Indian Strategic Studies: 02/01/19

1 February 2019

Indian Muslims: A Valuable Prize for Regional Rivals

By Dr. James M. Dorsey

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: The hearts and minds of Indian Muslims would be a valuable prize for Saudi Arabia and Turkey as they vie for leadership of the Muslim world. This is particularly true in the wake of the October 2 killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, which catapulted the rivalry to center stage.

When President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan recently declared that Turkey was “the only country that can lead the Muslim world,” he probably wasn’t only thinking of Middle Eastern and other Islamic states such as Pakistan and Bangladesh. There is growing evidence that Indian Muslims, the Islamic world’s fourth-largest community after Indonesia and the South Asian states, is on Erdoğan’s radar.

Erdoğan’s interest in Indian Muslims highlights the flip side of a shared Turkish and Indian experience: the rise of religious parties and leaders with a tendency towards authoritarianism in non-Western democracies that, according to Turkey and India scholar Sumantra Bose, calls into question their commitment to secularism.

Can the Afghan Peace Process Succeed?

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BY MOHAMMAD SHOAIB HAIDARY

Talks with the Taliban must include long-term, patient efforts to negotiate and resolve the disagreements between the Afghans on the issue of peace.

In 2018, Afghanistan witnessed rapid changes in the ongoing peace process. In early February, President Ashraf Ghani extended an unconditional peace offer to the Taliban. The war on terror in Afghanistan has continued for the past 17 years, at a cost of an estimated 38,480 civilian lives, with some 28,000 Afghan military personnel killed between 2015 and 2018 alone, and, by 2018, a $45-billion bill for the United States. In June 2018, a three-day ceasefire has been announced across the country for the first time since 2001, when the Taliban was toppled by the US-led invasion.

The United States brought in Zalmay Khalilzad, former US ambassador to Afghanistan, Iraq and the UN, as a special envoy for peace in Afghanistan to end America’s longest war. On November 9, 2018, Russia hosted a peace conference, with representatives from both the Afghan government and the Taliban attending a meeting at a luxury hotel in Moscow.

'Hopeful Moment': What An 'Afghan-Led, Afghan-Owned' Peace Process Might Look Like

By Ron Synovitz

After six days of talks in Qatar with Taliban representatives, the U.S. special envoy on Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, announced on January 28 that an agreement had been reached on a "framework" peace process to end the 17-year Afghan war.

Khalilzad said the agreement calls for the Taliban to prevent international terrorist groups from basing themselves in Afghanistan and for the United States to withdraw its forces from the country.

RFE/RL spoke with Graeme Smith, an Afghanistan analyst for the International Crisis Group, about what the implications of the development are for an Afghan-led peace process.

RFE/RL: Despite agreeing to a "framework" for future peace talks, the Taliban has yet to make concessions on two key U.S. demands -- implementing a cease-fire and agreeing to negotiate directly with Afghan government representatives as part of an Afghan-led, intra-Afghan peace process. Can these key issues be resolved?

The lesson we should learn from the killing fields of Afghanistan and Yemen

By David Ignatius

The handmaiden of peace is exhaustion. We are seeing that lesson in the killing fields of Afghanistan and Yemen.

Fragile peace agreements are emerging in both conflicts, thanks to skillful diplomats. There are a hundred reasons each negotiation may fail, and in assessing Middle East conflicts, we should remember that, unfortunately, “pessimism pays,” as my former Wall Street Journal colleague Karen Elliott House observed nearly 40 years ago.

But a process has started: Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. special envoy, said Monday, “We have a draft of the [peace] framework that has to be fleshed out.” A senior Gulf official told a Washington gathering Monday night that because of U.N. mediation efforts, “We are at the beginning of the end in Yemen,” and that the war there is now moving from a military to a political phase.

Peace pragmatism among the Afghan Taliban

While the Taliban continue to display strength through lethal attacks in Afghanistan, some important steps have also been taken to find a settlement. Interviews with Taliban leaders, commanders and foot soldiers highlight an unprecedented momentum, calling for the international community to identify ways to support the Afghan peace and reconciliation process.

