Combat brigades will soon head into firefights with cyber specialists…and possibly IT lawyers.
The next great conflict will play out not just on physical terrain but also in the electrical pulses of cyberspace and the electronic spectrum. But while anonymous enemies like ISIS or Russia’s “little green men” are free to use the digital space as they like, U.S. Army leaders say legal requirements and a pre-digital structure of rules complicate their response. That’s why,
for the last 18 months, the Army has been experimenting with different concepts of operations for the cyber units that will be on the front lines of tomorrow’s fights.
The Army, which already has 30 teams at full operational capability and 11 more at initial operating capability, is aiming to have 41 fully operational Army teams by year’s end.
“As soon as we create them they are in operational use” in both offense and defense, said Brig. Gen. J.P. McGee, the deputy for operations for Army Cyber Command. “We have Army soldiers delivering effects against ISIS and ISIL.”
Last April, the New York Times reported that military cyber teams are helping Iraqi Security Forces and Kurds fight ISIS by working to “to alter [ISIS fighters’] messages, with the aim of redirecting militants to areas more vulnerable to attack by American drones or local ground forces.”
Offensive cyberweapons are a key interest of the new administration. On January 20, President Trump’s team added a “Making Our Military Strong Again” page to the White House’s website: “We will make it a priority to develop defensive and offensive cyber capabilities at our U.S. Cyber Command.”
Yet the definitions of cyber weapons and cyberwarfare are not much more precise today than in 2010 when the Stuxnet worm shut down Iran’s Natanz nuclear enrichment facility. In 2011, the Pentagon acknowledged a secret list of cyber weapons but did not detail what they were.
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