Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Security-Enhanced Serial Communications, John White, Alexander Beall, Joseph Maurio, Dane Fichter, Dr. Matthew Davis, Dr. Zachary Birnbaum

Military Cyber Affairs

Industrial Control Systems (ICS) are widely used by critical infrastructure and are ubiquitous in numerous industries including telecommunications, petrochemical, and manufacturing. ICS are at a high risk of cyber attack given their internet accessibility, inherent lack of security, deployment timelines, and criticality. A unique challenge in ICS security is the prevalence of serial communication buses and other non-TCP/IP communications protocols. The communication protocols used within serial buses often lack authentication and integrity protections, leaving them vulnerable to spoofing and replay attacks. The bandwidth constraints and prevalence of legacy hardware in these systems prevent the use of modern message authentication and …

Enhancing The Battleverse: The People’S Liberation Army’S Digital Twin Strategy, Joshua Baughman

Military Cyber Affairs

No abstract provided.

What Senior U.S. Leaders Say We Should Know About Cyber, Dr. Joseph H. Schafer

Military Cyber Affairs

On April 6, 2023, the Atlantic Council’s Cyber Statecraft Initiative hosted a panel discussion on the new National Cybersecurity Strategy. The panel featured four senior officials from the Office of the National Cyber Director (ONCD), the Department of State (DoS), the Department of Justice (DoJ), and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The author attended and asked each official to identify the most important elements that policymakers and strategists must understand about cyber. This article highlights historical and recent struggles to express cyber policy, the responses from these officials, and the author’s ongoing research to improve national security cyber policy.

Operationalizing Deterrence By Denial In The Cyber Domain, Gentry Lane

Military Cyber Affairs

No abstract provided.

Defensive Industrial Policy: Cybersecurity Interventions To Reduce Intellectual Property Theft, Dr. Chad Dacus, Dr. Carl (Cj) Horn

Military Cyber Affairs

Through cyber-enabled industrial espionage, China has appropriated what Keith Alexander, the former Director of the National Security Agency, dubbed “the largest transfer of wealth in history.” Although China disavows intellectual property (IP) theft by its citizens and has set self-sustained research and development as an important goal, it is unrealistic to believe IP theft will slow down meaningfully without changing China’s decision calculus. China and the United States have twice agreed, in principle, to respect one another’s IP rights. However, these agreements have lacked any real enforcement mechanism, so the United States must do more to ensure its IP is …

Enter The Battleverse: China's Metaverse War, Josh Baughman

Military Cyber Affairs

No abstract provided.

The Influence Of Information Power Upon The Great Game In Cyberspace: U.S. Wins Over Russian Meddling In The 2018 Elections, Joseph H. Schafer

Military Cyber Affairs

The 2018 U.S. pivot in information and cyberspace degraded Russian operations in the 2018 election. Following pervasive Russian information power operations during the U.S. 2016 elections, the United States progressed from a policy of preparations and defense in information and cyberspace to a policy of forward engagement. U.S recognition of renewed great power competition coupled with Russia’s inability to compete diplomatically, militarily (conventionally), or economically, inspires Russia to continues to concentrate on information power operations. This great game in cyberspace was virtually uncontested by the U.S. prior to 2017. Widespread awareness of Russian aggression in 2016 served as a catalyst …

China’S Quantum Quandary, Elsa B. Kania

Military Cyber Affairs

No abstract provided.

Strategic Challenges Of Declining International Power For Democracies In A Hostile Cyber World: The Case Of China, Nigel Inkster

Military Cyber Affairs

No abstract provided.

The Financial Sector’S Vulnerabilities, Villains, And Options For Defense, John T. Harvey

Military Cyber Affairs

The consequences of cyber attacks on the financial sector go well beyond those suffered by the individuals and firms directly involved and may even lead to the destabilization of the system itself. The concern is all the greater given that banks and similar institutions play a much more critical role than most people realize and the nature of their operation already invites risk taking at the best of times. Bad actors hoping to sow chaos surely understand the trouble they could cause by targeting the financial underpinning of our economy. This paper will argue that while the cyber defense of …

Dry Rivers, Scary Strangers: Are Financial And Cyber Crises Alike?, Claudia Biancotti, Paolo Ciocca

Military Cyber Affairs

The internet and the financial system show crucial affinities: both are tightly interconnected global networks whose orderly functioning is a prerequisite for economic prosperity. In financial and cyber crises alike, vulnerabilities are a consequence of distorted economic incentives, contagion is fast, and the most serious risk is loss of trust. Lessons learned from financial meltdowns translate to the cybersecurity world: stability cannot be achieved until policies are in place to address all of these issues. Steps have been taken to rectify incentives, as exemplified by recent European Union legislation. Data that helps identify weak nodes are still scarce, notwithstanding recent …

Systemic Cyber Risks And Defense: Valuation, Innovation And Strategic Implications, Pythagoras N. Petratos

Military Cyber Affairs

No abstract provided.

Trouble On The High “C’S” – China, Cyber, And The Trading System, Robert Fisher

Military Cyber Affairs

No abstract provided.

Strategy Needed To Protect National Sovereignty Of Us Telecommunications Backbone, Thomas Donahue

Military Cyber Affairs

No abstract provided.

Regaining The Technological Edge: Authoritarians, Democracies, It Innovation’S Future, Andrea Little Limbago

Military Cyber Affairs

No abstract provided.

