War on the World Wide Web
How do you tell the Cyber story?
As an Army historian, I often get asked what I think the new threat will be. As tempted as I am to wield my (fictional) power for ill, by saying bear cavalry attacks, invasion by Daaleks, or annexation by Crimea (In new Russia, annexee annexes you!), I am forced to actually analyze past threats, look at current force structure, and see where we are weakest. So, coincidentally, does the Army. And we both came to the same conclusion: cyber. Which is why Cyber is a major buzzword these days. Major.
How major? In 2010 the Army established Cyber Command (ARCYBER), a major operational force command responsible for responding to cyber threats.
Army Cyber Command is the primary Army headquarters responsible for planning and executing cyberspace operations in support of Joint requirements and serves as the single point of contact for reporting and assessing Army cyberspace incidents, events and operations in Army networks, and for synchronizing and integrating Army responses thereto.
In 2014, ARCYBER was aligned with the Second Army, making the commander of ARCYBER also the commander of Second Army. That’s right, there’s an ARMY devoted to this now. Because when we sense there’s a threat, we straight up throw an army at it. And there’s even talk of elevating it to the level of a combatant command.
Commands all across the Department of Defense are responding in similar ways, with cyber units being stood up (military lingo for being formed) and attached to combatant commands and lower. Cyber is the going watchword for National Guard state headquarters all over the country, as states vie for newly created cyber warfare units. And in case you thought the Army was being silly and overreacting, the Air Force and Navy have established similar commands, aligned around similar operational units (10th Fleet for the Navy and 24th Air Force for the Air Force). All of a sudden, this is starting to sound like we’re prepping for combat.
And it is combat. Cyber attacks on defense, government, and civilian networks have skyrocketed in the past decade. We’re not talking isolated probes into government servers, but coordinated, sophisticated attacks that have, in military terms, overrun our defenses. Thus, when the Army states that, “Cyberspace is on par with the other war-fighting domains of land, sea, air and space,” we all know that warfare as we know it is entering a new era.
Why are cyber attacks so bad, you ask? Well, if you haven’t noticed, EVERYTHING is run by computers now. From Global Positioning Systems to Fire Direction Centers to the Army nightmare of personnel databases, we have become a 21st century fighting force: automated. This was all well and good when waging war against insurgencies from developing countries. But as we used technology to overcome the Improvised Explosive Device (IED) threat, to gather intelligence, and to make communications more efficient, we left ourselves open to our entire network being compromised.
In 2013, the Defense Science Board laid out these fairly dramatic (and realistic) possibilities:
Should the United States find itself in a full-scale conflict with a peer adversary, attacks would be expected to include denial of service, data corruption, supply chain corruption, traitorous insiders, kinetic and related non-kinetic attacks at all altitudes from underwater to space. U.S. guns, missiles, and bombs may not fire, or may be directed against our own troops. Resupply, including food, water, ammunition, and fuel may not arrive when or where needed. Military Commanders may rapidly lose trust in the information and ability to control U.S. systems and forces. Once lost, that trust is very difficult to regain.
Yeah, that’s bad. So, now we are looking at a new front in warfare. Which is where people like me come in. Military historians break down the battlefield, discuss tactics, analyze leadership decisions, and write histories of major actions. Which begs the question, how do you tell the story of a battle that occurs outside the confines of physical space?
In some respects, there are similarities. As we have seen, there are now major commands, with soldiers and leaders making decisions and reacting to crises. The battlefield is of course the network, and attacks are documented meticulously because they affect the very network that stores data.
But the most compelling aspect of history has always been, and will always be, the human interest piece. Warfare is made only slightly less hideous by the heights to which the human spirit can soar in its efforts to protect fellow soldiers. Warfare can bring out the best and worst in people, and in the U.S. Army, I would argue, it brings out the best. Reading citations for the Medal of Honor is a litany of courage and self-sacrifice. So how do we tell that story? How do we paint the panorama of words to bring to life a battlefield no one can see with soldiers who do not shed a drop of blood but are responsible for the safety and security of millions of people?
The short answer is, I don’t know. For one, it will involve historians becoming trained in an entirely new world, one with new lingo and jargon, and one that is highly complex. It will also involve substantial foresight to begin that training now. In the Army, we often have the tendency to let events roll over us and then scramble to collect data on them to record into histories. Let’s start collecting that data now and begin the discussion on how best to codify the new battlefield. Because it damn sure isn't going away anytime soon.
