While the defense community focuses inwardly on the move away from conflict to an uncertain complex world, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said it’s important to continue looking outward at what’s happening in the world–particularly the increase in cyber threats.
“Cyber has escalated from an issue of moderate concern to one of the most serious concerns to our national security,” Army Gen. Martin Dempsey said at the Center for 21st Century Security. “We now live in a world of weaponized bits and bytes, where an entire country can be disrupted by the click of mouse.”
Cyber has a borderless nature, he said. “Anyone anywhere in the world can use cyber to affect anyone else.”
It is a significant vulnerability, he said, pointing to the fact that in cyber conflict civilian infrastructure and business are often the first target.
“Intrusions into critical infrastructure have increased 17-fold,” since he became Chairman of the Joint Chiefs less than two years ago, Dempsey said. He added his voice to the chorus of cyber concern, noting that Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel calls cyber an “insidious and dangerous threat.”
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| Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Photo: JCS |
The Defense Department does have a growing capacity to protect its networks, he said, and the department is investing resources in this area: there will be a total of 4,000 cyber operators joining the ranks over the next four years, and some $23 billion spend on cyber security investment.
When asked, he said, DoD, with interagency partners will defend the nation to stop potential attacks that threaten” life, limb and the nation’s core critical infrastructure.”
Right now, Dempsey said there is a whole of government approach to cyber, with a “playbook” for how each governmental organization is to respond to cyber threats. It defines roles and responsibilities for each entity, including DoD, which will become involved if asked, as it is not the lead–the Department of Homeland Security is.
DoD resources will ebb and flow, “depending on how we see the threat evolving,” he said.
Right now, Dempsey said the department is going over the first update of cyber Rules of Engagement in seven years.
Cyber offers an adversary an asymmetric advantage. The military with the most agile and resilient networks will be the most effective in the future, something Dempsey has described in the Joint Force 2020 document.
Cyber strengthens the Air Force’s ability to achieve global reach, he explained, and for the Army, networks define and enable its forces on the battlefield. DoD is collectively making the investments necessary to ensure the joint force can operate in the cyber domain as in any other: Air, Sea, Land or Space.
The next step is making networks joint, he added, consolidating today’s thousands of networks into a Joint Information Environment in the cloud. This will deepen collaboration across services and mission areas and be more secure.
However, he warned that this new cyber world needs much more information sharing. “Too few companies have invested in cyber security,” and he worries that adversaries can find a chink in corporate digital armor.
Information sharing on threats primarily runs in one direction–from the government to critical infrastructure operators. Very little flows back, he said. “We can’t stop an attack if we can’t see it.”
Dempsey said it’s important to have the right legislation and standards in place and work with other nations to set norms of proper behavior in the cyber world. For example, the agreement to open a cyber security link with Russia is a step in the right direction, “a step we should take with others,” Dempsey said.
There’s been quite a change over his generation–he held up a device that looked like an iPhone that he said used the military’s secure internet, and was a voice and data device. The audience looked on enviously. That’s the future, he said.
He began his presentation saying the first phone he recalled was a black rotary phone at home. He still recalled the number, which began, appropriately enough considering his position: “Federal…”