Cyberspace, where information--and hence serious value--is stored and manipulated, is a tempting target. An attacker could be a person, group, or state and may disrupt or corrupt the systems from which cyberspace is built. When states are involved, it is tempting to compare fights to warfare, but there are important differences. The author addresses these differences and ways the United States protect itself in the face of attack.

SUMMARY
The establishment of the 24th Air Force and U.S. Cyber Command marks the ascent of cyberspace as a military domain. As such, it joins the historic domains of land, sea, air, and space.

All this might lead to a belief that the historic constructs of war—force, offense, defense, deterrence—can be applied to cyberspace with little modification.

Not so. Instead, cyberspace must be understood in its own terms, and policy decisions being made for these and other new commands must reflect such understanding. Attempts to transfer policy constructs from other forms of warfare will not only fail but also hinder policy and planning.

What follows focuses on the policy dimensions of cyberwar: what it means, what it entails, and whether threats can deter it or defense can mitigate its effects. The Air Force must consider these issues as it creates new capabilities.

Cyberattacks Are Possible Only Because Systems Have Flaws
As long as nations rely on computer networks as a foundation for military and economic power and as long as such computer networks are accessible to the outside, they are at risk. Hackers can steal information, issue phony commands to information systems to cause them to malfunction, and inject phony information to lead men and machines to reach false conclusions and make bad (or no) decisions. ...

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Paperback: 244 pages
Author: Martin C. Libicki
Publisher: RAND Corporation (November 25, 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0833047345
ISBN-13: 978-0833047342

PREFACE
This monograph presents the results of a fiscal year 2008 study, “Defining and Implementing Cyber Command and Cyber Warfare.” It discusses the use and limits of power in cyberspace, which has been likened to a medium of potential conflict, much as the air and space domains are. The study was conducted to help clarify and focus attention on the operational realities behind the phrase “fly and fight in cyberspace.”

The basic message is simple: Cyberspace is its own medium with its own rules. Cyberattacks, for instance, are enabled not through the generation of force but by the exploitation of the enemy’s vulnerabilities.

Permanent effects are hard to produce. The medium is fraught with ambiguities about who attacked and why, about what they achieved and whether they can do so again. Something that works today may not work tomorrow (indeed, precisely because it did work today). Thus, deterrence and warfighting tenets established in other media do not necessarily translate reliably into cyberspace. Such tenets must be rethought. This monograph is an attempt to start this rethinking.

The research described in this monograph was sponsored by Lt Gen Robert Elder, Jr., Commander, Eighth Air Force (8AF/CC), and Joint Functional Component Commander for Space and Global Strike, United States Strategic Command. The work was conducted within the Force Modernization and Employment Program of RAND Project AIR FORCE. It should be of interest to the decisionmakers and policy researchers associated with cyberwarfare, as well as to the Air Force planning community.

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