Indian Strategic Studies: 09/21/24

21 September 2024

Next steps for UK–India defence and technology cooperation

Rahul Roy-Chaudhury & Simran Brookes

For over a decade, the British and Indian governments have been talking about ‘realising the potential’ of their relationship. Now appears the opportune time to do so. The UK’s new Labour government led by Sir Keir Starmer seeks to enhance its ties with India, having included establishing a new strategic partnership with New Delhi as a manifesto commitment. India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, at the start of his third five-year term, also remains committed to elevating bilateral ties. But doing so, especially in both the defence and technology spheres, will require partnership with industry, research and innovation centres and academia.

Growing political and military tiesEven before the UK election, there have been positive developments in the bilateral relationship in 2024. India’s defence minister and external intelligence chief visited the UK after a gap of 22 and six years, respectively. Both foreign ministers and national security advisors have also been meeting regularly. Within three weeks of his appointment as foreign secretary, David Lammy visited New Delhi on 24 July during his first trip to the Indo-Pacific. While it is not yet clear if Starmer’s government will continue the UK’s ‘tilt’ towards the Indo-Pacific, his administration does seek to maintain its commitment to the region, in which the UK has significant economic interests.

Inside the Afghanistan Evacuation in 2021: An Ambassador’s Perspective

Robert Riley

In over four decades of serving as an ambassador, Foreign Service Officer, and staffer in public and private international service organizations, I have lived through countless diplomatic challenges and crises. But nothing could have prepared me for the gravity of what unfolded during the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in the summer of 2021. The rapid collapse of the Afghan government and security forces left behind chaos and uncertainty, creating an urgent mission to save our Afghan allies and American citizens stranded in the country. While many have focused on the politics and optics of the withdrawal, my colleagues and I worked tirelessly in the trenches, combining every resource we had at our disposal to ensure their safe passage.

Setting the Scene: A Historic Withdrawl from Afghanistan

This is a story of unsung heroes, public and private entities, volunteers, and ordinary citizens who stepped up. Using office software, satellite maps, messaging apps, and even secret codes to hide our intentions from the Taliban, we worked collectively to guide thousands of people to safety. What we accomplished was nothing short of a miracle, but it was not without immense challenges—many of which were shaped by decisions made long before the final withdrawal.

Philippines says disputed reef 'not lost' to China despite pullout

The Philippines insisted on Monday (Sep 16) that it had not given up a South China Sea reef, two days after it pulled out a ship stationed there following a months-long standoff with rival claimant China.

Manila had deployed the coast guard flagship BRP Teresa Magbanua to Sabina Shoal in April to stop Beijing from building an artificial island there, as it has atop several other disputed spots in the strategic waterway.

But the ship was abruptly called back to the western Philippine island of Palawan, with Manila citing damage from an earlier clash with Chinese ships, ailing crew members, dwindling food and bad weather.

"We have not lost anything. We did not abandon anything. Escoda Shoal is still part of our exclusive economic zone," Philippine Coast Guard spokesman Commodore Jay Tarriela told a news conference Monday, using the Filipino name for Sabina Shoal.

Beijing claims most of the South China Sea, including Sabina Shoal, despite an international tribunal ruling that its assertions have no merit.

Where Capitalism Is Working

Ruchir Sharma

Widespread disaffection with the current capitalist systems has led many countries, rich and poor, to look for new economic models. Defenders of the status quo continue to hold up the United States as a shining star, its economy outpacing Europe and Japan, its financial markets as dominant as ever. Yet its citizens are as pessimistic as any in the West. Barely more than a third of Americans believe that they will ever be richer than their parents. The share that trusts the government keeps trending downward, even as the state builds an ever more generous safety net. Seventy percent of Americans now say that the system “needs major changes or to be torn down entirely,” and the younger generations are the most frustrated. More Americans under 30 have a more positive view of socialism than of capitalism.

In countries with emerging economies, it has been a shock to see “the land of the free” abandon its traditional skepticism of centralized power and planning and instead promote big government solutions. Many of these countries, from India to Poland, have not forgotten their own failed trysts with socialism. They were surprised when U.S. President Donald Trump led a revolt against free trade and open borders, and when his successor, Joe Biden, began promoting what National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan called an “economic mentality that champions building.”

