Ben Carson's Cybersecurity Plan Is Terrible. But At Least He Has One.

It’s old news by now that Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson—despite his medical degree—has a tenuous relationship with science. So I didn’t exactly have great expectations for his campaign’s cybersecurity plan, modestly titled “Prescription for Winning the 21st Century Cyberspace Race.” To be honest, I wasn’t expecting a dedicated cybersecurity plan at all, much less an op-ed dedicated to the topic by Carson in Re/code this week.

The op-ed makes several not-very-interesting, not-very-original points: that our society is very dependent on computers, that a hypothetical large-scale attack on the power grid would be devastating, that cybersecurity breaches can have very high costs. (And also that no one has any idea what those costs really are—Carson cites the cost of identity theft as being “anywhere from $25 billion to $50 billion annually.” There are also, of course, identity theft cost estimates out there in the $5 billion and $10 billion range. Take your pick.)