Defining the Undefinable: Cyber's Future
U.S. Army officials struggled during AFCEA TechNet Augusta 2014 in Augusta, Georgia, to discuss the future of cyber operations when much of that future is currently unknowable, in large part because no one knows the full effects or challenges of emerging technologies.
Lt. Gen. Edward Cardon, USA, commanding general, U.S. Army Cyber Command, kicked off the first full day of the conference theorizing that we are on the brink of a major technology revolution involving cloud technologies, virtualization technologies, big data technologies, wireless and mobile technologies, and advanced computing technologies to include quantum computing. “When you take all of those together, it becomes very hard to predict the tech environment two to three years from now.”
He stressed the importance of experimentation to push the limits, saying the military lacks innovation when it comes to matching technology and cyber operations. “I think we lack imagination in what people can do to us, and we lack imagination in what kind of capabilities we might want in the future,” Gen. Cardon declared. “As you all bring these technologies on board, it’s our responsibility to weave them into the operations we’re doing, but sometimes you end up with this chicken and egg problem. If you don’t understand what it does, how do you know how to apply it?”
Experimentation inherently involves some failure. If the service conducts 150 experiments, officials should expect only 10 or 15 to survive, he stated. “So, we fail early, fail often, fail cheap,” he said, adding that zero failures means the service is not being bold and innovative enough. “If we’re going to maintain competitive advantage, we’re going to have to be much bolder than we are now,” Gen. Cardon said.
He also lamented the difficulties the service has in defining technology requirements. He compared it to difficulties the Army had establishing requirements for the Humvee. Officials opted to make the Humvee a lightweight truck without armor, only to discover in recent conflicts that it was vulnerable to roadside explosives. And when automotive experts saw what the service was doing, they were appalled, the general reported. The commercial experts warned that much of the technology was outdated and the vehicle design flawed. The military has the same problem in the cyber arena, he indicated.
Additionally, the Defense Department has a hard time describing the risk of cyber operations, which makes it less likely officials will get authorization to conduct those operations. With bombs, he said, the effects can be completely defined, “because we have all the research and based on the level of risk, decisions can be made.”
With cyber, on the other hand, officials cannot currently predict the effects or whether technology will be reverse engineered and used against our own forces. “This is an area that I think needs a lot of work,” he said.
Furthermore, Gen. Cardon said, this is a big year for the Army to think about and define cyberforces at the corps level and below. “We’re already experimenting with this at the Combat Training Center. We already have some capabilities,” he said. He clarified that he was talking about cyber in relation to other warfighting functions—space, electronic warfare, information operations, etc., and not just “hacker versus hacker.”
Lt. Gen. Robert Ferrell, USA, the Army chief information officer/G-6, reported that the service is laying out an aggressive path toward the network of 2025. That path includes eliminating data centers and moving services to the Defense Information Systems Agency’s data centers. The service has eliminated about 52 percent of its network and is projecting billions of dollars in savings in “enterprise services, capacity and security."
Additionally, the Army, in partnership with the Defense Department, is beefing up broadband capability. The network backbone is going from 10 gigabytes to 100, while bases, camps and posts are going from about 600 megabytes to 10 gigabytes. The work already has been completed at Fort Sam Houston and Joint Base San Antonio, both in Texas.
The pilot project, which has been underway for more than a year, also moves the service toward Joint Regional Security Stacks, which increases security, Gen. Ferrell reported. The project is expected to reach initial operating capability in Wiesbaden, Germany, in November, and two stacks will be completed in Southwest Asia by December.
Gen. Ferrell laid out his priorities and vision, which he described as a road map for his team to 2025. The road map includes the possible creation of a cyber branch and enhancing the cyber environment by the 2018 fiscal year. He said that his office is working on a campaign plan that is in final review and should be completed soon that will explain in more detail what he hopes to accomplish by 2018.
A panel of chief warrant officers rounded out the first day with a discussion of whether tactical level units, such as a brigade combat team, will one day be capable of launching offensive cyber attacks. While some believe that capability will be necessary, others said it is more likely strategic level personnel will use the Joint Information Environment to better protect tactical level networks and launch attacks from those networks when called upon.