And they can no longer look for inspiration to China. The “economic miracle” that began after the Communist Party started ceding power to the private sector in the late 1970s is faltering under leader Xi Jinping. China has returned to its old command-and-control ways, punishing businesses who grow too powerful in the eyes of the ruling party. Weighed down by heavy debts, an aging population, and an overreaching state, China’s economy has fallen off the miracle path.

Explaining China’s Diffusion Deficit – Analysis

Jeffrey Ding

Why Diffusion Capacity?

Why is it so important to distinguish between a state’s capacity to bring forth new-to-the-world inventions and its capacity to adopt innovations at scale? When there is a substantial gap between these two variables, assessments based solely on innovation capacity indicators will prove misleading because they undervalue the process by which new advances are embedded into productive processes. Specifically, a “diffusion deficit” characterizes situations when a state has a strong innovation capacity but weak diffusion capacity, which suggests that it is less likely to sustain its rise than innovation-centric assessments depict.

In many cases, there is not much daylight between a state’s diffusion capacity and its innovation capacity. These two parameters can be highly correlated. After all, the state that first pioneered a new method has a first-mover advantage in the widespread adoption of that technique. In addition, absorbing innovations from international sources is difficult without the tacit knowledge embedded in the original context of technological development. Diffusion and innovation are entangled, overlapping processes.

Russian and Chinese strategic missile defense: Doctrine, capabilities, and development

Jacob Mezey

Introduction

The purpose and composition of the United States’ homeland and regional missile defenses has long been the subject of a divisive public debate. In 1973, just a year after the landmark Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty was signed, noted strategic forces scholars Bernard and Fawn Brodie wrote that the “whole ABM question touched off so intense and emotional a debate in this country as to be virtually without precedent on any issue of weaponry.1 This debate continued through the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), the passage of the 1999 National Missile Defense Act, the George W. Bush administration’s subsequent withdrawal from the ABM Treaty, and has now received renewed attention in the recently released report of the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States.2

The primary point of contention in this debate—besides the cost and effectiveness of missile defense programs—has been the reaction of the United States’ main nuclear-armed strategic rivals, Russia and China. Critics have argued that US defenses against intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) could generate an arms-race dynamic either by forcing adversaries to increase their nuclear arsenals or by engendering fears of a US preemptive first strike, which could indirectly create crises.3 Similar statements have been expressed by Russian and Chinese officials, who have leveraged complaints that US ballistic missile defenses undermine the efficacy of their states’ nuclear deterrents and therefore their security.4

China is Learning About Western Decision Making from the Ukraine War

Mick Ryan

Wars are full of uncertainty.

Whether it is the uncertainty of what the enemy is doing on the other side of a hill, through to uncertainty about the motivations of political leaders in their decision-making, the ‘fog and friction of war’ is every bit of relevant in considering war in the 21st century as when Carl von Clausewitz wrote about this concept in the early 1800s.

However, sometimes there are things in war that we can be certain about. I would propose that one certainty of the Russo-Ukraine war is that China is watching it closely. In particular, it is learning to improve its strategic decision models (within the bounds of the CCP system) by watching U.S. and NATO decision-making and responses to the Ukraine war. Chinese aggression in the South China Sea and around Taiwan is also prompting Western debates which inform China’s strategic calculus.

I have explored the topic of Chinese learning from the Ukraine War in several previous articles. My first examination of China’s potential observations from the war in Ukraine was published back in April 2022. This was designed as short, initial exploration of what China might learn from the conflict. A year later, in February 2023, I undertook another exploration of how China might be using the war in Ukraine to wargame its own future operations. Finally, in September last year I published a piece here that proposed multiple areas where the Chinese leadership might be learning from the war in Ukraine.

China’s continued experimentation for peaceful reunification

Erik Green

In September 2023 the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) announced plans to make Fujian province ‘a demonstration zone for integrated development’ with Taiwan. Looking back at this announcement a year later, this policy seems to have marked the beginning of a new Taiwan strategy that seeks to achieve ‘peaceful reunification’ through bottom-up innovation and regional experimentation, while still preparing for reunification by force if necessary.