Countering "Made In China 2025": Strategy For Western Powers In A Cybered World, David Mussington

Military Cyber Affairs

No abstract provided.

Introduction To Mca Issue, “Systemic Cyber Defense", Chris C. Demchak

Military Cyber Affairs

No abstract provided.

China’S Maxim – Leave No Access Point Unexploited: The Hidden Story Of China Telecom’S Bgp Hijacking, Chris C. Demchak, Yuval Shavitt

Military Cyber Affairs

No abstract provided.

Three Futures For A Post-Western Cybered World, Chris C. Demchak

Military Cyber Affairs

West faces a different security dilemma due to the shoddy cyberspace substrate it built and spread globally. Cyberspace created a new form of ‘cybered conflict’ with five advantages for offense previously – scale of organization, proximity, precision, deception and tools, and opaqueness in origins. It also accelerated massive wealth transfers to rising near peer and now peer adversaries, who were expected to simply fold into the western-built international system. In the process, the basic well-being of the economies of the consolidated civil society democracies have become non-kinetic fields of conflict among state and nonstate actors. The past twenty-five years of …

An Economics Primer For Cyber Security Analysts, John T. Harvey

Military Cyber Affairs

One of the ingredients necessary to an understanding of the impact of cyber attacks is a reliable model of the economy. We face great challenges in trying to protect an already potentially unstable system from cyber aggression and operating with a flawed understanding of the determinants of output, employment, asset prices, et cetera, surely condemns us to failure. This is so not only because we need to know where points of leverage might exist for bad actors to disrupt and disable our system, but because policy recommendations may face significant push back from both selected scholars and powerful vested interests. …

Sticking To Their Guns: The Missing Rma For Cybersecurity, Lior Tabansky

Military Cyber Affairs

Why has cybered conflict disrupted the security of the most developed nations? A foreign adversary contemplating an attack on a developed nation's heartland certainly faces multiple state-run military-grade lines of defense on land, sea and air. A foreign adversary launching a direct cyber-attack on a non-military homeland target will meet none. Armed forces do not shield a society from cyber-attacks originated by foreign adversaries, no longer provide a buffer between the enemy and homeland, nor can they identify the attacker after an attack occurred.

Adversaries succeed in waging cybered conflict against the U.S. and its allies. Having repeatedly inflicted economic …

Cyber Futures And The Justice Motive: Avoiding Pyrrhic Victory, Mark Raymond

Military Cyber Affairs

Evaluating, and choosing between, possible cyber futures requires making collective decisions about values. Tradeoffs exist in the design of any governance arrangement for information and communications technologies (ICTs). At minimum, policymakers will be required to choose between governance arrangements that optimize for speed and scale on the one hand, and those that optimize for diversity and decentralization on the other. As in any other political domain, every eventual outcome will create winners and losers, at least in relative terms. Actors dissatisfied with outcomes may perceive a discrepancy between entitlements and benefits. In some such cases, they will act on this …

Introduction To Mca Issue, “Cyber, Economics, And National Security”, Chris C. Demchak

Military Cyber Affairs

No abstract provided.

People's War In Cyberspace: Using China's Civilian Economy In The Information Domain, Kieran Richard Green

Military Cyber Affairs

China is identified as posing a key challenge to US national security interests in cyberspace. These threats are incurred across the spectrum of conflict, ranging from low-level crime, to network penetration, to cyberattacks that have the potential to cause major physical destruction. Thus far, the majority of strategic assessments of China’s cyber capabilities have focused on the role of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), which is officially tasked with undertaking offensive operations in cyberspace.[1] However, China does not employ its cyber capabilities in isolation. Rather, it considers cyber to be part of the “Information Domain.” In Chinese doctrine, controlling …

Military Cyber Professionals Have An Important Part To Play In The Obama-Trump Transition, Michael V. Hayden

Military Cyber Affairs

Over the course of decades in service, I have experienced multiple presidential transitions. Each new Commander in Chief updates policies, personnel, and priorities…especially when the transition involves a new political party. In this respect, the current transition from the Obama to the Trump administration is no different. While this periodic exercise of our democracy may seem disruptive to some, it is a true opportunity for military cyber professionals to help shape our future national security posture.

Brandishing The Cybered Bear: Information War And The Russia-Ukraine Conflict, Azhar Unwala, Shaheen Ghori

Military Cyber Affairs

Russia’s use of cyber power against Ukraine offered renewed insight to Russian cyber strategy and capabilities. This article dissects the Russia-Ukraine conflict by analyzing Russia’s strategic doctrine, tactical maneuvers, and capabilities in the information realm. Understanding the Russia-Ukraine conflict in this manner can inform and strengthen U.S. cyber policy and strategy. In particular, U.S. strategic planners and cyber professionals should consider internalizing Russian strategic thinking regarding cyber power and promote tactical improvements in resilience, intelligence, and information among itself and its allies.

Data To Decisions For Cyberspace Operations, Steve Stone

Military Cyber Affairs

In 2011, the United States (U.S.) Department of Defense (DOD) named cyberspace a new operational domain. The U.S. Cyber Command and the Military Services are working to make the cyberspace environment a suitable place for achieving national objectives and enabling military command and control (C2). To effectively conduct cyberspace operations, DOD requires data and analysis of the Mission, Network, and Adversary. However, the DOD’s current data processing and analysis capabilities do not meet mission needs within critical operational timelines. This paper presents a summary of the data processing and analytics necessary to effectively conduct cyberspace operations.