Afghanistan continues to face harsh challenges. Even though the Taliban remain united under their current leadership, significant internal developments have taken place, including defections and divisions, but also their changing approach towards the future of Afghanistan. The Taliban interviewed for this report display a high degree of pragmatism towards their original vision of an emirate, and the report questions whether radical opposition to democracy truly defines their identity. Instead it appears that their primary raison d’être is the liberation of Afghanistan, and that they do not reject the idea of elections. They are less concerned with sectarian interpretations or resistance to democracy than to ending the ’US occupation’ and the practice of decisions being ’taken by the occupiers’. Positive developments in the recent past, including overtures by the Afghan government and a willingness on the part of both the US and the Taliban to engage directly with each other, indicate moderate progress towards a negotiated settlement.

EAST ASIA’S DECOUPLING

ROLAND RAJAH

Heightened global trade tensions and the US desire to ‘decouple’ from the Chinese economy for national security reasons pose significant risks to East Asia’s export-driven growth model.

However, the latest data suggests East Asia is no longer so dependent on exporting to the West, with China in particular eclipsing the United States as the leading source of ‘final demand’ for the rest of the region’s exports.

This gives East Asia much greater room to manoeuvre, as regional integration is now a more viable platform for growth while US decoupling efforts will likely struggle to find traction in the region.

ABSTRACT

A decade ago, East Asia’s economies were largely geared towards serving Western export markets. Trade within the region was dominated by parts and components that went into products still primarily destined for the United States and Europe. But, as this working paper shows, recently updated data from the OECD suggests that is no longer the case. East Asia is now driving its own demand. Behind this development has been the huge expansion in Chinese demand, which has now eclipsed the United States as the leading source of ‘final demand’ for the rest of the region. As a result, East Asia is somewhat less vulnerable to rising US–China trade tensions than commonly thought. More importantly, regional integration efforts, including the Belt and Road Initiative, are now more viable platforms for securing future economic growth, even if the rest of the world turns inwards. The key question is whether these opportunities can be capitalised on by deepening economic integration. Finally, with China cementing itself at the core of East Asia’s heavily integrated economy, any US decoupling effort aimed at pushing other East Asian economies to forgo closer economic relations with China will inevitably struggle.

The challenge of one world, two systems

Martin Wolf

The accelerating breakdown in relations between China and the US is the most significant current event. How is this to be managed, given today’s global interdependence?

Three recent pieces of evidence reveal alarm over the rise of China to its current status as the world’s “junior superpower”, in the words of Yan Xuetong of Tsinghua University. One is the campaign against Huawei, standard bearer for Chinese technological ambitions, which must be viewed in the context of the US trade war with China and its description of the latter as a “strategic competitor”. Another is a paper from the free trade-oriented BDI, Germany’s leading industry association, which labels China a “partner and systemic competitor”. The last is the description of Xi Jinping’s China by George Soros as “the most dangerous opponent of those who believe in the concept of open society”.

This, then, is a point on which a nationalist US administration, German free-traders and a noteworthy proponent of liberal ideas agree: China is no friend. At best, it is an uncomfortable partner; at worst, it is a hostile power.

Rare Earths and China: A Review of Changing Criticality in the New Economy

China’s dominance in the production of rare earth elements symbolizes the competition for once obscure sets of mineral resources in our increasingly digital, low carbon world.

For the last two decades China has produced between 80 and 95 percent of the world’s rare earths – a group of 17 metals that have become key components of revolutionary technological progress in fields ranging from energy, to ICT, to medical devices, to defense. Despite their name, rare earths are not rare, and can be found across the globe. Environmental concerns, which spiked in the 1970s and 80s notably in the United States and Europe, liberalized global trade, and Chinese policies designed to harness the country’s resource wealth are primarily responsible for the concentrated production of these metals.

The China dream: America’s, China’s, and the resulting competition

Gary J. Schmitt

Although changes in American and Chinese leadership have brought current tensions between the two nations to the fore, the underlying reasons for the tensions are not tied to either President Donald Trump or President Xi Jinping coming into office.

Rather, the strategic competition between the US and China is principally the product of regime-driven differences over both what constitutes their national interests and what their respective visions were for the character of China’s rise.

The administration’s Indo-Pacific strategy is a relatively coherent response to the challenge China poses. But questions remain about the administration’s ability to resource it sufficiently and carry it out steadily given President Trump’s own idiosyncratic America First policy views.

