In 2012, I led the first joint cyber operations with the Indian Air Force. Seven years too late, we have started talking about cyber jointness. “Synergy in Joint Cyber Operations” presented at an Indian National Defence University event. The first time ever that jointness was discussed in the Indian context. Not very verbose for obvious reasons – I flagged politics and turf wars. Some shakeups are happening; the Defence Cyber Agency is up. Winds of change…

1. Synergy in Joint Cyber Ops
Policy, Org. Reference & the Way Forward
Indian National Defence University
March 15, 2019
Pukhraj Singh
www.pukhraj.me

2. 0.001% of my actual body of work & experience

3. In cyber:
Institutional memory is institutional capability

4. The Hacker Who Co-opted the Military

5. Russian
Cyber
Doctrine
Indian Cyber
Doctrine
US Cyber
Doctrine
Dedicated to Brig. Singh

6. Part 1: The Physics of Cyber Operations
Part II: Jointness in Offensive Toolchains
Case Study: The Valery Gerasimov of South Asia
Part III: Intelligence-Operations Synergy

7. Part I
The ‘Physics’ of Cyber Operations
From Doctrine to Operations
From Operations to Doctrine

8. Four dimensions of state-sovereignty not working in cyberspace:
Territoriality, Causality, Proportionality & Legality

9. “Cyberweapons are power projection tools” – Dave Aitel, NSA

10. “I was looking for [a set of] tools that had broad range capability, had no regard really
for strategic depth and could be used in a way that would make a more logical
transition, may even avoid the use of kinetic force to RESET DIPLOMACY, reestablish
the ability to negotiate with whoever you’re working with.”
-- Gen. James Cartwright, USSTRATCOM

11. A cyberweapon is “anything which changes the terrain of cyberspace”
-- Gen Michael Hayden, NSA & CIA

12. Where the generals are going wrong:
Not asymmetric
Not non-kinetic
Not attributable

13. Rebecca Slayton, Cornell Uni

14. “I cannot change the reality that all security tools are dual-use”
-- Mike Walker, DARPA

15. “Defence & offence really were one team, we eventually realised”
- Richard “Dickie” George, NSA

16. -- Matthew Monte, CIA

17. The three first-principles of offence:
Humanity, Access & Economy
-- Matthew Monte, CIA

18. Part II
Jointness & Offensive Toolchains

19. This is your offensive toolchain
Only 5% of it actually manifests on adversarial infrastructure
An exploit is just this

20. Operation Slingshot
USSOCOM’s toolchain

21. The Valery Gerasimov of South Asia
Cyber Jointness: A Case Study

22. Part III
Int-Op Synergy

23. Please understand:
Ambiguity is the mother of all cyber operations
All cyber operations are pre-positioning
All pre-positioning is pre-emptive war

24. Observe > Orient > Decide > Act
Sensing > Sense Making > Deciding > Acting
NTRO+DCA
Targeting Framework
PMO
NSA
JIC
IDS
MAC
NTRO+DCA
NTRO+DCA DCA
Some other ideas:
Targeting is 50% of effort, money & accountability
Shared targeting infrastructure with access control & authorisations (via a toolchain)
Joint or inter-placed mission teams

25. Indian Cyber Doctrine?
Minimum Credible Baseline:
Situational Awareness in the Fog of War
The US cannot allow the insecurity of our cyber systems to reach a point
where weaknesses in those systems would likely render the US unwilling
to make a decision or unable to act on a decision fundamental to our
national security
-- Richard Danzig

26. Indian Cyber Strategy?
Cyber as a Counter-insurgency
“The cyber environment displays characteristics of a classical insurgent force”
-- Maj G.B. Parisien, Canadian Armed Forces
- What you own, you necessarily do not control
- Perpetually contested territory
- Embrace constant adversarial contact

27. Proportional Response
“Espionage & warfighting in cyberspace can be indistinguishable until the denouement”
- Col. Gary D. Brown, USCYBERCOM
- Attributability does not lead to intent, it’s a function of national security strategy
- Intent doesn’t have much bearing on impact
- Proportional response is power projection
- Proportional response is escalatory dominance
- Sony attack, backfiring of US deterrence in the Russia hack

28. Discrepancies in the Indian cyber escalatory matrix

29. Our Commander-in-Chief & Head of State need to think like Hacker-in-Chief now
-- Take away from Jacquelyn Schneider’s seminal study on the US Naval War
College’s wargames