A leading cyber expert said the Air Force needs to do a better job of teaching its cyber history and build “cyber-mindedness” so it doesn’t repeat its mistakes.
“We need to learn our cyber heritage and build cyber-mindedness just like we do air-mindedness,” Jason Healey, director of the Atlantic Council think tank’s cyber statecraft initiative, said Friday during an Air Force Association Mitchell Hour presentation.
Healey said the Air Force needs to recognize and nurture its cyber culture and instill new training staff into that culture while using the experience of cyber pioneers to educate new airmen.
Healey said the service doesn’t invest in teaching its cyber heritage because it incorrectly assumes cyber is relatively new and there “aren’t any lessons there.” Healey pointed out the service had the first informational warfare combat unit in U.S. military history, the 609th Information Warfare Squadron, located at Shaw AFB, S.C., activated in the mid ’90s.
Healey said the Air Force played the U.S. government’s most critical role in solving the mystery of a West German man who hacked into U.S. military computers and sold information to the Soviet Union. He said the story was chronicled in the book Cuckoo’s Egg.
Healey also said an attack on Rome Air Force Research Laboratory computers served as a “wake-up call” to the Defense Department. According to the Government Accountability Office, hackers in the mid-1990s took control of Rome Labs computers and stole intelligence research data.
He said the quicker the Air Force gets over thinking its cyber heritage is newer, the faster it can improve.