The Growing Popularity of Chinese Social Media Outside China Poses New Risks in the West

Claudia Biancotti

Chinese technology firms have developed a variety of social media outlets in the last few years. Some are wildly popular at home, while failing to attract foreign users. This indifference outside of China changed in 2018, as a Chinese app similar to Instagram made the first significant foray into the Western market. It even became popular among the US armed forces.

The overseas penetration of Chinese social media poses a substantial security problem, however. Social apps gather a lot of data on users; if this information is sent to China, it can be easily accessed by the government and leveraged, say, to make Beijing’s surveillance software better at recognizing Western faces, or at extracting intelligence on Western military activities. US and EU authorities have not paid sufficient attention to these risks.

China and the Challenges of the Fourth Industrial Revolution: Value Chains, 5G, and Emerging Markets

Marcin Przychodniak

China and the Challenges of the Fourth Industrial Revolution: Value Chains, 5G, and Emerging Markets

China has identified the ongoing digital revolution as its first opportunity in modern times to compete with other international powers, especially the U.S. The competition serves as the driving force for enhancing innovation and finding new sources of growth for the Chinese economy. The advantage of technological development is that it will allow China to become a “major cyber power,” introduce its own technological standards worldwide, raise its position in global value chains, and influence the world economy. But the process is seriously challenged by the change in China’s relations with the U.S., concerns in the EU about Chinese investments as well as domestic centralisation of power.

Is Trump baiting Iran into an armed confrontation?

by Ted Regencia

With US President Donald Trump's top diplomat ramping up his campaign to confront Iran's "malevolent influence" in the Middle East, and his top national security adviser reportedly seeking military options to attack the Islamic Republic, Iranobservers are warning the US may be provoking Tehran into an armed conflict that could quickly spread to the whole region.

Sina Toossi, a Washington, DC-based security and nuclear policy analyst, said the Trump administration's Iran policy now "seems firmly under the control of hardliners" such as US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and National Security Adviser John Bolton, both of whom had previously advocated regime change in Iran.

The Strategy Washington Is Pursuing in the Middle East Is the Only Strategy Worth Pursuing

MICHAEL DORAN

President Trump’s surprise December 19 announcement of an immediate withdrawal of American forces from Syria hit some Israelis like a sucker punch. “With this withdrawal, the United States abandons Syria and leaves Israel alone,” said Yaakov Amidror, a former national-security adviser to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. While conceding that “the effect of the U.S. decision is primarily psychological and diplomatic,” Amidror continued: “In those arenas, this is a very significant decision.” Subsequent reports to the effect that the drawdown of forces will be slower than originally announced and coordinated with America’s allies have softened the blow, but the shock still remains.

In retrospect, the announcement shouldn’t have come as a surprise. After all, Trump has never hidden his conviction that extended military operations in the Middle East are futile. He campaigned on the theme in 2016 and then returned to it last April. The United States, he declared then, had “spent $7 trillion in the Middle East in the last seven years. We get nothing out of it, nothing.” To this general observation, he added a specific promise: “We’ll be coming out of Syria . . . very soon. Let the other people take care of it now.”

The Trends in Islamic Extremism: Factors Affecting the Future Threat

By Anthony H. Cordesman

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It is far from clear that Al Qaida or ISIS can ever be fully defeated. The ISIS “caliphate” may be largely broken up, but substantial elements of both movements remain. New movements may emerge, and other movements may grow, and the demographic trends of Muslim-majority countries are a powerful warning that extremism may be a threat for decades to come.

The Focus of the Briefing

This briefing focuses on several key trends in Islamic extremism and terrorism. In the process, it addresses an extraordinarily complex and uncertain mix of variables – ones where there is little agreement among experts on the relative nature and importance of any given factor, much less how they interact, and the relative importance of any given one on the overall mix of forces that are shaping the future of the trends in violent Islamic extremism.

Why the UAE's Short-Term Labor Fix Will Create Long-Term Problems

A confluence of factors has slowed the United Arab Emirates' ability to attract and retain the number of temporary foreign workers it once did, dampening the country's ability to offset its slowing economy.

Recent reforms introduced by Abu Dhabi will be met with pushback from the country's minority native population — risking further divisions between richer southern emirates and the more oil-deprived northern ones.

In the shorter term, this will lead the government to consider rolling back these reforms and extend economic subsidies and cultural privileges to protect Emirati citizens' elevated social status.

In the longer term, rising divisions among north-south lines could lead to a restructuring of the country's political system, threatening its traditionally stable and business-friendly reputation.

