International Security & Defense

7 Items

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Analysis & Opinions - Foreign Affairs

How the U.S. Can Play Cyber-Offense

| Mar. 22, 2018

The focus on cyber-deterrence is understandable but misplaced. Deterrence aims to change the calculations of adversaries by persuading them that the risks of an attack outweigh the rewards or that they will be denied the benefits they seek. But in seeking merely to deter enemies, the United States finds itself constantly on the back foot. Instead, the United States should be pursuing a more active cyberpolicy, one aimed not at deterring enemies but at disrupting their capabilities. In cyberwarfare, Washington should recognize that the best defense is a good offense.

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Journal Article - Georgetown Journal of International Affairs

Campaign Planning with Cyber Operations

| Dec. 28, 2017

The military not only plans for operations, it also plans to plan. Yet there is no current plan or process in place to integrate cyber initiatives into campaign planning. The US government must determine how to integrate offensive and defensive cybercapabilities into campaign planning in order to leverage these capabilities and pair them with the military’s broad array of tools.

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Journal Article - Journal of Cybersecurity

Rules of Engagement for Cyberspace Operations: A View From the USA

| March 2017

As cyber weapons are incorporated into US military planning, policy makers and field commanders will increasingly confront a core issue: How to formulate the rules of engagement (ROEs) for US forces with regard to military operations that may use such weapons. Michael Sulmeyer, Herbert Lin, and C. Robert Kehler address ROEs from the perspective of US military operators. 

March 8, 2012: Norwich University student Adam Marenna, of Belair, Md.  Deep in the bowels of a building on the campus of the nation's oldest private military academy, students from across the globe are being taught to fight the war of the future.

AP Photo/Toby Talbot

Journal Article - Quarterly Journal: International Security

The Meaning of the Cyber Revolution: Perils to Theory and Statecraft

| Fall 2013

While decisionmakers warn about the cyber threat constantly, there is little systematic analysis of the issue from an international security studies perspective. Cyberweapons are expanding the range of possible harm between the concepts of war and peace, and give rise to enormous defense complications and dangers to strategic stability. It is detrimental to the intellectual progress and policy relevance of the security studies field to continue to avoid the cyber revolution's central questions.

Paper - Science, Technology, and Public Policy Program, Belfer Center

On the Use of Offensive Cyber Capabilities: A Policy Analysis on Offensive US Cyber Policy

    Authors:
  • Robert Belk
  • Matthew Noyes
| March 2012

This paper offers analysis and policy recommendations for use and response to various forms of cyber action for Offensive Military Cyber Policy. It establishes a pragmatic policy-relevant, effects-based ontology for categorizing cyber capabilities, and develops a comprehensive framework for cyber policy analysis. Furthermore, it demonstrates the utility of the cyber policy analysis framework by analyzing six key categories of external cyber actions identified by our ontology, which range the entire spectrum of cyber activity. Lastly, this work develops actionable policy recommendations from our analysis for cyber policy makers while identifying critical meta-questions.

Analysis & Opinions - Bloomberg

When We Wage Cyberwar, the Whole Web Suffers

| April 25, 2012

"Purveyors of cyberfear are going in the opposite direction. They are not interested in engaging with other countries to come up with codes of online conduct or to translate the Geneva Conventions for cyberspace — so as to avoid collateral damage and protect hospitals, electrical grids, and so on. They want to be able to change ones to zeros on servers around the globe, whatever that means for speech and commerce at home and worldwide."