Under this new strategy, the CCP encourages officials to devise initiatives for deepening cross-strait integration. These are then tested in areas such as Fujian, with the aim of replicating successful initiatives across China and the Taiwan Strait. This has led numerous national and local actors to implement integration policies focusing on economic and legal cooperation, as well as the building of shared infrastructure. In the last six months, this strategy has expanded; state media have framed the China Coast Guard’s (CCG) incursions into Taiwan’s protected waters around Kinmen – a Taiwanese island group just ten kilometres from Fujian’s coast – as a local experiment in legal integration. Such developments highlight the increasing resources that China is dedicating to achieving ‘peaceful reunification’ through experimentation and innovation. The CCP will likely re-evaluate this strategy in 2025 – the date for achieving significant progress in Fujian, and the end of the 14th Five-Year Plan.

Breaking The Circuit: US-China Semiconductor Controls – Analysis

Catherine Tan

In October 2022, the Biden administration introduced export controls to limit China’s access to advanced US semiconductors and technologies, aiming to maintain US technological superiority and address security concerns. These controls, targeting areas such as advanced chips and supercomputer components, were tightened in 2023. While the controls have disrupted China’s semiconductor industry in the short term, concerns persist about their long-term effectiveness and potential Chinese retaliation, along with significant policy gaps that will be explored further in the following brief.

“Small Yard, High Fence”: The Biden Administration’s Strategy

In the early 2000s, bringing China into the global community was widely seen as a strategic decision. The Bill Clinton and George W. Bush administrations supported integrating China’s economy into the international rules-based system, believing economic interdependence would promote stability and mutual economic gain. However, this did not lead to China’s democratization as hoped. Instead, China has used this economic partnership to implement a “Military-Civil Fusion” plan, which uses civilian technology—much of it from US partners—to strengthen China’s military capabilities. Many have now come to see technological ties with China as a potential vulnerability. Concurrently, however, the United States has recognized its own capacity to exploit this interdependence to gain strategic advantages over China.

Exploding pagers could ignite full-scale Mideast war

Amin Saikal

The alleged Israeli attack on members of Hezbollah via their pagers is another ominous development propelling the Middle East towards a full-scale regional war. It leaves Hezbollah with little option but to retaliate with the full support of the Iran-led “axis of resistance.”

The sophistication and impact of targeting the pagers are unprecedented. The attack resulted in at least 11 deaths, including some of Hezbollah’s fighters, and up to 3,000 people wounded.

The main aim of the attack, which US officials have reportedly said was carried out by Israel, was intended to disrupt Hezbollah’s means of communication and its command and control system in Lebanon.

Since Hezbollah has reduced the use of mobile phones by its forces because Israel can easily detect and target them, pagers have increasingly become the preferred messaging device within the group.

The attack may have also been designed to cause panic within the group and among the Lebanese public, many of whom do not support Hezbollah, given the political divisions in the country.

An unleashed Israel is humiliating its enemies

Hamish de Bretton-Gordon

The audacious attack on the Iran-backed terror group Hezbollah is likely to have effectively halted their operations, at least temporarily, crippled their command and control networks, and injured many of their fighters.

Those of us who have fought Al Qaeda and Isis in Afghanistan and Iraq are all too familiar with the jihadists’ use of mobile phones and pagers to detonate bombs, which have claimed the lives of many British soldiers. It brings a measure of satisfaction to see the terrorists receive a taste of their own medicine.

This operation exemplifies what is known in military strategy as the “indirect approach”. Coined by British tank commander B. H. Liddell Hart after World War I, this strategy seeks to reduce high casualty rates in conflict zones characterised by dense forces, such as the Western Front. In this case, it targets a fleeting and elusive enemy that hides among civilians, making them difficult to strike without causing extensive collateral damage, as we have seen in Gaza. As the great General Bill Slim aptly put it, “Hit the other fellow as quickly as you can, as hard as you can, where it hurts him most, when he ain’t lookin’.” This principle appears to have guided what was likely a Mossad operation against Hezbollah.

