Commander Frank C. Sanchez, USN, is an Action Officer on the Joint Staff J32, Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance Operations. Major Weilun Lin, USAF, is Chief of the Central and South Asia Branch, Joint Cyberspace Center, U.S. Central Command. Lieutenant Colonel Kent Korunka, USA, is a Joint Intelligence Planner, Joint Planning Support Element, Joint Enabling Capabilities Command, U.S. Transportation Command.
The cyberspace threat exists in a realm that does not conform to the physical limits of land, sea, air, and space. Unlike these traditional domains, cyberspace fosters an unpredictable threat that can adjust, morph, and reproduce without a national identity or face.1 The challenge of the military is to posture its approach to cyberspace and cyberspace threats that are initiated by faceless, borderless, and sometimes nationless enemies. These enemies manifest in a domain neither confined nor governed by the traditional norms and rules of war, which the broader military has no experience undertaking. To ensure the United States maintains cyberspace dominance and can foresee, rapidly respond to, and counter cyberspace threats, the U.S. military’s strategy and approach to cyberspace must adapt and incorporate unconventional approaches and hybrid warfare into its operational capability.
Despite its importance, the Nation’s leaders, strategists, and military planners struggle to understand how cyberspace operations (CO) fit into national security as an instrument of national policy. A significant shortcoming is due to the leaders’ lack of experience and basic understanding of what cyberspace is and what effects can be achieved in the cyber realm. Unlike the younger generation, who are considered digital natives, the majority of national and military leaders and military planners are considered digital immigrants. Popularized by Marc Prensky, the phrase digital natives refers to the generation who grew up using digital technology, and digital immigrants refer to the generation born before the advent of technology (circa the 1980s) but later adopted its use.2 While digital immigrants lack cyber knowledge, many of them understand irregular warfare (IW) and the value and importance of special operations. The many similarities shared by IW and cyber warfare (CW) can establish a foundation to guide U.S. leaders in the execution of cyberspace operations to maintain cyber superiority.
Early cyber power theorists generally recognized three key terms: cyberspace, cyber power, and cyber strategy.3 As the cyberspace domain matures, cyber theorists and thinkers still have not reached the appropriate definitions of these key terms. An understanding of irregular warfare fosters a rudimentary knowledge of cyber warfare. By highlighting how irregular warfare and cyber warfare are similar and providing the critical framework for using IW principles to approach, define, and integrate cyberspace operations across all domains and Services, U.S. leaders can begin to understand how cyber power can increase the effectiveness of the broader U.S. military cyber force.
Irregular Warfare and Cyber Warfare Interlinked
Special operations have a long, storied, and varied history within the U.S. military, including, for example, Roger’s Rangers, the assault of Pont-du-hoc, and Operation Eagle Claw. Colonel Joseph Celeski, USA (Ret.), noted that the Joint Special Operations University Special Operations Forces (SOF)-Power Workshop concluded that special operations is “a multi- and cross-domain force, capable of conducting or supporting conventional or unconventional operations on various levels leading to or supporting military and political outcomes.”4 Members of the workshop listed the following characteristics of the SOF operational environment:
A complex operating environment marked by instability and ambiguity; acts of violence, influence, and leverage are conducted in a nonlinear and often indirect way and include low-level operations of subtlety and guile.5
A high-risk, highly sensitive environment, in which there is high personal and political risk in conducting operations.6
An irregular warfare environment characterized by intra-state and sub-state acts of political violence, plus insurgency, subversion, violent political action, and terrorism.7
Joint Publication 3-05, Special Operations, described the special operations environment as “hostile, denied, or politically and/or diplomatically sensitive . . . and . . . characterized by one or more of the following: time-sensitivity, clandestine or covert nature, low visibility, work with or through indigenous forces, greater requirements for regional orientation and cultural expertise, and a higher degree of risk.”8
Cyberspace shares similarities with special operations due to its complexity and actors. The new global domain of cyberspace relies on the connected information technology infrastructure that includes all the automation and networked system components through which information or content flows or is stored.9 Cyberspace operations are conducted in the physical network, logical network, and cyber-persona layers of the cyberspace domain.10 The ease of entry into cyberspace allows individual actors, criminal organizations, and small groups to operate in the cyberspace environment on a similar level as nation-states and transnational organizations. The anonymity and lack of attribution afforded actors in the cyberspace domain resemble the covert or clandestine aspects of SOF.
The cyber domain threatens regional and national security in ways that are uncommon in the other traditional domains of land, sea, air, and space.11 As a result, bad actors in cyberspace range from individual hackers and criminal enterprises to violent extremist organizations and nation-states. Bad actors steal information for personal or national gain for reasons that include profit, intelligence, denial of services, or to inflict damage on critical infrastructure. Within the traditional domains, these types of actions are relatively recognizable and easier to classify as acts of war, but in cyberspace the underlying intent and attribution of a cyber attack are difficult to discern.
Past thinkers and strategists have identified other similarities between special operations and cyber operations. Eric Trias and Bryan Bell wrote, “The inherently clandestine nature of special operations parallels the ease of conducting stealthy cyber operations.”12 Patrick Duggan proposed that “cyber-warfare is, at its core, human-warfare” and “requires SOF’s unique human expertise, unconventional mindsets, and discreet asymmetric options.”13 Most notably, Jim Chen and Alan Dinerman presented a framework to compare and contrast the similarities between conventional warfare and cyber warfare. Using factors borrowed from other authors, Chen and Dinerman created a matrix to facilitate the discussion of the cyber warfare capabilities compared to conventional warfare.14 An adaptation of their findings is reflected in the table, which includes IW for comparison and contrast, in order to highlight the similarities between CW and IW. While not entirely inclusive of all aspects and characteristics of each warfare, the table illustrates the strong parallels between cyber warfare and irregular warfare.
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