Four key events are addressed in this briefing note. Key event one is the announcement in April and May of 2017 with the launch of two supercomputers in Canada (Graham at University of Waterloo; Cedar at Simon Fraser University) and a third (Niagara at The University of Toronto) using Compute Canada’s Resources Allocation (Compute Canada, 2018a). Key event two is the announcement that Huawei Canada is building Graham’s operating system (Feldman, 2017). Key event three entails CSIS being warned by the US Senators (Rep. Sen Marco Rubio and Dem. Sen Mark Warner) about the possibility of China and Russia spying on Canada. Key event four, the United States has reportedly banned sales of Huawei products on US military bases (Bronskill, 2018; Collins, 2018). This briefing note is particularly relevant as Compute Canada is now preparing for 2019 resource allocation; there may be a raised/elevated security risk of economic espionage intellectual property theft and abusing education access privileges which needs to be considered (SFU Innovates Staff, 2018).

On October 19th, 2018, the Canadian Association for Security and Intelligence Studies (CASIS) Vancouver hosted its ninth roundtable meeting which covered “Cybersecurity in an Information Warfare Age.” The following presentation was hosted by Dr. Steven Pearce, a lecturer in the School of Computing Sciences at Simon Fraser University and an astrophysicist by trade. Dr. Pearce has over 30 years of experience in mathematics and technology, focusing on the theory of technology and socio-technology. In his presentation, Dr. Pearce used these themes to highlight how technological advancements accelerated the destructive capabilities of humans, while simultaneously warning of conflating cyberwarfare with information warfare as it detracts from their unique underpinnings and objectives. The subsequent roundtable discussion centered around a case study where Chinese microchips that create back- door access to systems were found embedded in server motherboards that Amazon purchased. After discovery, they were allegedly shown to have been distributed to banks, companies and US defence agencies. Thereafter, audience members discussed the security implications of hardware hacks and what the Canadian government and citizens could change to safeguard against both software and hardware hacks.

Cybercrime has been a contentious issue among security actors, vis-à-vis the extent to which international cooperation may be fostered to respond to the accelerating incidence of cyber-attacks. This paper contrasts between the cyber- governance approaches adopted by two non-Western regional organizations, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and the Gulf Cooperation Council, over the past decade. Considering their similar institutional origins, Most Similar Systems Design methodology was employed to assess how ASEAN and GCC have distinctly responded to cybercrime. It considers the dynamics of the digital divide — a divide which is exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic — and in which ASEAN and the GCC are challenged to bolster their cyber-capabilities. Findings reveal that GCC increasingly diffuses norms of international cooperation to tackle cybercrime. By contrast, ASEAN embodies cyber norms which regulate behavior along the lines of intra-regional cooperation, wherein norms of international cooperation are rendered subsidiary to norms of regional autonomy.

On November 23, 2020, Dr. James Patrick Welch presented on the topic of Drone Warfare in Transnational Armed Conflict and Counterterrorism at the 2020 CASIS West Coast Security Conference. The presentation was followed by a moderated question and answer period. Key points of discussion included: the ethics surrounding drone warfare, drone proliferation, accountability, and AI technology in drone warfare.

On November 24th, 2020, Professor John Ferris presented Behind the Enigma: The Authorized History of GCHQ, Britain’s Secret Cyber-Intelligence Agency at the 2020 CASIS West Coast Security Conference. The presentation was followed by a question and answer period.