July 31, 2018 — Despite obvious distinctions, parallels exist between 18th century era fortification and the purposes, processes, and implications of pursuing security in an artificial cyber realm of the 21st century. The Revolutionary War era fortification of the Hudson River bottleneck focused upon the West Point area between 1778 and 1781. Differing professional perspectives and factors such as available resources led to disagreement about the defensive concept, and Thaddeus Kosciuszko’s construction of layered defenses strengthened the US position in the region during the latter phases of the war. British failure in a belated overland raid, demonstrating an inability to “brute” the new defenses, led to British interest in leveraging an insider threat (Benedict Arnold), but then as now, insider threats could not automatically guarantee success. MORE
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July 31, 2018 — A security dilemma is said to exist when one country cannot make itself more secure without making another less secure. [2] Circa 1913, for instance, if a major European country sought security by drafting more men, its neighbors would feel impelled to do likewise to recover their former levels of security. During the Cold War, when deterrence was the only feasible response to threat posed by the other side’s nuclear weapons, any attempt to build more weapons or bring them to a higher state of readiness (for retaliatory purposes only, it would be claimed) would alarm the other side who would feel impelled to do likewise. MORE
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July 31, 2018 — On December 31, 2015, Chinese officials announced a substantial reorganization of the armed forces. [1] The reforms cut across the entire People’s Liberation Army (PLA),[2] and constitute the most dramatic reorganization of China’s armed forces since the 1950s. [3] President Xi Jinping described the reforms as essential for modernizing the military. [4] and the reorganization affirmed the PLA’s fidelity to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). [5] The reform also established a new service branch called the Strategic Support Force (SSF) on par with the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Rocket Force. Among its many missions, the SSF secures electromagnetic space and cyberspace. [6] China’s military pundits lauded the SSF as necessary for twenty-first century warfare. [7] For years, the PLA has fielded cyber capabilities at various levels of command, and the SSF elevates control of cyber operations to the highest echelons. [8] Ultimately, the PLA employs cyber forces to ensure cyber sovereignty (wangluo zhuquan) and safeguard the Chinese Dream across all domains. MORE
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July 31, 2018 — Platforms are becoming a dominant force in business and software architecture. Regardless of where you look across commercial, government, health or military/defense sectors, platforms are increasingly becoming core features of the digital world. They are at the center of digital ecosystems.
When we think platforms today, it is important to realize that there is a business view, a technology view, and an ecosystem view. Evolving from highly specialized and expensive Service Delivery Platforms, today these multi-tenant and multi-role platforms provide reusable sets of building block capabilities designed to accelerate the growth and to sustain multiple digital ecosystems. MORE
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July 31, 2018 — Although the United States withdrew its last remaining combat forces from Iraq in December 2011, a significant insurgency spanning the territory of Iraq and Syria has evolved under a variety of names including the Islamic State, Islamic State in Syria (ISIS) and the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL)—for this work, we choose to employ the title ISIL. Since ISIL’s break with al-Qaeda in February 2014, it has become the chief standard-bearer of a Salafi jihadist movement set upon forming a trans-regional caliphate. In its activities, ISIL has extended its territorial reach across North Africa and the Arabian Peninsula as well as claiming credit for terror attacks from Belgium to Bangladesh. As much as a movement, ISIL is the contemporary brand for Jihadist insurgency in the Middle East and beyond. MORE
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July 31, 2018 — The US Army executes small-scale direct commission programs for specialties needed within the profession of arms. When expanded into Cyberspace, similar programs can provide an opportunity to enhance readiness and capability while building toward a force of the future. A Cyberspace direct commission program can serve as a test case for removing the traditional bar to lateral entry for technical specialties. Challenges relating to culture, development, and operations may arise during implementation of such a program. This paper hopes to start the initial discussion on these topics and introduce ideas about future research that can contribute to the Army’s assessment of a direct commission program. MORE
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July 31, 2018 — For most of us today, the phrase “Maginot Line” is a stale but cruel joke, if not just some vague memory from a high school history class. It is well-worn metaphoric shorthand for any defensive measure firmly believed to provide excellent protection, but that is in fact quite useless. Actually, worse than useless—because building a Maginot Line creates the complacency of a false sense of security. MORE
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July 31, 2018 — This article investigates how the speed and sophistication of cyber tools shape modern conflict. Using the United States as a case study, it looks at how, when, and why physical and cyber affronts can quickly escalate, and what appropriate counter-actions exist at each stage of the conflict. We also briefly contrast the US physical and cyber conflict escalation ladders with those of China and Russia. Our work has important implications for policy-makers and military leaders as it demonstrates the importance of having cyber escalation ladders for each country. We stress that not only should these ladders include country-specific perceptions of various actors and their likely motivations, but they should also account for other actors’ differences in perception of various physical and cyber actions. The latter could lead to a difference in each state’s understanding of the others’ escalation ladders, and thus unexpected responses. MORE
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July 31, 2018 — Cyberspace has been recognized as a warfighting domain in the US Department of Defense (DoD), yet neither the DoD nor the broader US Government has taken full advantage of military cyber power to defend US interests and project power. One important reason for this is how we choose to consider and describe cyber. Do we treat it as no different from other domains and normalize cyber as a warfighting capability? Or do we recognize it as fundamentally different from other warfighting domains and use cyber-unique approaches? I believe the answer to both questions is “yes”—we need to further normalize cyber as a warfighting capability, yet recognize how it is different from the physical warfighting domains. The key to our future success lies in reconciling these two perspectives. MORE
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July 31, 2018 — In the security paradigm, privacy is the major challenge for the security of an open society against cyber threats. In contemporary society, privacy is a lesser security challenge than the threat of an increased attack surface and strengthened attack vectors: Big Data, artificial intelligence, and the massive aggregation of public data. In this research note, we introduce a high-level conflict between interests and societal goals that supersede the privacy and security conflict. MORE
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