The market for artificial intelligence is growing at an unprecedented speed, not seen since the introduction of the commercial…
The COVID pandemic is a challenge that will eventually create health risks to Americans and have long-lasting effects. For many, this is a tragedy, a threat to life, health, and finances. What draws our attention is what COVID-19 has meant our society, the economy, and how in an unprecedented way, family, corporations, schools, and government agencies quickly had to adjust to a new reality. Why does this matter from a cyber perspective?
COVID-19 has created increased stress on our logistic, digital, public, and financial systems and this could in fact resemble what a major cyber conflict would mean to the general public. It is also essential to assess what matters to the public during this time. COVID-19 has created a widespread disruption of work, transportation, logistics, distribution of food and necessities to the public, and increased stress on infrastructures, from Internet connectivity to just-in-time delivery. It has unleashed abnormal behaviors.
A potential adversary will likely not have the ability to take down an entire sector of our critical infrastructure, or business eco-system, for several reasons. First, awareness and investments in cybersecurity have drastically increased the last two decades. This in turn reduced the number of single points of failure and increased the number of built-in redundancies as well as the ability to maintain operations in a degraded environment.
The Iranian military apparatus is a mix of traditional military defense, crowd control, political suppression, and show of force for generating artificial internal authority in the country. If command and control evaporate in the military apparatus, it also removes the ability to control the population to the degree the Iranian regime have been able until now to do. In that light, what is in it for Iran to launch a massive cyber engagement against the free world? What can they win?
The adversary in the future fight will have a more technologically advanced ability to sense activity on the battlefield – light, sound, movement, vibration, heat, electromagnetic transmissions, and other quantifiable metrics. This is a fundamental and accepted assumption. The future near-peer adversary will be able to sense our activity in an unprecedented way due to modern technologies. It is not only driven by technology but also by commoditization; sensors that cost thousands of dollars during the Cold War are available at a marginal cost today. In addition, software defined radio technology has larger bandwidth than traditional radios and can scan the entire spectrum several times a second, making it easier to detect new signals.
We tend to see vulnerabilities and concerns about cyber threats to critical infrastructure from our own viewpoint. But an adversary will assess where and how a cyberattack on America will benefit the adversary’s strategy. I am not convinced attacks on critical infrastructure, in general, have the payoff that an adversary seeks.
The American reaction to Sept. 11 and any attack on U.S. soil gives a hint to an adversary that attacking critical infrastructure to create hardship for the population might work contrary to the intended softening of the will to resist foreign influence. It is more likely that attacks that affect the general population instead strengthen the will to resist and fight, similar to the British reaction to the German bombing campaign “Blitzen” in 1940. We can’t rule out attacks that affect the general population, but there are not enough offensive capabilities to attack all 16 sectors of critical infrastructure and gain a strategic momentum.
An adversary has limited cyberattack capabilities and needs to prioritize cyber targets that are aligned with the overall strategy. Trying to see what options, opportunities, and directions an adversary might take requires we change our point of view to the adversary’s outlook. One of my primary concerns is pinpointed cyber-attacks disrupting and delaying the movement of U.S. forces to theater.
As an industrial nation transitioning to an information society with digital conflict, we tend to see the technology as the…
For cybersecurity, it is pivotal for the next decade to be able to operate with a decreasing time window to act.
The accelerated execution of cyber attacks and an increased ability to at machine-speed identify vulnerabilities for exploitation compress the time window cybersecurity management has to address the unfolding events. In reality, we assume there will be time to lead, assess, analyze, but that window might be closing. It is time to raise the issue of accelerated cyber engagements.
There is no alternative way to ensure victory in the future fight than to innovate, implement the advances, and scale…
The Founding Fathers have done more for U.S. strategic cyber resiliency than other modern initiatives. Their contribution is a stable…
In my view, one of the major weaknesses in cyber defense planning is the perception that there is time to…
The demands for legalizing corporate hack backs are growing – and there is significant interest by private actors to utilize…
THE ZERO DOMAIN In the upcoming Fall 2018 issue of the Cyber Defense Review, I present a concept – the…
( I wrote this opinion piece together with Lt. Col. Stephen Hamilton and Capt. Kyle Hager) The U.S. Army’s ability to…
The change from a focus on counter-insurgency to near-peer and peer-conflicts has also introduced the likelihood, if there is a…
In the cyber debate, there is a significant, if not totally over-shadowing, focus on the information systems themselves – the…