Inside Cyber Warfare, 2nd Edition

Chapter 14. Conducting Operations in the Cyber-Space-Time Continuum

The United States, NATO, and the European Union all participate in cyber warfare games in order to create scenarios that can be utilized for offensive and defensive planning. However, many of these scenarios fall into the same traditional mode of combat that has served the US Department of Defense so well over the years—that of a known adversary who combines a kinetic attack with a supporting cyber attack. Unfortunately, with the exception of the Russia-Georgia conflict in 2008, that’s almost never the case. Not only does attribution continue to be an unsolved problem, certain government officials like Secretary of State Hillary Clinton are taking attribution for granted based on the skimpiest evidence.^[41]

IPB, Intelligent Preparation of the Battlefield, was the former DoD acronym for knowing the lay of the land upon which a battle will be fought (it has since been changed to Joint Intelligence Preparation of the Environment).^[42] Eventually, cyberspace will be incorporated into that doctrine; however, based on current thinking (as evidenced by a web search on the subject), it’s being bolted onto warfare in a three-dimensional world that should no longer be defined in three dimensions. A perfect example of this mindset is described in the article “Rise of a Cybered Westphalian Age”^[43]:

First, the technology of cyberspace is man-made. It is not, as described by the early “cyber prophets” of the 1990s, an entirely ...