Question

Take a look at the following article. It's short, but after reading it, do you still think that a defensive posture is enough? Or would take offensive cyber actions against other countries be too much of a provocation? If you were advising the President on which way to go, what would you say, and why? Feel free to bring other news articles into this as well, if you like. ‘DICEY ISSUE’ TO CONSIDER GOING ON CYBER WARFARE OFFENSE, SAYS DNI (LINKS TO AN EXTERNAL SITE.)LINKS TO AN EXTERNAL SITE.

Answer 1

Ans:

Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats told senators Tuesday that an administration policy on cyber warfare is still a “work in progress” as the weigh the “dicey” prospect of going on offense.

Coats testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee on worldwide threats that the cyber threat “is one of my greatest concerns and top priorities of our office.”

“From U.S. businesses to the federal government to state and local governments, we are under cyber attack,” he declared. “While state actors pose the greatest cyber threats, the democratization of cyber capabilities worldwide has enabled and emboldened a broader range of actors to pursue their malign activities against us.”

“We assess that Russia is likely to continue to pursue even more aggressive cyber attacks with the intent of degrading our democratic values and weakening our alliances. Persistent and disruptive cyber and influence operations will continue against United States and European countries and other allies, using elections as opportunities to undermine democracy and sow discord and undermine our values.”

In addition to Russia, he said, Chinese, Iranian and North Korean cyber actors “continue to build off past successes to improve the scope and scale of their cyber capabilities.”

Coats said Russia is emboldened by feeling their past influence operations have been successful and “views the 2018 U.S. midterm elections as a potential target.”

“We continue to see Russian activities designed to exacerbate social and political fissures in the United States,” he said. “In the next year, we assess Russia will continue to use propaganda, social media, false flag personas, sympathetic spokesmen and other means of influence to try to build on its wide range of disruptive operations.”

Defense Intelligence Agency Director Lt. Gen. Robert Ashley listed cyber among myriad threats the U.S. faces, noting that “our top competitors are developing and using cyberspace to increase their operational reach into our military and civilian systems, exploiting our vulnerabilities and challenging the adequacy of our defense.”

Upon questioning about U.S. cyber posture, Coats told lawmakers that there are “ongoing discussions among a number of our agencies — Department of Homeland Security, Department of Defense, the State Department and others — relative to the cyber threat.”

“Our office recently met with three of the most — current agencies dealing with this, NSA and others, to talk about the effect of cyber on the upcoming elections, but as well as the impact of that,” he said. “It’s a whole-of-government approach. I have discussed it personally with the president of the United States. He has said, ‘I assume you’re doing your job, all of you who head up these agencies relative to cyber. But if you need for me to say — direct you do it, do it.'”

cyber warfare is ‘old wine in new bottles’, with marginal added value. This misses the larger possibilities for political/military chain reactions that cyber warfare may prompt, possibly leading to armed conflict. This article utilizes Offense-Defense theory to appraise the influence of cyber warfare on international security and the prospects for conflict. Offense-Defense theory, as applied here, better explains the relationship between technological innovation and international politics, and leads to different conclusions from other realist approaches. Redefining the Offense-Defense balance to accommodate cyberspace leads to an emphasis on the offensive advantages of cyber capabilities. The offensive and defensive cyber postures of China, Russia, the United States, and NATO are examined here to empirically assess the role of cyber warfare in security policy. Evidence shows that innovations in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) allow states to take greater risks and adopt more vigilant or offensive positions toward adversaries. Cyber capabilities do not cause armed conflict, but make decisions to escalate easier and cheaper. A strategic enabler that provides attackers greater freedom of action, cyber warfare is becoming a necessary condition for the conduct of war, even if it is not a sufficient one.