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Cyber Operations: The New Balance

Abstract : A new normalcy is ascendant in cyberspace. What does this mean, and what are the implications for the Department of Defense (DOD) cyber policy. Some characterize cyber new normalcy as hybrid, multimodal Internet conflict, which combines state-level lethality with amorphous cyber formations. Others view cyber new normalcy as a breathtakingly broad and globally inclusive campaign of deliberate cyber penetrations against governments, militaries, and commercial concerns. In a January 2009 Foreign Affairs article, Defense Secretary Robert Gates described today's new normalcy as the search for balance in defense capabilities. A few examples might serve to better illuminate the cyber new normalcy concept. During the August 2008 conflict between Russia and Georgia, cyber attackers used tools from a Web site hosted by a company in Texas to attack a Georgian government Web site that had been relocated- coincidentally-to a Web hosting company in Atlanta, Georgia. In essence, the United States experienced collateral damage during these cyber attacks. Borderless cyber operations confounding border-based paradigms are not a deviation; it is cyber new normalcy. During the December 2008 attacks in Mumbai, India, the attack teams used cable television, BlackBerry phones, Google Earth imagery, and global positioning system information to form an integrated, low-cost command and control capability that enabled a modicum of information superiority. As Ralph Peters points out, incidents such as Mumbai demonstrate that nonstate actors "do not fear network-centric warfare because they have already mastered it." Mumbai is not an outlier; it is cyber new normalcy. Finally, in a subtle yet telling sign of cyber new normalcy, hackers in 2008 attacked the Barack Obama and John McCain campaign.