US Military Advantage in Cyberspace is Challenged
The superiority of the US military in cyberspace, which once could be taken for granted, is gradually eroding, says an Army Field Manual published this week.
In the past decade, “U.S. forces dominated cyberspace and the electromagnetic spectrum (EMS) in Afghanistan and Iraq against enemies and adversaries lacking the technical capabilities to challenge our superiority in cyberspace.”
“However, regional peers have since demonstrated impressive capabilities in a hybrid operational environment that threaten the Army’s dominance in cyberspace and the EMS,” according to the new Field Manual.
“Rapid developments in cyberspace and the EMS will challenge any assumptions of the Army’s advantage in this domain. While it cannot defend against every kind of intrusion, the Army must take steps to identify, prioritize, and defend its most important networks and data.”
The underlying principles of US Army operations in cyberspace were described in the new Field Manual 3-12, Cyberspace and Electronic Warfare Operations, 11 April 2017 (unclassified, 108 pages).
January saw us watching whether the government would fund science. February has been about how that funding will be distributed, regulated, and contested.
This rule gives agencies significantly more authority over certain career policy roles. Whether that authority improves accountability or creates new risks depends almost entirely on how agencies interrupt and apply it.
Our environmental system was built for 1970s-era pollution control, but today it needs stable, integrated, multi-level governance that can make tradeoffs, share and use evidence, and deliver infrastructure while demonstrating that improved trust and participation are essential to future progress.
Durable and legitimate climate action requires a government capable of clearly weighting, explaining, and managing cost tradeoffs to the widest away of audiences, which in turn requires strong technocratic competency.