The Russian Crisis

By George Friedman

Vladimir Putin failed to keep his promise to create a modern economy. Now he has to pay the price.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s trust rating has fallen to its lowest point in 13 years. According to a poll conducted by the Russian Public Opinion Research Center, only 33 percent of Russians said they trusted the president. Polls can be unreliable and opinions fickle, but a survey like this in a country like Russia can be an indicator of deep discontent arising from significant social and economic problems.

Hope Fades

Over a quarter of a century ago, the Soviet Union fell because things stopped working. The state was the center of society and managed the economy. After Josef Stalin died, there was a sense of hope in Russian society about the economy – and that hope sustained the government, even when it failed to meet expectations. But by the 1980s, ordinary Russians’ belief that they could provide for their families and that the gulf between them and the nomenklatura (or bureaucratic elite) would diminish had faded. What changed their minds was not envy or anger – Russians had grown to expect a certain level of inequality – but a lack of hope. They had little and were not going to get more. Worst of all, they lacked hope for their children.

Hackers Turn the Tables on Russia

By Amy Mackinnon, Elias Groll

Russian government officials are getting a taste of their own medicine. A new site that collects hacked and leaked material from around the web late last week published a major collection of documents and emails belonging to Russian government officials and oligarchs.

On Friday, a site calling itself Distributed Denial of Secrets published a 108-gigabyte archive dubbed the “Dark Side of the Kremlin,” which includes emails and documents from the Russian Interior Ministry, the Russian weapons exporter Rosoboronexport, and Kremlin officials, oligarchs, and separatist forces in eastern Ukraine. The trove is the result of numerous hacks conducted by various groups in Russia and Ukraine in recent years.

The Russian documents and emails “show how the Russian power system is interconnected, and documents influence operations in real time—from those separatists/terrorists backed by Russia to those in the Orthodox and business worlds,” said Emma Best, the co-founder of Distributed Denial of Secrets and a journalist and transparency activist, in message to Foreign Policy.

WHAT IF....? SCANNING THE HORIZON: 12 SCENARIOS FOR 2021

Florence Gaub

Foresight is about choice, decision and action – and not, as is repeated time and again, predicting the future and getting it wrong.

This Chaillot Paper aims to alert decision-makers to potential developments with significant strategic impact while they can still prepare for, or even avoid them. This is done using two methods combined: horizon-scanning as well as single scenario-building. Taken together, they produce plausible events set in 2021 – with strategic ramifications well beyond that. All 12 scenarios in this Chaillot Paper reflect the expertise and imagination of the researchers who wrote them: some explore potential conflicts, while others look at disruptive political developments, or indeed at crises with significant ramifications.

That said, all are designed in the hope of drawing attention to foreign and security policy aspects which are potentially overlooked, and all are extrapolated from ongoing and recent developments. Download document

PUTIN'S LAST TERM: TAKING THE LONG VIEW

Putin has dominated Russia since 1999. He now faces many problems, including how to transfer power, if at all. The West should prepare for change – or for no change.

Vladimir Putin has dominated the Russian political scene since 1999. But he is now in what should be his final term as president. He faces economic, social and foreign policy problems; and he has to decide what will happen at the end of his term of office.

#Putin has dominated the #Russian political scene since 1999. How will he deal with the economic and other problems that #Russia now faces, and what will he do when his term of office ends?

The performance of the Russian economy in recent years has been mixed. Inflation has fallen, foreign reserves have risen and the ruble’s exchange rate is relatively stable; but growth has been anaemic and real disposable incomes have fallen.

The Changing Role of Energy in the U.S. Economy

The Energy in America workshop series examines how energy impacts the U.S. economy at multiple levels and the changing role of energy development on job creation, evaluating whether policy makers have the right tools and capabilities to create more economic opportunity through energy policies and investments.

Our first workshop, Energy in America: The Changing Role of Energy in the U.S. Economy, was held in Fall 2018. We focused on the role of energy in the U.S. economy at the national, regional, and local levels, assessing the economic consequences of multiple energy pathways, such as increased energy exportation or further low-carbon development. The workshop speakers and participants then examined some of the key economic impacts of energy regulations and policies, including labor effects, economic distortions, and impacts on higher education. To help frame these discussions, several workshop speakers produced a series of white papers available below.

