WASHINGTON: United States military leaders are starting to unveil the updated Defence Department cyber strategy, calling for military troops to “campaign in and through cyberspace” to defend the United States.
According to Voice of America (VoA), The Pentagon shared the classified version of its 2023 Cyber Strategy with Congress earlier this week. It promised to produce an unclassified summary of the latest strategy in the coming months.
According to a Pentagon that the latest cyber strategy updates the previous one, issued in 2018, and “is informed by years of real-world experience of importance [Defence Department of US] cyberspace operations.”
Those operations include 47 deployments to 22 countries by United States Cyber Command “hunt forward teams,” recently to Albania and Latvia. Hunt forward teams played a role in securing the 2020 presidential election.
The Defense Department said, “The department would maximize its cyber capabilities in support of integrated deterrence, employing cyberspace operations in concert with other advance instruments of national power.”
It also warned that United States military cyber teams “would campaign in and through cyberspace below the level of an armed tussle to reinforce deterrence and frustrate adversaries.”
The latest cyber strategy lists China as the major threat, in line with top Pentagon officials’ last statements and congressional testimony.
“China represents the department’s pacing challenge,” according to the strategy fact sheet. ” China has made important investments in army cyber capabilities and empowered several proxy organizations to pursue malicious cyber activities against the United States.”
Earlier this month, the director of the United States Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, and CISA, warned that China would likely turn to cyberspace should tensions between Washington and Beijing boil into something more.
Jen Easterly told the forum organized by the Special Competitive Studies Project, “In the event of the conflict with the United States, we would almost certainly see China use advanced cyber operations against our critical infrastructure and almost certainly be able to disrupt critical infrastructure.”
"…to include rail, to include oil & natural gas pipelines, essentially to deter military deployments & to induce societal panic" per @CISAJen re: #China's use of #cyber in a potential conflict w/the US
— Jeff Seldin (@jseldin) May 9, 2023
Just this past week, CISA, along with the FBI, the United States, National Security Agency and allies from Britain, Australia, Canada and New Zealand, issued a warning about cyber activity by a China-linked serious threat actor known as Volt Typhoon.
NEW warning about #China-linked #cyber actor
Advisory from Five Eyes partners -US, #Australia, #Canada, #Britain, #NewZealand– blames #VoltTyphoon for "cluster of activity…affect[ing] networks across US critical infrastructure sectors"
— Jeff Seldin (@jseldin) May 24, 2023
