Sign up to save your podcasts
Or
Share Dr. Jason Healey – “A Bizarre Pair: Counterinsurgency Lessons for Cyber Conflict”
Share to email
Share to Facebook
Share to X
Share to email
Share to Facebook
Share to X
Or
Dr. Jason Healey – “A Bizarre Pair: Counterinsurgency Lessons for Cyber Conflict”
Released 27 April 2022.
The lessons of counterinsurgency have deeper implications for cyber conflict than previous research has identified. Two decades of experience in Iraq and Afghanistan provide insights into the cyber strategy of defending forward including treating major cybersecurity and technology companies as host-nation partners and focusing on winning the hearts and minds of global netizens.
Click here to read the original article.
Keywords: cyber conflict, counterinsurgency, Iraq, Afghanistan, cybersecurity
Episode Transcript
Stephanie Crider (Host)
Welcome to Decisive Point, a US Army War College Press production featuring distinguished authors and contributors who get to the heart of the matter in national security affairs.
The views and opinions expressed on this podcast are those of the podcast guests and are not necessarily those of the Department of the Army, US Army War College, or any other agency of the US government.
Decisive Point welcomes Dr. Jason Healey, author of “A Bizarre Pair: Counterinsurgency Lessons for Cyber Conflict,” featured in the autumn 2020 issue of Parameters. Healey is a senior research scholar at Columbia University School for International and Public Affairs, specializing in cyber conflict, competition, and cooperation. This episode of Decisive Point reexamines Healey’s article through the lens of Russia and Ukraine.
The guests in speaking order on this episode are:
(Guest 1: Jason “Jay” Healey)
(Host)
Welcome back to Decisive Point, Jason. Let's talk about your 2020 article “A Bizarre Pair: Counterinsurgency Lessons for Cyber Conflict.” That is a bizarre pair. Can you lay the groundwork for us, please?
(Healey)
Sure, absolutely. Cyber has long been realized, back to at least the early 90s, as an interesting method of irregular warfare.
Some of the very first writing on this—people like John Arquilla and Dorothy Denning and Winn Schwartau—would write about how technology-dependent societies are going to be open to asymmetric attack because of these cyber vulnerabilities and cyber capabilities—especially the United States, which has historically had these oceans, and we didn't have to worry about direct attack—that adversaries could use cyber as irregular warfare to affect us. In fact, we could use cyber as irregular warfare against them. We could have advantages by being a high-tech power.
And so that aspect had been relatively well written about. The effects of it were maybe exaggerated; we thought maybe cyber would have more impact then, in the 90s, than we do 20-odd years later. But the ideas were relatively well baked.
What I was trying to do with this article is to flip that around—to say, we're 20-plus years into fighting irregular warfare ourselves, especially counterinsurgency and civil wars, so what can we take from those hard-won lessons? To think and apply them to fighting and winning in cyberspace.
(Host)
You laid out some pretty specific lessons. Can you walk us through those? What lessons can cyber take from counterinsurgency?
(Healey)
The lessons that I took—of saying, “Boy, what can we learn about how to win in cyberspace based on the lessons from irregular warfare”—really fit in three areas.
The least interesting, I thought, was on deception: For both cyber and irregular warfare, the attackers are relying on deception to succeed. That was a parallel, but I wasn't quite sure what we take from that. The other two, I thought there were stronger recommendations.
First is that cyber conflict really depends on the host nation. Now,
View all episodes
By US Army War College PressReleased 27 April 2022.
The lessons of counterinsurgency have deeper implications for cyber conflict than previous research has identified. Two decades of experience in Iraq and Afghanistan provide insights into the cyber strategy of defending forward including treating major cybersecurity and technology companies as host-nation partners and focusing on winning the hearts and minds of global netizens.
Click here to read the original article.
Keywords: cyber conflict, counterinsurgency, Iraq, Afghanistan, cybersecurity
Episode Transcript
Stephanie Crider (Host)
Welcome to Decisive Point, a US Army War College Press production featuring distinguished authors and contributors who get to the heart of the matter in national security affairs.
The views and opinions expressed on this podcast are those of the podcast guests and are not necessarily those of the Department of the Army, US Army War College, or any other agency of the US government.
Decisive Point welcomes Dr. Jason Healey, author of “A Bizarre Pair: Counterinsurgency Lessons for Cyber Conflict,” featured in the autumn 2020 issue of Parameters. Healey is a senior research scholar at Columbia University School for International and Public Affairs, specializing in cyber conflict, competition, and cooperation. This episode of Decisive Point reexamines Healey’s article through the lens of Russia and Ukraine.
The guests in speaking order on this episode are:
(Guest 1: Jason “Jay” Healey)
(Host)
Welcome back to Decisive Point, Jason. Let's talk about your 2020 article “A Bizarre Pair: Counterinsurgency Lessons for Cyber Conflict.” That is a bizarre pair. Can you lay the groundwork for us, please?
(Healey)
Sure, absolutely. Cyber has long been realized, back to at least the early 90s, as an interesting method of irregular warfare.
Some of the very first writing on this—people like John Arquilla and Dorothy Denning and Winn Schwartau—would write about how technology-dependent societies are going to be open to asymmetric attack because of these cyber vulnerabilities and cyber capabilities—especially the United States, which has historically had these oceans, and we didn't have to worry about direct attack—that adversaries could use cyber as irregular warfare to affect us. In fact, we could use cyber as irregular warfare against them. We could have advantages by being a high-tech power.
And so that aspect had been relatively well written about. The effects of it were maybe exaggerated; we thought maybe cyber would have more impact then, in the 90s, than we do 20-odd years later. But the ideas were relatively well baked.
What I was trying to do with this article is to flip that around—to say, we're 20-plus years into fighting irregular warfare ourselves, especially counterinsurgency and civil wars, so what can we take from those hard-won lessons? To think and apply them to fighting and winning in cyberspace.
(Host)
You laid out some pretty specific lessons. Can you walk us through those? What lessons can cyber take from counterinsurgency?
(Healey)
The lessons that I took—of saying, “Boy, what can we learn about how to win in cyberspace based on the lessons from irregular warfare”—really fit in three areas.
The least interesting, I thought, was on deception: For both cyber and irregular warfare, the attackers are relying on deception to succeed. That was a parallel, but I wasn't quite sure what we take from that. The other two, I thought there were stronger recommendations.
First is that cyber conflict really depends on the host nation. Now,