Thrust Group: 5-Cyberconflict, Information and Communication Technology
Thrust Group Leader: Don Howard
Thrust Group Participant: Brad Allenby, Edward Barrett, Geroge Lucas, Neil Rowe, Panayotis Yannakogeorgos
Cyberspace is a highway for bits of information and is now the foundation of the Information Society. Light speed communications facilitate:
- Financial transactions
- Just-in-time supply chains
- Remote critical infrastructure control
- High tempo military operations
- Empowered (or super empowered) non-state actors (violent and non-violent)
The organized use of force in cyberspace by and for the purpose of the state is a challenge to global cybersecurity efforts. Cyberwarfare programs are proliferating at an alarming rate as states increasingly realize that cyber can be used to project national power and gather intelligence.
Conflict in cyberspace is currently unregulated by laws specifically addressing this issue. The knowledge threshold for states to develop cyberwarfare capabilities is, arguably, much lower than that required to build an air or nuclear forces. Attacks in cyberspace have been characterized as being potentially just as damaging as a ballistic missile strike. This is due to the migration of command and control capabilities for critical infrastructures, including energy and waste-water treatment facilities, into cyberspace.
The stakes become unthinkable if one considers the U.S. and Russian positions on possible retaliation for strategic cyberattacks include the use of nuclear weapons. The technical and political complexities of identifying the origin of an attack present unique challenges to military responses since acts of strategic information warfare, would not offer the same evidence as the launch of a missile.
Bearing these basic points in mind, the research questions guiding CETMONS cyberwarfare thrust group are:
- What is the impact of cyberwarfare capabilities on existing economic, social, military, cultural, and technological systems?
- Under what conditions does a cyberattack amount to an act of war?
- Can existing laws and norms of warfare be applied to the cyber domain?
- What is a proportional response to a cyberattack?
- How do we define a cyber war-crime?
- What is the impact of cyberwarfare capabilities on civil-military relations?
- Is it possible to bring the international community to the negotiating table to formulate a cyber arms control treaty?
- How can the international community increase cooperation in the area of attack attribution?
- How can we measure cyberwarfare capabilities in a domain defined by ambiguity?