Inside Cyber Warfare, 2nd Edition

Chapter 11. The Role of Cyber in Military Doctrine

We are detecting, with increasing frequency, the appearance of doctrine and dedicated offensive cyber warfare programs in other countries. We have identified several, based on all-source intelligence information, that are pursuing government-sponsored offensive cyber programs. Foreign nations have begun to include information warfare in their military doctrine, as well as their war college curricula, with respect to both defensive and offensive applications. They are developing strategies and tools to conduct information attacks.

—John A. Serabian, Jr., Information Operations Issue Manager, Central Intelligence Agency, before the Joint Economic Committee on Cyber Threats and the US Economy, February 23, 2000

This chapter examines the military doctrines for cyber warfare being developed by the Russian Federation (RF), the People’s Republic of China, and the United States. Over 120 nations are engaged in developing this capability, and so a complete survey of each is beyond the scope of this book. Source material contained in this chapter includes published papers and speeches, as well as entries from official military journals. Readers are highly encouraged to look at all sources rather than cherry-picking only the “official” ones.

The Russian Federation

Of China, Russia, and the United States, it is Russia that has been the most active in the implementation of cyber attacks against its adversaries, which include Chechnya, Kyrgyzstan, ...