White House cybersecurity chief: 'You don't have to be a coder in order to really do well in this position'

White House cybersecurity chief: &#039;You don&#039;t have to be a coder in order to really do well in this position&#039;

(Image credit: iStock)

last updated 8 January 2015

In an interview with GovInfoSec on Thursday, White House cybersecurity coordinator Michael Daniel said that his lack of technical knowledge is an advantage in his position. He has minimal professional background in computer security, and feels that, "You don't have to be a coder in order to really do well in this position. In fact, actually, I think being too down in the weeds at the technical level could actually be a little bit of a distraction."

Dr. Edward Felton, a professor of computer science at Princeton, took to Twitter to critique Daniel’s boast:

This criticism has been echoed elsewhere, with Daniel Cooper at Engadget remarking, "Maybe we'll start working on our application to become the next surgeon general, after all, we have seen at least four episodes of ER."

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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.