New CYBER MAVEN Column: Why the US is More Vulnerable to CyberAttack

Warrior Maven Will Now Feature a New CYBER MAVEN Special Column:

By Ross Rustici – Warrior Maven Columnist and Senior Contributor – Previously Served as a Technical Lead, Intrusion Analyst and East Asia Cyber Lead at the Department of Defense

Why the US is More Vulnerable to CyberAttack

In January of this year there was significant press about how the Department of Defense was considering nuclear retaliation for a cyber attack. The Joint Chiefs of Staff pushed back against this idea stating that the new posture review spoke about strategic level attacks beyond a nuclear scenario and that cyber wasn’t even mentioned. This entire conversation side stepped perhaps the most important point being punctuated by this line of thinking.

The United States’ geography has fundamentally shifted. No other country in the world can claim that their continuous territory has remained free from foreign adversaries in the last 200 years while actively engaging in multiple conflicts.[1] Yet today, the United States is further constrained than at any point previously in its history. A nuclear Armageddon is no long the only thing the U.S. military and population need to worry about. Today, cyber attacks are a very real way to bring the war to the home front in a way that no one in two centuries has experienced.

The United States asymmetric dependence on the Internet makes cross domain escalation the only recourse for the military. There are very few potential adversaries of the United States that are as dependent on information networks as the United States is. This makes the normal approach of offensive superiority largely an inept tactic when it comes to in domain conflict. Simply put, the United States cannot exact the same toll on its adversaries in cyber space that they can on it. This means there is no way for an offensive cyber program to create escalation dominance which is fundamental for a conventional deterrence posture.

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