Amid the Trauma of War, Chronic Diseases Should Not Be Forgotten

Dr Sylvia Garry, Rachel Thompson

From starving children in Yemen to bombed-out hospitals in Syria, today’s media offers many images depicting the impacts of conflict on health. Where conflicts occur, international and local aid workers rush to treat the wounded and assist with essential food supplies and vaccinations.

However, many people in humanitarian crises also suffer and die from chronic diseases, which now account for 7 in 10 of all deaths worldwide. Conflicts contaminate the air and water, reduce access to nutritious food and create stressful living conditions. This makes people sicker and more susceptible to chronic illness. At the same time, health workers flee, hospitals are targeted and there are medication shortages.

Venezuela’s Presidential Crisis and the Transition to Democracy

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The Origin of the Presidential Crisis

Venezuela’s presidential crisis is caused by the absence of an elected president that can assume the presidency since January 10, 2019, the day that, according to the Venezuelan Constitution, a new presidential term began.

Articles 230 and 231 of Venezuela’s constitution establish that the presidential term begins on January 10 of each term (the inauguration day). That day, according to the constitution, the elected president must assume the presidency through an oath presented at the National Assembly (the Venezuelan Congress.

Nicolás Maduro is claiming that he is the elected president because the Venezuelan electoral authority (the National Electoral Council) proclaimed him as Venezuela’s president after the May 20 election.

Counter Terrorist Trends and Analyses (CTTA) – Volume 11 Issue 1

The January issue focuses on an overview of the terrorist and violent extremist threats in key countries and conflict zones in the Asia-Pacific throughout 2018. The articles discuss the regional terrorism threat and responses in Southeast Asia, South Asia, Central Asia, China and the Middle East. Thematically, the articles also analyse online extremism and the counter-ideology dimensions of terrorism and violent extremism in 2019.

The lead article argues that global terrorist and extremist threat is likely to persist in 2019 as the Islamic State (IS) is going through a phase of readaptation and decentralisation. The group has established clandestine and underground structures to survive in Iraq and Syria. Its ideology is still intact and continues to be propagated in the cyber space. In the provinces, groups, networks and cells which have pledged allegiance to IS leader Abu Bakr al Baghdadi are radicalising Muslims and conducting attacks. Harnessing both the physical and virtual space, IS continues to present an enduring threat worldwide. Although the apex of IS leadership and many of the directing figures are on the run and might be eliminated in 2019, the penultimate leadership enabling the fight and supporting the infrastructure will continue to operate in the shadows as they become agile and more cunning. The IS and Al-Qaeda (AQ)-centric threats are likely to remain given the lack of an effective global counter terrorism plan and strategy, the continuation of superpower and geopolitical rivalry, and the failure to resolve the underlying causes of extremism and terrorism.

Without a clearer ethics policy, the US could lose the military tech battle with China

By: Jill Aitoro

WESTLAKE VILLAGE, Calif. — Nearly three decades after the Cold War ended, a new strategy of containment is underway at the Pentagon.

Innovation leaders from the Pentagon and Silicon Valley spoke about that strategy to hold back China from military technology domination during a roundtable hosted by Defense News just outside of Simi Valley, California. All participants emphasized the need for thoughtful tactics to lure support from the most advanced minds.

“It’s not about us and China. It’s a world order,” said Hawk Carlisle, CEO of the National Defense Industrial Association and a former U.S. Air Force four-star general. “China would like the world order to change to fit their vision of what it should look like, which is authoritarian in many ways."

Why cyberwar is contributing to a potential doomsday

By: Justin Lynch

A wave of new cyberattacks and an increase in information warfare tactics are helping to create an existential threat to humanity, according to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, who said in their annual report that its Doomsday Clock “is two minutes to midnight.”

The group of top researchers, scientists and thinkers warned Jan. 24 that the world is in a “new abnormal” state of crisis that is comparable when the United States pursued the hydrogen bomb in 1952. Since 1947, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has released a report that uses the clock as an indicator of how close the world is to an existential threat to humanity, or midnight.

As institutions and government agencies face a proliferation of hacking ― attacks that often undercut humanity’s trust in those organizations ― the new fears fuel the state of crisis, said Herb Lin, senior research scholar for cyber policy and security at Stanford University and contributor to the report.

