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Strategic Cyberwar Theory - A Foundation For Designing Decisive Strategic Cyber Operations, Jan Kallberg

Jan Kallberg

Cyber Resilience Is A National Problem, Jan Kallberg

Jan Kallberg

The biggest challenge for American cyber resilience right now is to disseminate knowledge within the nation. The federal sector, the financial institutions, and the defense complex are on top of the game to a high degree. The asymmetric way cyber conflicts are and will be fought exposes the whole government structure of a country. The sheer numbers entities that form local government are staggering – just as examples I mention that in the US there are 6,000 counties, 15,000 police departments, and 50,000 public utilities. My take is that to be able to strengthen American cyber resiliency local government needs …

Why The Cyber Bill Matters, Jan Kallberg

Jan Kallberg

The separation between private sphere and the federal government matters more than we might think. The bill will create a funnel for industries, enterprises, local government, and state agencies to share information with the federal government. The bill separates the federal government and these other entities – by a traditional but validated approach – by the surrender to federal government for protection by bargaining away the “right” to self-protection. It is important because the federal government will maintain its legitimacy and authority over defending the nation – and by doing so we avoid a chaotic cyber environment where everyone is …

Failed Cyberdefense - The Environmental Consequences Of Hostile Acts, Jan Kallberg, Rosemary A. Burk

Jan Kallberg

A failed cyberdefense can have wider effects than discussed in earlier debates of potential consequences of a cyberattack. The need for cyberdefense to protect the environment has not drawn the attention it deserves as a national security matter. Adversarial nations are covertly pursuing methods to damage and disrupt the United States in a cyberconflict in the future. The president of the United States noted this in Sustaining U.S. Global Leadership: Priorities for 21st Century Defense: Both state and non-state actors possess the capability and intent to conduct cyberespionage and, potentially, cyberattacks on the United States, with possible severe effects on …

Cyber Beyond Computers - The Environmental Aspect, Jan Kallberg

Jan Kallberg

A forgotten aspect on cyber and cyber conflicts impact on our society is the fact that tampering with our control systems can lead to industrial processes running amok - and lead to environmental damages. Threats to our environment is taken very serious by the population and pollution and contamination of our living space trigger drastic reactions.

Sojuznik Snowden: A Solid Russian Investment, Jan Kallberg

Jan Kallberg

The Edward Snowden case catapulted us back to the heights of the Cold War for one single reason: His story is too manicured and well-placed to be true. As the old saying goes: If it sounds too good to be true, it probably isn’t. With the Snowden affair, many of the Russian political objectives are reached. It has has created a wedge that split the United States and Europe. Even if Vladimir Putin wears a fancy Italian suit, he is still a KGB-man, slightly better looking than the official grey suits in the heyday of the Soviet Eastern Bloc. The …

Societal Cyberwar Theory Applied The Disruptive Power Of State Actor Aggression For Public Sector Information Security, Jan Kallberg, Bhavani Thuraisingham, Erik Lakomaa

Jan Kallberg

Abstract – The modern welfare state faces significant challenges to be able to sustain a systematic cyber conflict that pursues the institutional destabilization of the targeted state.

Cyber defense in these advanced democracies are limited, unstructured, and focused on anecdotal cyber interchanges of marginal geopolitical value.

The factual reach of government activities once a conflict is initiated is likely to be miniscule. Therefore the information security activities, and assessments leading to cyberdefense efforts, have to be strategically pre-event coordinated within the state. This coordination should be following a framework that ensures institutional stability, public trust, and limit challenges to the …

Private Cyber Retaliation Undermines Federal Authority, Jan Kallberg

Jan Kallberg

The demarcation in cyber between the government and the private spheres is important to uphold because it influences how we see the state and the framework in which states interact. One reason we have a nation state is, in a uniform and structured way, under the guidance of a representative democracy, to deal with foreign hostility and malicious activity.

