CYBER MAVEN: How Enemies Would Attack the US

By Ross Rustici – Warrior Maven Columnist and Senior Contributor –

Rustici Previously Served as a Technical Lead, Intrusion Analyst and East Asia Cyber Lead at the Department of Defense

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Dependency, Vulnerability, and the Tyranny of Time

The tyranny of time and distance is something that man has been unable to escape since before the dawn of civilization. That gap has reduced over the years. First by learning to run, then through the domestication of animals, all the way to cutting-edge development of hypersonic weaponry. The ability to project military power is measured as a function of speed, distance, power, and cost. This simple fact is why the United States maintains a large alliance network with overseas bases in every region of the world, and why no other country has the ability to reasonably threaten the United States with conventional arms.

The distance across the Atlantic and Pacific oceans are too vast to project power with conventional forces without a massive economy to support a disporportinately large military budget. These buffers, combined with only two bordering countries both of which are substantially smaller and generally aligned with the United States, has led it to develop an offensive ethos that no other military can share.

The precision and effectiveness that the Revolution in Military Affairs brought U.S. troops in the 90s and early 2000s shocked the world. Suddenly a 2-million-person strong military was transformed from a cudgeled into a scalpel. The early success of information superiority for offensive operations led further breakneck development in this area until American fighter aircraft are outfitted so they can function as flying routers. This military dependence on information correlates to societies. Just in time shipping that relies on rapid transfers of goods across the country by rail or truck, the digitization of: information, the financial industry, critical infrastructure.

Convenience, speed, cost are the drivers of the digital transformation, yet security has never been a paramount concern. This is true even in the way senior leaders in the U.S. government speak about cyber threats today. The discussion is not about defense or reducing the capacity of America’s adversaries to succeed in their intrusions, but rather it is to strike back via cyber means to demonstrate superiority and deter actions by imposing costs. The creation of in domain superiority is the ethos of how America defends itself. Out aggress the aggressors.