Cyberspace in War

Alphanso Adams

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Introduction

In 1942, the United States established an air route within the China-BurmaIndia Theater to supply materiel and people into Japanese-occupied China. The Army’s Signal Corps and Army Airways Communications Service were responsible for establishing communications across the theater and quickly discovered significant obstacles. India, the hub of the air route, lacked an extensive and reliable network to support the modern foreign air force of the United States.1 Aircraft and administrative message transmission became heavily reliant on radio communications, which overloaded the ad hoc network.2 When wired infrastructure was installed, it fell victim to a range of climatic, biological, and human interferences.3 Yet the air-to-ground and base-communications capabilities were critical to the conduct of operations for what was the most dangerous air route in the world.4

Today’s military strategist might be forgiven for perceiving cyberspace as a completely virtual domain, built solely on computer-coded logic and human interactions. Yet, cyberspace is not far beyond the wires and radio frequencies of battlefields 80 years prior. Analyses of the threats within cyberspace often grapple with the consequences of cyber weapons against populations, governments, militaries, and industries.5 Fear of an unsuspecting attack capable of crippling power grids, banking institutions, or military aircraft have contributed to a public consciousness of an impending cyberwar in scale and shock as impactful as the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.6 This perception, however, overlooks a key commonality with those decades-old battlefield challenges. Just as air forces of World War II relied heavily on physical components to transmit information, so too do today’s military forces require physical infrastructure to access cyberspace

The US military, particularly the US Air Force and US Space Force, will need to operate in constrained environments without the level of access to cyberspace it has enjoyed when fighting against technologically inferior military forces. The US Air Force has operated with similar constraints in the past, and I will demonstrate how a combination of transmission technologies were employed to account for physical circumstances on the ground to overcome these constraints and to accomplish military objectives. Specifically, I will examine how the US Air Force addressed the physical challenges of the communications architecture in the Vietnam and Gulf Wars. From these past experiences, I will extrapolate lessons that can apply to cyberspace to help shape military strategies for the future.

Although I have no intention of perpetuating a stovepiped view of cyberspace, I argue the strategist must wrestle to control physical access to cyberspace first before considering operations “in” or “with” cyberspace. Given the gravity of this claim, how can the strategist gain a better understanding of the physical challenges of cyberspace? The first requirement is to understand exactly what is meant by the term “cyberspace.”

Background

Defining cyberspace and exploring its relevance are critical to understanding why it is important in war. The following paragraphs discuss why cyberspace matters as a source of power for states, both politically and economically. Building on this discussion, the work turns then to an explanation of why cyberspace matters to militaries in war.

No universal definition of cyberspace exists, but the most useful for understanding the physical characteristics is: “A global domain within the information environment whose distinctive and unique character is framed by the use of electronics and the electromagnetic spectrum to create, store, modify, exchange, and exploit information via interdependent and interconnected networks using information-communication technologies.”

This definition provides three key insights into the nature of cyberspace. First, unlike other domains, cyberspace is only accessible through electronic means by leveraging the electromagnetic spectrum. Unlike the land, sea, and air domains, cyberspace is not everywhere waiting to be tapped into. Cyberspace is created by man-made equipment that exploits a scientific phenomenon. Second, cyberspace is a critical component of the information environment. The origin of information and the intensity of interactions between physical, virtual, and cognitive dimensions characterizes the cyberspace contribution to the information environment.8 Third, cyberspace is formed through interconnected networks across a distance using information-communication technologies. As Colin Gray succinctly puts it, “Cyber[space] is information and the communication of this information.”

This information and its exchange have become resources driving modern economies. An inability or delay in connecting to the digital commons has an impact on overall economic growth. The United Nations estimates that digital services exports accounted for 50 percent of all global service exports.10 Other analysis measures the digital economy at nearly 15.5 percent of world gross domestic product.11 Additionally, because cyberspace is interconnected, both private and state-owned companies can benefit from first-movers advantage by leveraging information to compound their market position. Like compound interest, digital economies benefit from information on information.12 Because information has become a wealth-generating resource, efforts to exert sovereignty on cyberspace have been pursued by states. Government regulations and laws restricting the location of physical infrastructure needed to mine, store, and process digital information have been adopted in both democratic and communist governments.

Additionally, cyberspace has provided a global venue for political discourse. Globalization and the reach of information has altered the idea of societal community by undermining the nation-state as the principal means of engagement.14 People exchanging information beyond the control of governments gives cyberspace the potential to subvert national identity, disrupt trade, and replace the role of governments as intermediaries between people.15 In response, nation-state leaders have often attempted to restrict the flow of information within their national boundaries with, at times, catastrophic results.

Beyond economics and politics, cyberspace has become critical in war. The military force unable to connect to cyberspace is at an information disadvantage, which could have decisive consequences on the battlefield.17 Modern military forces have become more highly integrated and dependent on the information environment to create asymmetrical advantages in combat power. From Russian General Gareev’s perspective, Operation Desert Storm was such a pairing of “war with the application of ultra-modern multinational forces and war using outdated weapons on the part of Iraq.”18 Against modern forces, Gareev stipulated war could not be won by targeting a fraction of fielded combat forces. Instead, he stated destruction of the enemy’s “common information space,” where intelligence, orientation, command, control, and targeting reside, would be more effective.19 A natural evolution of this thought is the targeting of cyberspace where information exists and digital interactions occur. Attacks directed at cyberspace could become a means to remove an adversary’s asymmetrical information advantage on the battlefield