Concerns are now persistently on the rise as the NSA, the lead intelligence agency in helping the government understand who is attacking U.S. networks and tracking down adversaries in cyberspace is set to sever ties with Cyber Command, leaving the agency to stand on its own. Apparently, this is the last thing anybody could want, fearing that such would cause harm to the production and dissemination of valid information. How does this move impact national security against data threats?
The original promise of the internet was that the free exchange of information. As reliance on communication networks has grown, this global information highway has fractured into the “splinternet” — as many countries have carved out their own parts of the internet with their own rules. Will actual physical walls built to keep intruders at bay result in efficient defensive steps taken by countries to maintain digital sovereignty? Or will it hinder us to access data to be had in this digital world?
Northern Command is prototyping and testing a set of AI tools to support Joint All Domain Command and Control (JADC2) with hopes that the new artificial intelligence will instantly pull together all sorts of data to give commanders a clear picture of the battlefield, enabling good, fast decisions. Will AI rapidly provide and constantly upgrade the best options to ensure a high probability of intercept, improve greatly the time each solution would take, more than humans?
The challenges with managing cyberspace and the information warfare sphere demands the Department of Defense do more to align cyberspace and emerging operations within the larger information environment. Information warfare has been around for decades, the scale and scope have been amplified by the global nature of cyberspace, affording adversaries not only a global reach, but a much more tailored approach to help integrate cyber and information as doctrines and domains. How does the hasty effort to sever the dual hat leadership structure of the National Security Agency and Cyber Command affect the terms of defining the problem we want to solve?
Last October 2019, Mumbai, India’s financial capital, suffered a massive power outage that shut down thousands of businesses, dozens of trains, and left millions without power. India has been openly working to decrease its dependence on China’s supply chain, and these power outages were more than just a technical glitch-filled embarrassment. On February 28, an investigative report published by the U.S. cybersecurity firm Recorded Future, linked China with the power outage and theorizes that the attack on India’s infrastructure was both a warning and retaliation for a very recent border skirmish. At the forefront of cyber warfare, where does an increasingly nationalistic country stand against being bullied by a tech behemoth?