The Case Against Israeli-Saudi Normalization

Frederic Wehrey and Jennifer Kavanagh

When President Joe Biden leaves office early next year, he will probably do so without having realized a signature item on his agenda for the Middle East—a diplomatic normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia, sealed by a formal U.S. security guarantee to Riyadh. Yet this elusive agreement runs the risk of being picked up again by his successor, no matter who wins the election in November. While in office, former President Donald Trump was among Saudi Arabia’s biggest supporters, and he has already signaled his desire to expand the so-called Abraham Accords—a series of bilateral agreements between Israel and a handful of Arab countries, negotiated under his watch—to include Saudi Arabia. Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic candidate, could be compelled to revive the deal or some variation of it, both for the sake of continuity and because hammering out a grand bargain in this troubled region would be a foreign policy achievement for a relatively inexperienced politician.

But for Harris or Trump, continuing to elevate this regional accord would be a grave mistake. The proposed arrangement will not end the war in Gaza, solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, block China’s inroads to the Middle East, or counter Iran and its militant proxies. Instead, by committing Washington to defend a deeply repressive Arab state with a history of destabilizing behavior, the pact’s main achievement will be to further entangle the United States in a region that successive U.S. presidents have tried to pivot away from.

The single-minded pursuit of this bad deal has also blinded U.S. policymakers to other, more important drivers of conflict in the region, and it has caused the United States to delay efforts to ramp up pressure on Israel to end its war in Gaza. The next U.S. president should therefore jettison the proposed accord and focus Middle East policy instead on the economic and social issues most important to the region.

While media focuses on Project 2025, concerns grow over UN's 2030 Agenda, 'Transforming our world'

John Mac Ghlionn

While many American journalists and Democrats remain obsessed with Project 2025, the conservative blueprint for a Republican White House, world leaders including Democratic President Joe Biden are now increasingly focused on Project 2030, the United Nation program officially known as "Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development."

Leading this movement, as initially reported by the writer Tim Hinchcliffe, is UN Secretary-General António Guterres, who has called for a sweeping overhaul of the United Nations Security Council and the global financial system.

The initiative, presented under the pretense of accelerating Agenda 2030’s Sustainable Development Goals, is being marketed as a noble effort to combat poverty, inequality, and climate change. Yet, beneath the rhetoric lies perhaps a more concerning agenda that could compromise national sovereignty and individual freedoms under the guise of global progress.

Europe does not define, defend or duplicate itself: on it goes to doom

Kevin Myers

The first page of Draghi report on the wretched future of Europe provides an unintentional insight into why the SS EUtanic is heading for the iceberg. It contains a photograph of two engineers. They are, quite naturally, both young women, one of possibly immigrant origin, and we know why: because any realistic portrayal of European engineers as what they mostly are, indigenous males, would be, well, both racist and sexist. Yet all attempts everywhere to make engineering (and those other STEM subjects – science, technology and mathematics) 50 per cent female have foundered, except for medicine. The why of this is complex, and need not detain us here, but the other why, namely that a report about Europe’s future should begin with a lie, should interest us. So too should Draghi’s few mentions of Europe’s catastrophic birth-rate: three mentions, I think, in all, at one stage colourfully called a “demographic headwind.”

“Headwind” is a natural force outside the control of the object facing it, whereas demographics are, to a degree, controllable. Financially rewarding motherhood is one incentive, but where the local culture ruthlessly denigrates and even mocks motherhood – as it does across most of the EU – the only takers of the financial incentives will of course be immigrants. Again, this is a complex problem, but probably the most daunting complexity results from a healthy fear of racism, and a perfectly understandable one as the 80th anniversaries of the liberation of Belsen, Dachau and Auschwitz draw near.

‘Us against the world’ isn’t true and it’s not a winning strategy

Yakov Nagen

“Together we will be victorious .” This slogan, which emerged in Israel in the wake of October 7, printed on signs all over the country, tacked on to the end of ordinary TV advertisements, and stated constantly by government officials, is less ubiquitous today as the war drags on and internal disagreements deepen. But we must still embrace this slogan. It encapsulates a profound truth: our success lies not only in military strength but in the unity of Israeli society. In the face of relentless enemies seeking our destruction, our most potent weapon is cohesion. Victory demands that we build bridges, not barricades, beyond our immediate circles, even beyond the Jewish people.

