we believe there is a tension in the ambiguous wording of the NSS document. Yours faithfully, Thomas Charlton Stephane Chui Alastair Cole Conrad Deverell Ryan Hopkins Matthew Morley Kiah Shabka Thomas Owen Charles Tolley Nick White.

Posted on July 3, by Danny Steed. Posted on June 23, by Roo Haywood Smith. Posted on May 26, by Danny Steed. The European Security and Defence Union Vol. How Should the State Manage the Contemporary Expectation of Non-Combatant Evacuation Operations? Blogroll Documentation Feedback How Should the State Manage the Contemporary Expectation of Non-Combatant Evacuation Operations?

Plugins Support Forums Themes WordPress Blog WordPress Planet Categories Activity Afghanistan Applied Strategy Balkans Briefing Paper China Conference Crisis Watch Cyber Economics Grand Challenges Intelligence Inter-state war Iran Iraq Itinerant Strategist MStrat NATO Nuclear Deterrence Papers and Publications Prime Minister SSI Update Strategic Foresight Syria Terrorism Uncategorized Tags ARRC Asia-Pacific Balkans Beijing Bosnia British Army Chatham House Conferences cyber-security Cyber Attacks Danny Steed DFID EU Gareth Stansfield Grand Challenges IAEA Iran Iraq JIC Middle East MoD MStrat National Security Strategy NATO Nuclear deal Nuclear Deterrence paul cornish Paul Newton podcast Prime Minister Research Royal College of Defence Studies RUSI Russian Federation Saudi Arabia security Sergio Catignani SSI Honorary Network strategy Strategy and Security Institute Syria terrorism the Gulf UN University of Exeter.

Proudly powered by WordPress.