As the Department of Defense (DOD) pushes to integrate cyber operations more deeply into modern warfare, its top cyber official highlighted a proposed Cyber Innovation Warfare Center focused on rapidly testing and operationalizing emerging technologies.
The Trump administration rebranded the DOD to the Department of War.
Speaking at GDIT’s Emerge: Battlespace of the Future event in Washington on June 2, Assistant Secretary for Cyber Policy and Principal Cyber Advisor Katherine Sutton said the organization has been discussed as part of the CYBERCOM 2.0 initiative.
That effort looks to build deeper expertise in emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), which Sutton said will fundamentally “change how we fight.”
“One of the Cyber Command 2.0 enabling organizations that we’ve talked about is the Cyber Innovation Warfare Center, which brings together an innovation center and a warfare center to figure out how do we quickly experiment with these tools, figure out how they’re best going to be used, and then codify some of those warfare techniques into our doctrine, into our techniques, into our procedures, and most importantly, into our training to make sure that we have a workforce that’s ready to receive those tools,” Sutton said.
“[I’m] really excited for that opportunity and looking forward to partnering with all of you in this room from an industry perspective, because that’s where the innovation is really coming from, and we need to figure out how to fully partner with that,” she added.
John Sahlin, vice president of cyber solutions at GDIT, added that while industry partners won’t be on the front lines making mission-critical decisions, they can help warfighters make better decisions through technology tools.
“When you think about cybersecurity … it’s not just about preventing our adversaries from stealing our information, it’s about ensuring that we have the ability to make good decisions,” Sahlin said.
“I think that’s where industry can really make some strides in thinking creatively about how to apply cyber concepts and new advances in cyber technology, particularly around the areas of AI and operational technology cyber, and employ that into potentially new concepts of employment for battlefield commanders,” he said.
The push for deeper industry partnerships extends beyond emerging technologies and into critical infrastructure protection, according to an Army cyber leader.
Brandon Pugh, principal cyber advisor at the U.S. Army, pointed to the Army’s recent Defense Critical Infrastructure Summit, held on May 14 at Fort Bragg, N.C., as an example of how the service is working more closely with industry partners.
“For probably the first time … we brought interagency leaders at the principal or under secretary level together, along with industry leaders and Department of War and Department of Army leaders,” Pugh said.
The goal, he said, was to identify obstacles and strengthen collaboration around protecting military installations and critical infrastructure. “How do we work together to harden all of our installations, not just in the Army, but really across the entire department?” Pugh said.