This war transcends Israel’s physical borders, extending into the global arena. That means that we absolutely cannot afford to isolate ourselves, to be “a people dwelling alone,” as the wicked prophet Balaam characterized the children of Israel in the Bible. Our path forward must include partnerships with other peoples. The ancient vision of the prophets, one of human fraternity including Jews and other nations, is more relevant than ever. In this era of heightened hatred and division, we are called to forge alliances, not withdraw into the dangerous assumption that the world is uniformly against us. Isolation only strengthens our enemies, who seek to broaden their own coalitions while we retreat.

Identifying our enemies, and also finding allies, is essential. Despite the global level of pervasive evil and rising hostility towards Israel, we must resist the dangerous narrative that “everyone is against us.” This, after all, is the story Hamas wishes to promote, a portrayal of themselves as leaders of a global religious war of Islam against Judaism.

Fighting Abroad from an Ally's Land

Jeffrey W. Hornung, Kristen Gunness, Bryan Rooney, Dan McCormick, Lydia Grek, Ryan A. Schwankhart, Gian Gentile & Marisa R. Lino

Discussions about U.S. military posture in the Indo-Pacific often assume that the United States will have the ability to not only quickly access its military capabilities stationed in the region, but also to freely operate from bases in allied countries. The authors of this report explore this assumption, examining the opportunities and constraints that the U.S. military might face when operating from the territories of Japan, the Republic of Korea (ROK), and the Philippines. The authors examine the basing and access assumptions for the U.S. military should it wish to preposition supplies in, and operate from, these allies in peacetime and in a conflict over Taiwan when these allies themselves have not been attacked.

For this research, the authors conducted a comprehensive literature review of historical and current studies on access; held an internal RAND workshop with military experts to determine the types of capabilities and access requests the United States might make of Japan, the ROK, and the Philippines in a Taiwan contingency; conducted extensive discussions and interviews in the fall of 2022 with officials and experts in Japan, the ROK, and the Philippines and with U.S. government personnel and experts in the United States who work on issues related to these three allies; and examined important agreements the United States has with each treaty ally that are relevant for U.S. military access and basing.

Theater Army Strategy – U.S. Army Pacific

On behalf of General Charlie Flynn, Commander of United States Army Pacific, I want to provide you with a digital copy of the United States Army Pacific Theater Army strategy that was approved for public release this week. Please take time to review the attachment and the reader’s notes below – and incorporate into articles, analysis, discussion, research, teaching, and policy development.

I reference the classified version below, so if you can, please contact me on SIPR for the complete version.

Very important: The Commanding General who called for this strategy and shaped its development in every critical way has described his vision as building the foundation for peace, stability, and development across the incredibly important Indo-Pacific region. The higher direction is to avoid armed conflict; the military strategy is to be a useful and relevant instrument for national leaders every day, and ready for the future.

Russia Evaluates Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Combat Missions

Dr Charles Bartles

The accompanying excerpted article in a monthly journal of the Russian Ministry of Defense, Armeisky Sbornik, discusses the importance of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) on the modern battlefield. Russia believes that current UAV usage is not just a feature of the current conflict, but also indicative of the changing character of war. Therefore, Russia is now considering how UAV usage will be employed for all types of combat actions (offense, defense, raid, meeting battle) and when on the march.[i] Although not explicitly stated, the article suggests that UAVs will no longer be concentrated in a single unit as they were before 2022.[ii] Russia’s understanding of the situation suggests that individual units will likely each have their own UAVs and counter-UAV technologies. In the Russian view, success on the modern battlefield requires that all types of units, not just electronic warfare and air defense personnel, need some degree of UAV and counter-UAV technologies to accomplish their respective missions.

NATO’s Jens Stoltenberg on the Future of Russia’s War in Ukraine

Ravi Agrawal

There’s little doubt that Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine transformed NATO. Sweden and Finland reversed decades of policy to join the military alliance, and member states ramped up their defense spending to support Kyiv and prepare for future conflicts with Moscow. Jens Stoltenberg, NATO’s secretary-general, presided over these dramatic changes in the final years of his decadelong tenure. As he prepares to hand over the reins to Mark Rutte, a former Dutch prime minister, Stoltenberg sat down with me on FP Live to discuss Ukraine’s potential use of long-range missiles, and what NATO should do about the growing collusion between Russia and Iran, China, and North Korea.

