Cyberspace and the Era of Persistent Confrontation
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This non-fiction book examines cyberspace as a military domain and as a means for the great powers to contest politically, short of actual violence. It is a collection of essays by the author, James Van de Velde, Ph.D., an Associate Professor at the National Intelligence University, where he teaches courses on Cyber Warfare, WMD-Terrorism, and Intelligence Collection and Analysis. He is also Adjunct Professor at the Georgetown Security Studies Program, School of Foreign Service, and Adjunct Faculty in the Global Security Studies Program at Johns Hopkins University. Dr. Van de Velde is a Lead Associate for the consulting firm, Booz Allen Hamilton, where he currently consults to the J5 (Strategy) Division of US Cyber Command. The chapters include:
MAKE CYBERSPACE GREAT AGAIN TOO!
WHAT IF WARFARE TODAY OCCURS ONLY IN PEACETIME?
WARFARE AND DETERRENCE IN THE ERA OF CYBERSPACE
CYBERSPACE'S FUTURE IS CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF PERSISTENT AUTHORITARIANISM
WHY ‘CYBER NORMS’ ARE DUMB
TOP TEN STATEMENTS REGARDING JIHADIST USE OF THE INTERNET DESIGNED SPECIFICALLY TO UPSET MILLENNIALS!
THE MEDIA’S RESPONSIBILITY TO COMBAT TERRORISM VIA CYBERSPACE
HIGH TECH POSEURS
APPLYING CLASSICAL NOTIONS OF STRATEGY TO CYBERSPACE
WHAT COMES AFTER ‘PERSISTENT ENGAGEMENT?’ ‘3G:’ GATES, GUARDS, AND GUNS
James Van de Velde
James Van de Velde, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor at the National Intelligence University, where he teaches courses on Cyber Warfare, WMD-Terrorism, and Intelligence Collection and Analysis. He is also Adjunct Professor at the Georgetown Security Studies Program, School of Foreign Service, and Adjunct Faculty in the Global Security Studies Program at Johns Hopkins University. Dr. Van de Velde is a Lead Associate for the consulting firm, Booz Allen Hamilton, where he currently consults to the J5 (Strategy) Division of US Cyber Command. He is a former White House Appointee under President George H.W. Bush Sr., for nuclear weapons arms control; a former Lecturer of Political Science and Residential College Dean at Yale University; State Department Foreign Service Officer; and naval intelligence reserve officer. Dr. Van de Velde is an Associate Member of the International Institute of Strategic Studies and has held fellowships at the Center for International Security and Arms Control at Stanford University and the US-Japan Program at Harvard University. Dr. Van de Velde received his B.A. from Yale University in 1982 and his Ph.D. from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy in 1988.
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Cyberspace and the Era of Persistent Confrontation - James Van de Velde
Cyberspace and the Era of Persistent Confrontation
A collection of essays on cyber warfare and great power competition via cyberspace,
by the author
JAMES R. VAN DE VELDE, Ph.D., LCDR, USNR
Copyright © 2019 James Van de Velde
ISBN-13: 978-0-578-58751-6
jamesvandevelde@gmail.com
All rights reserved.
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James R. Van de Velde, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor at the National Intelligence University, where he teaches courses on Cyber Warfare, WMD-Terrorism, and Intelligence Collection and Analysis. He is also Adjunct Professor at the Georgetown Security Studies Program, School of Foreign Service, and Adjunct Faculty in the Global Security Studies Program at Johns Hopkins University. Dr. Van de Velde is a Lead Associate for the consulting firm, Booz Allen Hamilton, where he currently consults to the J5 (Strategy) Division of US Cyber Command. He is a former White House Appointee under President George H.W. Bush Sr., for nuclear weapons arms control; a former Lecturer of Political Science and Residential College Dean at Yale University; State Department Foreign Service Officer; and naval intelligence reserve officer. Dr. Van de Velde is an Associate Member of the International Institute of Strategic Studies and has held fellowships at the Center for International Security and Arms Control at Stanford University and the US-Japan Program at Harvard University. Dr. Van de Velde received his B.A. from Yale University in 1982 and his Ph.D. from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy in 1988.