The state is given a monopoly on violence by its citizenry. The state then acts under the existing laws on behalf of the citizens to ensure the intentions of the population it represents. These powers grant the federal government an authority …

From Cyber Terrorism To State Actors’ Covert Cyber Operations, Jan Kallberg, Bhavani Thuraisingham

Jan Kallberg

Historically, since the Internet started to become a common feature in our lives, hackers have been seen as a major threat. This view has repeatedly been entrenched and distributed by media coverage and commentaries through the years. Instead the first twenty year of the Internet was acceptably secure, due to the limited abilities of the attackers, compared to the threat generated from a militarized Internet with state actors conducting cyber operations. In reality, the Internet have a reversed trajectory for its security where it has become more unsafe over time and moved from a threat to the individual to a …

Nuclear Deterrence In A Second Obama Term, Adam Lowther, Jan Kallberg

Jan Kallberg

In the months prior to the 2012 presidential election in the United States, members of the Obama administration and sympathetic organizations inside the Beltway began floating the idea that the administration would pursue – after an Obama victory – further reductions in the US nuclear arsenal. With the ink still wet on the New ST ART Treaty, efforts to reduce the American arsenal to 1000 operationally deployed strategic nuclear weapons or, as some suggest, 500, is certainly premature. These efforts illustrate a poor understanding of nuclear deterrence theory and practice and the ramifications of a United States that lacks a …

Offensive Cyber: Superiority Or Stuck In Legal Hurdles?, Jan Kallberg

Jan Kallberg

In recent years, offensive cyber operations have attracted significant interest from the non-Defense Department academic legal community, prompting numerous articles seeking to create a legal theory for cyber conflicts. Naturally, cyber operations should be used in an ethical way, but the hurdles generated by the legal community are staggering. At a time when the United States has already lost an estimated $4 trillion in intellectual property as a result of foreign cyber espionage, not to mention the loss of military advantage, focusing on what the United States cannot do in cyberspace only hinders efforts to defend the country from future …

Europe In A ‘Nato Light’ World - Building Affordable And Credible Defense For The Eu, Jan Kallberg, Adam Lowther

Jan Kallberg

From an outsider’s perspective, the Common Security and Defense Policy and the efforts of the European Defense Agency are insufficient to provide Europe with the defense it will require in coming decades. While the European Union—particularly the members of the European Monetary Union—struggle to solve prolonged fiscal challenges, viable European security alternatives to an American-dominated security architecture are conspicuously absent from the documents and discussions that are coming from the European Council and at a time when the United States is engaged in an Asia-Pacific pivot. This is not to say that no thought has been given to defense issues. …

Cyber Operations Bridging From Concept To Cyber Superiority, Jan Kallberg, Bhavani Thuraisingham

Jan Kallberg

The United States is preparing for cyber conflicts and ushering in a new era for national security. The concept of cyber operations is rapidly developing, and the time has come to transpose the conceptual heights to a broad ability to fight a strategic cyber conflict and defend the Nation in a cohesive way. Richard M. George, a former National Security Agency official, commented on recent developments: “Other countries are preparing for a cyberwar. If we’re not pushing the envelope in cyber, somebody else will.”1 Therefore, increased budgets are allocated to cyber operations research and education. The Defense Advanced Research Projects …

Diseñando Colisiones De Satélites En La Guerra Cibernética Encubierta, Jan Kallberg

Jan Kallberg

La guerra concentrada en la red depende de la red de información global para capacidades de combate conjuntas.3 La capa fundamental crea la capacidad de combate global como la columna vertebral espacial de la red de información donde los haberes espaciales son el elemento decisivo. EE.UU. depende de las capacidades espaciales para su éxito y la seguridad nacional de EE.UU. se basa hoy en día en un número limitado de satélites muy utilizados. Estos satélites son cruciales para la disuasión estratégica, la vigilancia, la recopilación de inteligencia y las comunicaciones militares. Si la disuasión estratégica falla, los satélites forman parte …

The Return Of Dr. Strangelove: How Austerity Makes Us Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb…And Cyber War, Jan Kallberg, Adam Lowther

Jan Kallberg

With sequestration looming—generating significant cuts to defense spending—the United States may find itself increasingly relying on nuclear and cyber deterrence as an affordable way to guarantee national sovereignty and prevent major conflict. While earlier defense planning and acquisitions were based on economic conditions that no longer exist, Congress’ options to balance the budget by cutting defense spending are politically palatable because far fewer American are “defense voters” than “social welfare voters,” according to a number of recent public opinion surveys.

