Expert: Air Force, Other Services Need to Embrace Cyber as Weapon of War

Shaun Waterman

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The Air Force and its fellow military services need to stop thinking about cyber as a technology issue and focus on learning how to use it as a weapon of war, the U.S. Navy’s former top cyber advisor Chris Cleary said Sept 16.

“I still think all the services are struggling as to how they’re going to embrace cyber,” Cleary told Air & Space Forces Magazine after speaking on a panel about cyber dominance at AFA’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference.

“You talk about cyber dominance, and people start talking about Zero Trust and what the [Chief Information Officers] do,” said Cleary, now a vice president with defense contractor ManTech. “No. This is about warfighting.”

Earlier, Cleary told the panel, moderated by Department of the Air Force CIO Venice Goodwine, that military cyber operators need to start thinking and talking about the ways that cyber tools could be used to inflict damage on the enemy.

“What is our business?” he asked, “The Department of Defense exists fundamentally for two reasons, to deliver lethality or prevent lethality from being delivered upon us.”