The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Department of Defense or the U.S. Government.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
MAKE CYBERSPACE GREAT AGAIN TOO!
WHAT IF WARFARE TODAY OCCURS ONLY IN PEACETIME?
How Our Adversaries ‘Fight’ In Peacetime
Russia’s Hybrid Warfare Strategy
China’s Salami Slicing Strategy
The Islamic State’s iTerrorism Strategy
How To Fight During Peacetime
Counter Russia
Counter China
Counter Islamic State
WARFARE AND DETERRENCE IN THE ERA OF CYBERSPACE
Is the Cyber Domain Different?
The Fundamentals of Deterrence Do Indeed Apply to Cyberspace
The Danger in Not Inflicting Punishment
Deterring Kinetic Conflict via Cyberspace
CYBERSPACE'S FUTURE IS CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF PERSISTENT AUTHORITARIANISM
WHY ‘CYBER NORMS’ ARE DUMB
‘CRASH THEIR COMMS:’ CONTEST AND DEFEAT THE ISLAMIC STATE’S CUTTING-EDGE USE OF SOCIAL MEDIA
The Islamic State is Online and is OPSEC Savvy
Jihadi Cool
Command and Control Via App
Twitter-storm
A Modern Technology That Serves the Retrograde Islamic State Well
Success at Cyber Jihad 2.0 Suggests Things Are Only Going to Get Worse
What to Do
The Fifth Domain of Warfare Is Here, Whether We Like it or Not
TOP TEN STATEMENTS REGARDING JIHADIST USE OF THE INTERNET DESIGNED SPECIFICALLY TO UPSET MILLENNIALS!
THE MEDIA’S RESPONSIBILITY TO COMBAT TERRORISM VIA CYBERSPACE
HIGH TECH POSEURS
APPLYING CLASSICAL NOTIONS OF STRATEGY TO CYBERSPACE
WHAT COMES AFTER ‘PERSISTENT ENGAGEMENT?’ ‘3G:’ Gates, Guards, and Guns
MAKE CYBERSPACE GREAT AGAIN TOO![1]
President Obama’s reluctance to punish malicious cyberspace actors gave us the cyber world we most wanted to avoid. Malicious governments now see cyberspace as a largely unconstrained space for political maneuver, disinformation, information operations, and occasional destruction; a few governments actively support cyber criminals who advance state interests (mostly against the United States).
Our most dangerous opponents in cyberspace are states, three of which – Russia, China, and North Korea – also use cybercrime as a tool of state power. Nation-states use cyberspace for espionage, industrial theft, coercion, and crime to advance their aims – most importantly, the dismantling of the liberal-democratic world order to replace it with something more favorable to their own interests.
Our opponents adopt unconventional strategies, leveraging cyberspace to ensure that their actions stay below the level that could trigger military conflict. Our adversaries and competitors have embraced cyber warfare precisely to avoid kinetic hostilities with the United States but still achieve their political objectives.
The United States in particular is engaged in almost continuous contact with adversaries in cyberspace, with often-ambiguous legal implications that frequently hamstring our ability to respond. The media has occasionally called it virtual warfare,
but a better term for the situation may be persistent cyberspace confrontation,
or warfare during peacetime.
Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, and the Islamic State/al Qa`ida use cyberspace to pursue a variety of goals, including operations that emplace cyber weapons on our critical infrastructure (both public and private), steal intellectual property, attack US industry, and enable terrorist acts. More recently, Russia has used such methods to interfere in presidential elections (not just in the United States) — a new threshold of audacity and political danger.
The Obama Administration’s hopes that cyberspace would emerge as a peaceful domain where speech was open and free (where the internet would not be regulated or censored by states), and where proprietary and personal information was respected and safe through the acceptance of norms, were unambiguously dashed. Cyberspace is the domain where adversaries come to change the political status quo via information operations, use our infrastructure to steal our information and wealth, and plan and execute terrorism. Adversaries no longer fear competing with us in cyberspace, believing either that we are self-restrained for legal or politically naïve reasons or we are not as capable as they thought we were.
