Breaking Geo-Truths: Leadership, Paradigm Shifts, and the Cyber Status Quo

From Churchill to Netanyahu — why breaking the status quo is the only path to defeating cybercrime and building a bipartisan doctrine for resilience

Every so often, history forces leaders to make choices that shatter the status quo. Choices that reject “containment” and instead embrace decisive paradigm shifts. Whether in war, politics, or economics, these inflection points become lessons for every CISO, policymaker, and business leader facing the pandemic of cybercrime today.

This scene from The West Wing is one I’ve been reflecting on as I write this (watch here).

Today’s example comes from Israel’s airstrike in Doha, Qatar, eliminating senior Hamas leadership hiding under diplomatic cover. But to truly understand why this matters for cyber strategy, we need to look at leadership across history — where breaking the cycle of “managing” threats became the only path to survival.

Case Study: Netanyahu and the Post–October 7th Paradigm

Since October 7th, 2023, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made it clear: terrorism would no longer be managed, contained, or tolerated. Israel’s response — from the targeted strike on Hamas’ cyber unit in 2021, to the pager operations, the elimination of Nasrallah, strikes in Iran and Yemen, and now the Doha operation — redefined the conversation globally.

For decades, Western democracies absorbed terror as an inevitability: negotiate, trade for hostages, strike back selectively, pay when convenient, and otherwise hope for deterrence. Before October 7th, Netanyahu himself was guilty of this calculus. But Israel broke that cycle, insisting instead on dismantling terror infrastructure wherever it exists — even under immense international pressure.

This isn’t a political argument. It’s a leadership doctrine: the cost of tolerating the status quo eventually outweighs the cost of breaking it. The same is true for cyber.