Analysis - Toward A New American Military., Adam Lowther, Jan Kallberg

Jan Kallberg

In releasing the United States Department of Defense’s (DoD) Sustaining U.S. Global Leadership: Priorities for 21st Century Defense and Defense Budget Priorities and Choices in January 2012, President Barack Obama and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta offered a rationale for the administration’s reductions in defense spending. By stating that the shift in strategic direction is an effort to “put our fiscal house in order” and a response to the 2011 Budget Control Act, which requires DoD to reduce spending by $487 billion between fiscal years 2012 and 2021, the United States’ NATO partners in Europe were given considerable reason for …

The Return Of Dr. Strangelove, Jan Kallberg, Adam Lowther

Jan Kallberg

With the prospect of sequestration looming, the United States may find itself increasingly rely ing on nuclear and cy ber deterrence as an affordable means of guaranteeing national sovereignty and preventing major conflict between the U.S. and potential adversaries in the Asia-Pacific. While earlier defense planning and acquisition were based on economic conditions that no longer ex ist, Congress’s options to balance the budget by cutting defense spending are politically palatable because far fewer American are “defense v oters” relative to “social welfare voters,” according to a number of recent public opinion surveys. The simple fact is China’s rise has …

Common Criteria Meets Realpolitik Trust, Alliances, And Potential Betrayal, Jan Kallberg

Jan Kallberg

Common Criteria for Information Technology Security Evaluation has the ambition to be a global standard for IT-security certification. The issued certifications are mutually recognized between the signatories of the Common Criteria Recognition Arrangement. The key element in any form of mutual relationships is trust. A question raised in this paper is how far trust can be maintained in Common Criteria when additional signatories enter with conflicting geopolitical interests to earlier signatories. Other issues raised are control over production, the lack of permanent organization in the Common Criteria, which leads to concerns of being able to oversee the actual compliance. As …

Towards Cyber Operations The New Role Of Academic Cyber Security Research And Education, Jan Kallberg, Bhavani Thuraisingham

Jan Kallberg

Abstract – The shift towards cyber operations represents a shift not only for the defense establishments worldwide but also cyber security research and education. Traditionally cyber security research and education has been founded on information assurance, expressed in underlying subfields such as forensics, network security, and penetration testing. Cyber security research and education is connected to the homeland security agencies and defense through funding, mutual interest in the outcome of the research, and the potential job market for graduates. The future of cyber security is both defensive information assurance measures and active defense driven information operations that jointly and coordinately …

Employees' Peers Can Fill Gap When Vetting Clearances, Jan Kallberg

Jan Kallberg

Federal Times' Jan. 8 editorial ["Time to overhaul security clearance system"] proposed changes in the security clearance system. Many of these proposed changes are straightforward: one unified government body that handles clearances, reciprocity among agencies to honor the clearance, and increased automation. I would like to add another recommendation: peer reporting during the period the security clearance is held. The process of clearing personnel would be faster if we could rely on automated vetting with limited additional manual research, and then add active peer reporting. A structured clearance process at the entrance point can be trespassed, but peers watch and …

Designer Satellite Collisions From Covert Cyber War, Jan Kallberg

Jan Kallberg

Outer space has enjoyed two decades of fairly peaceful development since the Cold War, but once again it is becoming more competitive and contested, with increased militarization. Therefore, it is important the United States maintain its space superiority to ensure it has the capabilities required by modern warfare for successful operations. Today is different from earlier periods of space development,1 because there is not a blatantly overt arms race in space,2 but instead a covert challenge to US interests in maintaining superiority, resilience, and capability. A finite number of states consider themselves geopolitical actors; however, as long as the United …

Waldo In The Light Of Austerity And Federal Debt Crisis, Part 2, Jan Kallberg

Jan Kallberg

Waldo’s predictions about the future for public administration describe five areas that would be problematic in the future: legitimacy, authority, knowledge, control, and confidence. Legitimacy includes not only that the government is legally legitimized but capable and focused on an intention to deliver the “good society.” Authority, according to Waldo, is the ability to implement policy with the acceptance of the people based on rationalism, expectations of public good, ethics, superior knowledge, and institutional contexts. Knowledge is institutional knowledge, the ability to arrange and utilize knowledge within the bureaucracy since coordination is the major challenge in knowledge management. Government has …

Waldo In The Light Of Austerity And Federal Debt Crisis, Part 1, Jan Kallberg

Jan Kallberg

Dwight Waldo wrote The Enterprise of Public Administration in 1979 looking back on a long and fruitful academic career, but also as a reflection about the future for public administration. Can a 30 year old book still be relevant? You bet. Today, the public sector is increasingly facing fiscal challenges. Federal, state, and local governments throughout the country have major budget deficits followed by austerity measures that undermine the ability to deliver the good life of the future. In this day and age rereading Dwight Waldo’s The Enterprise of Public Administration is an intellectual exercise worth pursuing. Several of Dwight …