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The President is . Your tech friends are . Seth Rogen and Sony joined Target, Home Depot and JP Morgan Chase on its list of victims.  But, you still only have a beginner’s sense of what cyber-security means. We are living in a digital world, and all the same bad stuff that happens in the offline world is moving online. That includes the threats we usually assign to our military or intelligence agencies. What’s it all mean? Below are some essential links to get you up to speed. But, to fully prepare, join us in person or by livestream when we host a Cybersecurity conference on Monday, February 23rd (You can RSVP .), followed by a conference on the Tuesday and Wednesday. (RSVP for that ).

To prepare for the conference, here are 7 things you should read on cybersecurity.

By Sara Sorcher, The Christian Science Monitor

The Pentagon’s advanced research wing plans to spend $125 million on Plan X, a virtual-reality system for US cyber warriors to see attacks coming over networks and more quickly fight against them.

By Matthias Schwartz, The New Yorker

The N.S.A. claims it needs access to all our phone records. But is that the best way to catch a terrorist?

By Tim Maurer, Foreign Policy

The development of more and more advanced cyber capabilities is expanding the way in which states carry out conflicts.

By Rob Morgus, Real Clear World

As the number of cyber attacks increase, how are we able to define what is an act of cyber war, and what is not.

By Anne Marie Slaughter and Shane Harris, The Weekly Wonk

How do we win a war that can’t be seen? Anne-Marie Slaughter goes behind the cyber curtain and investigates the insides of the NSA in this podcast with Shane Harris.

By Peter W. Singer and Emanuel Pastreich, The Brookings Institution

Peter Singer discusses the dynamics of cyberspace and how governments should best conceptualize cyber threats, and suggests that cybersecurity’s greatest challenges are in threat identification and attribution.

By Tim Maurer, TIME

Let’s start a conversation about whether and how a global cyber federation could make cyberspace a more resilient and humanitarian human creation.