The U.S. military service chiefs acknowledged that cyberwarfare has become a normalized part of war and military action at a think tank discussion on Tuesday night.
The moderator in the discussion on challenges facing the U.S. military, New York Times national security correspondent David Sanger, brought up cyber issues when he asked if the chiefs are normalizing cyberwarfare by openly mentioning offensive capabilities alongside others and how it is integrated.
Adm. John Richardson, Chief of Naval Operations (CNO), responded that there is no such thing as a purely regional conflict anymore and “everything stems, you know, beyond—transregionally if not globally, cyber being a big part of this. And that everything happens in multiple domains at once.”
When pressed if cyberwarfare is a normal tool, Richardson said, “the fact is it’s a pretty hot war in the cyber domain going on right now.”
The U.S. is sustaining hundreds of thousands of attacks per day. Organizing defenses against that threat, the department has become very capable in cyber. “And so this is an area where the fight is on,” he said.
Gen. Robert Neller, Commandant of the Marine Corps, added the reason the military has become more involved in cyber is because the adversary has moved to that domain “and we are not going to cede that to them. We are not going to cede that domain, whether it’s they’re recruiting on it or where they’re messaging on it, where they’re providing disinformation or propaganda or however you want to couch it.”
Neller noted the military’s activities in this respect is different from just attacking networks and physical systems, but actively contesting messaging and use of social media as adversaries like the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) recruit and plan attacks.
“What we’ve done is, first of all, identified the problem, seen that it has certain traits or characteristics that are identifiable, and then helped our partner nations develop counter-capabilities, to include intelligence in messaging and information so that they—when they see something like this they can confront it and call it out and they don’t sit there and wait,” Neller said.
He compared this strategy to the ancient military strategist Sun Tzu’s notions of defeating your enemy without having to fight them.
Neller also acknowledged that cyberwarfare causes complications for the U.S. because it is a nation of laws that respects the rights of citizens so “we are reluctant to pass through your webpage or your website to get at somebody who’s on the other side of that firewall who’s lying and violating the law.” This then leads to issues with rules of engagement.
America’s adversaries know its strengths and weaknesses in this regard, so the U.S. security community must solve these security vs. rights issues “but it all involves permissions and authorities,” Neller said. Under certain contexts the military has the proper authorities to attack opponents in the cyber realm if they are in a “designated area of hostilities.” Additionally, there are other authorities available to the president and the national leadership under authorities used to protect the nation as a whole, Neller said.
Despite these issues, Richardson highlighted that “we should be very clear that there’s no more capable nation or actor in the world than the United States in terms of cyber warfare.”
The CNO characterized himself as a classicist in thinking the nature of war has not truly changed and cyberwarfare is another extension in a contest between thinking adversaries where each side studies the opponent’s vulnerabilities to achieve their aim.
“We’re going to be surprised. We’ve got to build in an inherent agility and adaptability. And so we’re seeing that we’re confronted with a new, you know, form of competition here. We realize we may have been a little bit too dogmatic in terms of, you know, phases of warfare and such, and our competitors are targeting that vulnerability and we’ll respond,” Richardson said.
This discussion was part of a Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) McKeon Lecture in New York.