November 18, 2020 — Hardly a day goes by without a cyber-related news story coming across the wires, yet the International Relations (IR) subdiscipline of cyber conflict studies has yet to meaningfully impact a wider discourse. This article examines the impact of five recent scholarly works on the evolution of this subdiscipline that, while quite popular within the general population, remains largely ignored by the broader International Relations (IR) scholarly community. The article dissects the strengths and weaknesses of these works and their place in the evolving literature by a generation of scholars who are moving debates beyond hyperbole. By highlighting cyber conflict studies to date, this roadmap hopefully will help to advance the study of cyberspace within the IR cyber community. MORE
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November 18, 2020 — In June 2017, during Ukraine’s multi-year undeclared war with Russia, the NotPetya worm hit Ukraine as part of a “scorched-earth testing ground for Russian cyberwar tactics.” Between 2015 and 2016, Kremlin-backed hackers known as Sandworm focused on Ukrainian government organizations and companies. In the NotPetya cyber-attack against Ukraine, this worm spread automatically, rapidly, and indiscriminately throughout thousands of computers worldwide, crippling multinational companies, including maritime shipping giant Maersk, pharmaceutical giant Merck, food producer Mondelēz International, and even Russia’s state-owned oil company, Rosneft. NotPetya is unlike other malware to date because its goal was purely destructive. It mimicked ransomware but was, in reality, more sinister since there was no amount of ransom that could be paid to decrypt a system’s data because no decryption key even existed. Damages associated with the 2017 NotPetya attack exceeded $10 billion. While there was no loss of life, former U.S. Department of Homeland Security advisor Tom Bossert equated NotPetya’s destructiveness to “using a nuclear bomb to achieve a small tactical victory.” MORE
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November 18, 2020 — Smart City initiatives are multiplying at an accelerated pace. Hundreds of Smart City pilot projects are aiming to make urban dwelling more sustainable by leveraging automation, and digitizing interactions among technologies, people, and the physical environment. Each project is an ecosystem, with stakeholders ranging from government officials and technology firms with their near infinite supply chains to city residents. Many projects that began as experimental pilots are now integral to the way city government organizations deliver services to their constituents. An increasingly urbanized world, rapidly becoming more dependent upon sophisticated technologies, presents novel and substantial complexities to future military operations. MORE
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November 18, 2020 — Threat financing describes how threat actors move, manage, and raise funds to support their specific goals. One emerging challenge for Special Operations Forces (SOF) support to counterterrorism missions is digital threat financing. This has risen to prominence in recent years with the evolution of digital currencies, cashless payments, and other forms of financial technology that allow for the near-instantaneous transfer of funds from one party to another. As such, SOF must undertake and prioritize counter-threat finance (CTF) efforts for its Theater Special Operations Commands (TSOCs) and its intelligence analysts to deter violent extremist organizations (VEO). MORE
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November 18, 2020 — Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions highlights the critical term “paradigm shift,” which occurs when it suddenly becomes evident that earlier assumptions are no longer correct. The plurality of the scientific community studying this domain accepts the change. These paradigm-shifting events can be scientific findings or, as in the social sciences, a system shock that creates a punctured equilibrium, triggering a leap forward acquiring new knowledge. MORE
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November 18, 2020 — The following book review covers the overview, content, and insights of Majid Yar and Kevin F. Steinmetz’s “Cybercrime and Society” Third Edition, published by SAGE publication in 2019. The structure of the book review includes a cursory background on the authors, the structure of the book content design, an overview of the chapter contents, and a book review conclusion. The book is being reviewed as part of a process to evaluate it for an upcoming undergraduate course in Foundations in Cybersecurity for Computer Science and Criminal Justice students working towards a minor or concentration in Cybersecurity. Provoking questions about our dependence on the Internet and approach to cyber threats. MORE
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July 27, 2020 — Welcome to our first themed edition of The Cyber Defense Review (CDR). Our inaugural themed edition is focused on information operations (IO) and information warfare (IW). IO and IW are not new constructs within the history of conflict. However, the exponential adoption and weaponization of social media technologies are rapidly changing the character of modern conflict. Soon digitally networked technologies known as the Internet of Things (IoT) will widely come online and supercharge the precision and reach of social media to enable unprecedented influence of targeted populations. These powerful information technologies are enabling our adversaries to achieve strategic goals and objectives that avoid our military strengths within the spaces short of armed conflict. As evidenced in 21st century conflicts thus far, the ubiquitous and amplifying effects of Information Age technologies are being used by our adversaries in ways that create a symphony of chaos, confusion, and polarization of targeted populations. These capabilities provide militarily inferior adversaries with the ability to achieve information parity at the minimum and information advantage at the maximum. If left unchecked, access to inexpensive and increasingly powerful commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) technologies will continue to provide our adversaries with the means to achieve information advantage in continuously innovative ways at a fraction of the cost of conventional warfare. MORE
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July 27, 2020 — Operations against ISIS, disrupting Russian attempts to interfere in the 2018 US midterm elections and, most recently, countering Iran's attempts to increase instability across the Middle East mark important efforts by the US military to find effective capabilities, doctrinal concepts, and appropriate roles in an era of information warfare. We must fight the battles our adversaries put before us. If our doctrines, systems, and processes do not match that reality, then it is time for new thinking. Through three decades of near-ceaseless global operations, “Information Operations,” or IO has endured as the mainstay approach for how the Armed Services and the Joint Force conceptualize and apply informational power as an integral element of military operations. Despite evolving definitions, ever-changing formulations, and passionate assertions as to both its criticality and utility, IO remains doctrinal and relevant, though often misunderstood, a term of military art. Most often, IO has proved useful at tactical and operational levels of war. At more strategic and political levels, the efficacy of IO remains elusive, and US leaders, both civilian and military, have been less than adept at effectively realizing the potential of “informational power.” MORE
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July 27, 2020 — The world has changed, and our approach to warfare must change with it. As traditional organized power structures erode, disorder fills the void. We are moving from successive regional conflicts to a future characterized by continual global competition. This circumstance will reward those who can leverage information for strategic advantage. The 2018 National Defense Strategy (NDS) described this new paradigm by emphasizing the need to compete with adversaries now.[1] The Air Force recognizes that we are already in competition below the threshold of armed conflict. Within the Air Force, the standup of 16th Air Force as an Information Warfare (IW) Numbered Air Force (NAF) in October 2019 represents a direct response to this new reality. In the document directing the standup, the Air Force described IW as “The employment of military capabilities in and through the information environment to deliberately affect adversary human and system behavior.”[2] Our task is to synchronize – Cyberspace; Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR); Electromagnetic Warfare (EW); Information Operations (IO) – across the continuum of cooperation, competition, and conflict, and support the joint force’s ability to compete, deter, and win wars across multiple domains. MORE
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July 27, 2020 — In his 2019 book, Information Wars: How We Lost the Global Battle Against Disinformation and What We Can Do About it, Richard Stengel detailed the Department of State’s (DoS) struggles in this burgeoning space. Stengel leaves the reader with a view of the United States Government (USG), where individual departments and agencies resist collaboration and tackle disinformation as individual departments and agencies. The result is a poorly integrated effort with limited awareness of parallel activities, significant challenges to cross-department and inter-agency collaboration, and the inability to evaluate and describe success or failure. Rather than accept Stengel’s description as the only way the USG can function, this article posits counterpoints derived from direct involvement with multiple USG departments and agencies during both the Obama and Trump administrations. The counterargument is an understanding of cross-governmental authorities combined with collaborative implementation leads to greater success in combating disinformation. MORE
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