A Cease-Fire in Gaza Wouldn’t End Israel’s War

Steven A. Cook

In late May, U.S. President Joe Biden laid out the details of what he called an Israeli proposal for a cease-fire in Gaza. In the course of his remarks, he made the case that “once a cease-fire and hostage deal is concluded, it unlocks the possibility of a great deal more progress, including—including calm along Israel’s northern border with Lebanon.” Two weeks later, Axios scoop machine Barak Ravid revealed that the “White House believes that a ceasefire in Gaza is the only thing that would significantly de-escalate the tensions on the Israeli-Lebanese border.”

New Gaza Health Numbers Show Israel Kills Two Babies Every Day

Sharif Abdel Kouddous

The Israeli military killed at least 710 Palestinian babies before they made it to their first birthday, the equivalent of two infants under one-year-old killed by Israel every day for nearly a year. That’s according to a 649-page document published by the Ministry of Health in Gaza on Sunday listing the names of tens of thousands Palestinians killed by Israel between October 7 and August 31.

Of the 40,738 the ministry has confirmed dead, it has biographical information—including identification number, gender, date of birth, and age—for 34,344. Because the ministry does not have complete biographical information for the remaining 6,394, it has not listed their names. The list starts with the youngest victims. For the first 13 and a half pages, the age is listed as 0—those under one year old.

North Korea – A new eye in the sky?

Joseph Dempsey

Conversion work on one of the three Ilyushin Il-76 Candid aircraft that Russia delivered in the early 1990s is being carried out at Pyongyang Sunan International Airport. Though operated by state-owned carrier Air Koryo, these aircraft are used in paratrooper drills – and the past application of temporary camouflage has indicated their availability for military dual role.

In late 2023, one of the three aircraft was moved to a separate maintenance area at the airport with a new fenced area around it. This additional layer of security and the subsequent appearance of a covered structure on top of the fuselage suggested a possible special-mission role for the airframe.

An obvious option is that the aircraft is being converted for the AEW role or is at least an AEW radar testbed. There appears, for instance, to be consistency in size and position of the rotating-radar-mounting points seen in other Il-76 AEW conversions, such as those by Russia (A-50U Mainstay and A-100), China (KJ-2000) and Iraq (Adnan-2).

The mounting points had, until very recently, only been under cover in available satellite imagery, with no official reporting of what seemed a secretive project, even by North Korean standards.

Fighting For Our Humanity, Fighting For Our Future – OpEd

Robert J. Burrowes

It is easy to peruse the state of human affairs and fail to perceive the catastrophic state in which we find ourselves.

After all, it is the responsibility of various Elite agents and agencies to ensure that the bulk of humanity remains unaware of the state of our world and that even those relatively few with some level of awareness in one or two domains are not aware in others. See ‘The Elite’s 5,000-Year War on Your Mind is Climaxing. Can We Defeat it? (Parts 1 & 2)’.

Beyond the problem of limited awareness, however, the Elite also has a substantial array of tools to ensure that the few who do become aware, whether of one problem or even something approaching the whole, remain powerless to respond effectively.

And so our future and even our very humanity are now threatened in ways that have eluded virtually everyone.

And the effective resistance to this multitude of threats is zero.

The Three Laws of Robotics and the Future

Ariel Katz

Isaac Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics have captivated imaginations for decades, providing a blueprint for ethical AI long before it became a reality.

First introduced in his 1942 short story “Runaround” from the “I, Robot” series, these laws state:

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

2. A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

As we stand on the precipice of an AI-driven future, Asimov’s vision is more relevant than ever. But are these laws sufficient to guide us through the ethical complexities of advanced AI?

As a teenager, I was enthralled by Asimov’s work. His stories painted a vivid picture of a future where humans and physical robots—and, though I didn’t imagine them back then, software robots—coexist harmoniously under a framework of ethical guidelines. His Three Laws were not just science fiction; they were a profound commentary on the relationship between humanity and its creations.

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

Shaun Waterman

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.”

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