Imagine if the air domain had just emerged and Russian, Chinese, Iranian, and North Korean aircraft flew unmolested above the skies of New York, San Francisco, Washington, DC, and every city and town in the United States, mapping our infrastructure, and stealing modest amounts of US wealth and proprietary information in each pass. Would the US practice good, ‘risk-adverse’ strategy by complaining but doing nothing – not threatening the aircraft, launching our own aircraft inside adversary airspace, or even simply sanctioning such states for their malicious actions? The conventional wisdom of rank and file US Government bureaucrats on cyberspace thinks it is being risk-adverse by not responding aggressively – by not pushing back on malicious cyberspace behavior. They fear escalation. Yet passivity invites escalation, not acceptance of our idealistic goals for cyberspace. Which risks escalation more: to hit a bully back or to not hit a bully back?
During the past few years, the United States found itself reacting late, insufficient, or more often not-at-all to more nimble, authoritarian states. The United States needs to shape the cyber environment in order to affect the norms and behavior we expect: respect for sovereignty, respect for proprietary information, and the inviolability of critical infrastructure, not to mention protect the future gems of the state: intellectual property, data analytics, AI, algorithms, and cognition.
America’s attackers in cyberspace are not interested in conducting a ‘cyber 9/11.’ The Chinese focus on industrial theft to enrich their state and leap frog ahead militarily and commercially. The Russians use cyberspace to pedal false narratives on social media and with international proxies and ‘experts’ to influence elections, leverage criminal groups to steal industrial information and western money, and stealthily emplace code on our civilian infrastructure for industrial espionage and to threaten such infrastructure in a time of crisis or war. Iran and North Korea use cyber operations against American companies to punish states and industry they oppose;[2] their goal is usually political coercion and signaling, though occasionally destruction. The Islamic State/al Qa`ida use the internet to post illegal speech that calls for the murder of innocents and for recruitment, weapons information sharing, inspiration, and crude command and control. Cyberspace is the one military domain where clear boundaries and red lines have not been established or defended by the United States.
China’s Cybersecurity Law requires multinational companies to make data accessible to the Chinese Government and strengthens the Communist regime’s control over web content it considers inappropriate. Internet ‘sovereignty’ to China is freedom from western influence via the internet. Chinese law requires tech companies operating in China to retain consumer data and provide the state access, while also filtering content deemed illegal. China will soon use such data to monitor all Chinese citizens. The tool the West may have thought would open totalitarian regimes has served such regimes very well in maintaining totalitarian control.
China’s cyber law includes now a ban on foreign internet firms unwilling to comply with the country’s policies on content removal — most notably Google, Facebook, and Twitter. This has led to domestic firms essentially imitating western business models, such as Google’s Chinese counterpart, Baidu, or Renren, the Facebook of China, or Weibo and Twitter, while adhering to government restrictions. Perhaps the most important (and protectionist) policy within Chinese law is the requirement that companies cough up their source code so that the government may ensure that it is ‘secure’ and ‘legal.’ The Chinese then steal such source code and provide it to Chinese companies, who integrate it and subsequently push the American firms out of the market. Yet these American firms just cannot help themselves but comply. The US Government ought to admit to these companies that they cannot protect them in China from industrial espionage and that they are most likely to lose their intellectual advantage.[3]
Action in violence-free cyberspace is far easier for authoritarian and totalitarian states to conduct than liberal, consensus-building democracies. In short, the invention once thought as a panacea for advancing free speech and liberal democracy is instead the perfect tool to effect internal political control against dissidents and freedom seekers and asymmetrical warfare against the United States.
Cyberspace is sometimes referred to as the Wild West
precisely because it has not been tamed by the United States and its allies. The shaping of cyberspace requires a combination of international norms promulgated on paper in international forums but also clear, well-signaled responses to unacceptable activities. The United States needs to introduce the concepts of dominating and ‘winning’ in cyberspace, first and foremost to protect internationally accepted notions of property and