April 26, 2024

2023 Executive Order on Trustworthy AI Misses Issues of Autonomy and AI Multi-Threat Challenges

On October 30, 2023, the Administration released Executive Order (EO) 14110 on Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence (AI). For several reasons this EO lays a light hand on the Department of Defense (DoD). The DoD had and was already implementing “responsible AI” safeguards for defense programs. A public debate over AI for some time has been in progress among political and IT capital goods elites over a rising concern that uncontrolled commercial and government use of AI is spreading too rapidly into all private and consequential aspects of citizens’ lives but these are areas in which DoD generally plays a limited role. However, adversaries and vendors also get a vote in the future of trust with AI and DoD.

April 26, 2024

Mission Thread Analysis: Establishing a Common Framework in a Multi-Discipline Domain to Enhance Defensive Cyberspace Operations

ARCYBER is challenged to balance the demands of mission commanders requesting defense of critical missions, Congress directing actions to defend critical resources, and intelligence reports, all resulting in diversion of resources to address perceived threats. Mission Thread Analysis (MTA) is a process to help build understanding and consensus between customers (operational force) and providers (network operators and defenders), offering an analytical framework where both sides detail their operational and technical requirements. ARCYBER redesigned and formalized the MTA process to help inform prioritization, training, team employment, and optimization of Defensive Cyber Forces.

April 26, 2024

Beyond U.S. CYBERCOM: The Need to Establish a Dedicated U.S. Cyber Military Force

The question of a Cyber Military Force is not new, although most studies lack practical solutions. This article explores the requirement to establish a separate U.S. Cyber Military Force, detailing threats, precedent, and current gaps and provides a framework for the DoD to recommend Congress establish a separate U.S. Cyber Military Force. Establishing a separate cyber military force under the Department of the Army is a critical and necessary step in addressing the evolving cyber threats facing the United States. Such a force will enable the U.S. to be better positioned to defend its national interests in the cyber domain, develop advanced capabilities, and maintain a competitive advantage over potential adversaries.

April 26, 2024

Violent Limitations: Cyber Effects Reveal Gaps in Clausewitzian Theory

The U.S. military describes and understands war within the Clausewitzian frame of physical violence to accomplish a political goal by enforcing will on the military of an opposing state through physical actions. However, the cyber domain and the effect of cyber actions reveal that our understanding of war can no longer be restricted to the Clausewitz paradigm. Cyber effects can cause destruction without kinetic actions and brought the cognitive dimension to the forefront of many military leaders’ and planners' thinking. Cyber activities reveal that while new technology may not have changed war, a theoretical foundation built upon Clausewitz narrowly restricts the understanding of war for the modern era.

April 26, 2024

Quantum Leap: Improving Cybersecurity for the Next Era of Computing by Focusing on Users

History shows that advantages are gained by the force who uses new technologies to secure their communications. Quantum computing appears to provide a variety of benefits including new ways to secure communications and the ability to not just bypass a cryptologic system, but potential to attack the system itself. While quantum technology is very promising, history shows the vulnerabilities posed by human factors should be taken into account in the design, engineering and implementation of these technologies.

April 26, 2024

How the Collapse of the Soviet Union Made Russia a Great Cyber Power

As a result of the unique circumstances created by the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia has developed disproportionate cyber power relative to its economic stature. Russia is only the world’s eleventh-largest economy by gross domestic product (GDP), and its information technology (IT) sector constituted just under 6% of the country’s GDP before Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Despite these limitations, Russia is commonly recognized as an elite cyber power. Importantly, Russia relies heavily on cyber professionals from outside its security agencies, including talent from the private sector and associated with organized criminal groups (OCGs), to conduct offensive cyber operations on the state’s behalf. However, after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, a mass exodus in Russian IT professionals occurred and this presents the West with a unique opportunity to weaken Russia’s power in the cyber domain.

April 26, 2024

Communities, Agency, and Resilience: A perspective Addressing Tragedy of the Cyber Commons

Cybersecurity suffers from a “tragedy of the commons” problem, where people and institutions have adopted lax security practices due to a tendency to weigh the perceived costs of adopting sound cybersecurity practices as higher than their expected benefits. For example, despite advancements in cybersecurity measures and extensive investments in tools and strategies to counter cyberattacks, foundational best practices have faltered leading to global cybersecurity challenges. Part of the dilemma stems from the fact that cybersecurity continues to be approached with a limited mindset, which creates a significant threshold of social cohesiveness for combating cyber threats. In the meantime, the cyber threat landscape continues to proliferate and exploit the fragile networks that we all inhabit. This paper provides a community-centered framework for cyber resilience that offers a starting point for addressing the tragedy of the commons problem in cybersecurity.

Dec. 5, 2023

Cyber Persistence Theory: Redefining National Security in Cyberspace By Michael P. Fischerkeller, Emily O. Goldman, and Richard Harknett

Cyber Persistence Theory provides an important discussion of the structural shift in cyber strategy necessary for taking U.S. cybersecurity to the next level. No other work has made such a convincing case for this structural shift as the au¬thors explain the current gap between cyber theory and observed cyber applica¬tion. This alternative to the cyber deterrence paradigm provides an in-depth, academic analysis of the modern cyberspace environment. The main takeaway of this thesis is that cyberspace activity, especially exploitation, is the primarily form of strategic competi¬tion, and that exploitation should be interpreted as an alternative to war wherein states quickly capitalize on other state’s cyberspace vulnerabilities rather than resorting to compellence. According to the authors, in cyberspace, states operate, at a low-cost, out of a structural need to persist and a strategic incentive to achieve short-term gains, without necessarily triggering an armed attack.

Dec. 5, 2023

CISA – The Future of Cyber Weather Forecasting

Cybersecurity is like the weather on a summer day; you can see out of your win-dow—just like you can see into your network—but you can’t see the storm on the other side of the mountain without a network of stations reporting what they can see. This analogy could be useful in thinking about forecasting for cyberse¬curity. This approach to cybersecurity—developing a “cyber-weather forecaster” —would enable defenders to see, predict and deal with threats in the same way that the National Weather Service (NWS) forecast helps us decide whether to bring an umbrella or leave it at home. As CISA’s Joint Cyber Defense Collaborative (JCDC) matures, developing “cyber weather forecasters” would provide an important improvement in gaining visibility into our networks and conducting predictive analysis.

Dec. 5, 2023

Beyond “Bigger, Faster, Better:” Assessing Thinking About Artificial Intelligence and Cyber Conflict

As cybersecurity researchers and scholars of cyber conflict studies turn to think about the impact that artificial intelligence (AI) technologies will have on patterns of digi¬tal insecurity, it is important that they learn from the record of recent technological transformation of the national security enterprise. This research note considers the challenge of forthcoming changes in the dynamics of global cyber conflict brought about by AI. It identifies a tendency in the way commentators frame the intersection of these technological areas with known technical or operational touchstones. Specifical¬ly, commentary along both lines often ignores the question of evolving strategic context in much the same way that early scholars of cyber conflict often did, reducing any con¬clusion about the impact of AI on cyber conflict to a simplistic “bigger, faster, smarter, better” bottom line. In place of these frames, I suggest a simple four-part typology that envisions cyber conflict dynamics in which interaction (1) employs AI, (2) is conducted against AI, (3) is undertaken entirely by AI, and (4) is shaped and attenuated by AI.