Wargames director Jackie Schneider on why cyber is one of 'the most interesting scholarly puzzles'

In other games, we had people from Silicon Valley who were leading AI companies or cyber companies.
What we found is those who had expertise in cyber operations were more likely to be more nuanced about how they used the cyber capability.
On a larger level about how we as humans respond to cyber technologies, or how we as humans respond to crisis situations, we actually see very generalizable patterns that extend beyond individuals' expertise.
When I first started working with cyber operations and thinking about the impact of cyber operations on crises, it was in the early 2010s.
People were really concerned that all the characteristics of the technology, the uncertainty about attribution, the timeliness of the ability to execute an offensive cyber operation, and the relative ease would all be an incendiary that would lead to conflict where there wouldn't otherwise be conflict.
I realized people react in very unusual ways to cyber operations.
I would run experiments and wargames, and I would find that individuals don't respond to cyber operations like they would when faced with a physical threat.
Instead, they treat cyber operations in this kind of anxiety-inducing way, where the uncertainty about cyber operations actually creates this kind of buffer area where they don't feel an impetus to respond violently to cyber.
My hunch here is that it's because of the way in which cyber operations create effects.
I think as we see cyber operations there, we know that cyber operations are proliferating, but this is occurring all the time.
JS: Talking about it from an American perspective, there are authorities that we have created that we believe are important in order to make sure that the use of cyber operations are appropriate and effective.
The president created executive agencies and he had to approve them in order to use offensive cyber.
During the Trump administration, these authorities were delegated down to the combatant command level - in this case, Cyber Command.
Cyber Command had more direct authorities to execute offensive cyber.
They still have internal requirements in order to conduct those operations; just because you say that Cyber Command might have an authority, that does not mean that the airman or the lieutenant that's on the keyboard can now conduct an operation.
They still have to go through a tasking process within the Department of Defense and within Cyber Command that includes lawyers to make sure that what is occurring is appropriate.
These are all part of the bureaucratic process of making cyber decisions.
JS: That has been the constant tension about cyber operations.
We thought we could apply those same analogies to cyber operations.
At the beginning of cyber operations in the U.S., we thought about building cyberattacks like we would build those kinds of bombing plans.


This Cyber News was published on therecord.media. Publication date: Sun, 26 May 2024 22:59:04 +0000


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