Protecting Weapon Systems through Improved Cyber Resilience

The same highly connected, automated cyber capabilities that give U.S. soldiers, airmen, sailors, and marines an edge over potential adversaries also create critical vulnerabilities. Because of a decades-long effort by the Department of Defense (DoD) to automate and connect weapon systems, they are highly software-dependent and networked, creating vast and complex cyberattack surfaces, extending well beyond weapon systems and subsystems to include the many ancillary systems they connect to. Nearly all U.S. weapon systems functions are now enabled by computers, and they were not built with the complex cyber threats we face today in mind. This means all capabilities – from powering a system on and off, to targeting missiles, to flying aircrafts – are at risk of exploitation.

TRAINING THE MACHINES: INCORPORATING AI INTO LAND COMBAT SYSTEMS

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Recent developments in artificial intelligence (AI), or machine learning, have the potential to revolutionize how humans interact with technology. Rather than merely responding to direct inputs in predefined ways, systems that can sort through vast amounts of data and refine their network structures are rapidly improving their ability to predict and categorize. These advances are driven primarily by the massive quantity of information that can be captured and correlated. The more data that is integrated, the more precise the model becomes—whether it is driving patterns on city roads, overhead imagery of farm fields or medical scans of disease-prone organs. AI also has broad military applications, ranging from cybersecurity to aviation maintenance diagnostics to higher echelon military intelligence analysis. Its potential in military applications, however, is sharply limited by the rarity of war. Lacking real-world data to train on and unable to draw from historical cases, AI-enabled land combat systems may be severely limited in their effectiveness, especially in the critical opening phases of war.

Government Responses to Malicious Use of Social Media

Since 2016, at least 43 countries around the globe have proposed or implemented regulations specifically designed to tackle different aspects of influence campaigns, including both real and perceived threats of fake news, social media abuse, and election interference. Some governments are in the early stages of designing regulatory measures specifically for digital contexts so they can tackle issues related to the malicious use of social media. For others, existing legal mechanisms regulating speech and information are already well established, and the digital aspect merely adds an additional dimension to law enforcement.

Our research team conducted an analysis of proposed or implemented regulations and identified a number of interventions. Some measures target social media platforms, requiring them to take down content, improve transparency, or tighten data protection mechanisms. Other measures focus on civil actors and media organisations, on supporting literacy and advocacy efforts, and on improving standards for journalistic content production and dissemination. A third group of interventions target governments themselves, obligating them to invest in security and defence programs that combat election interference, or to initiate formal inquiries into such matters. Finally, a fourth group of interventions take aim at the criminalisation of automated message generation and disinformation. Read the full report here.

China, Russia Building Super-EMP Bombs for ‘Blackout Warfare’

BY: Bill Gertz

Several nations, including China and Russia, are building powerful nuclear bombs designed to produce super-electromagnetic pulse (EMP) waves capable of devastating all electronics—from computers to electric grids—for hundreds of miles, according to a newly-released congressional study.

A report by the now-defunct Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from EMP Attack, for the first time reveals details on how nuclear EMP weapons are integrated into the military doctrines of China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran.

The report discloses how those states could use EMP attacks in theaters of battle in the Middle East, Far East, Europe, and North America.

VICTORY OVER AND ACROSS DOMAINS: Training For Tomorrow’s Battlefields

Jennifer McArdle

Today's U.S. military is an information-dependent force, one that is wholly reliant on information communication technology (ICT) for current and future military operations. The adaptation and integration of ICTs into weapons platforms, military systems, and concepts of operation has put the battle for information control at the heart of military affairs. Although the use of ICT exponentially increases the lethality of the U.S. military, the dependence on these technologies is, in many ways, also a vulnerability. U.S. competitors plan to employ a range of cyber and informationized capabilities to undermine the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of U.S. and allied information.

It is impossible to deny an adversary's ability to shape aspects of the information environment, to include spoofing and sabotaging ICT-based warfighting systems. The U.S. military's goal should instead be to sustain military operations in spite of a denied, disrupted, or subverted information environment. This requires a paradigm shift away from information assurance to mission assurance. U.S. warfighters should be trained to fight in and through an increasingly contested and complex battlespace saturated by adversary cyber and information operations. This report engages in a detailed analysis of current and future cyber and informationized training for the non-cyber warfighter. It provides initial recommendations as to how training systems, scenarios, models, and simulations can evolve to better reflect the complexities of a rapidly changing information-rich combat environment.

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