The long-awaited Defence Green Paper is finally out and makes for interesting reading. So too do the accompanying documents from MoD’s Development Concepts and Doctrine Centre, Future Character of Conflict and Global Strategic Trends – Out to 2040, which provide extensive background to the headline announcements of the Green Paper itself.
Unsurprisingly, cyberspace makes it into the top concerns of government moving forward into a new administration and a Defence Review. What is clear from the DCDC papers is that MoD does understand the current cyber operating environment and has a good handle on the trends and drivers likely to be significant out to, well, 2040. The ‘contested, congested, cluttered, connected, constrained’ mantra of the whole exercise applies pretty well to cyberspace too.
What is less clear from the Green Paper is the UK’s military response to cyber threats, but that’s understandable given the politically complex timing of the paper. Mentions of ‘enhanced’ cyber capabilities and structures in the Green Paper are fairly generic, and the DCDC Future Character of Conflict paper makes explicit reference to the necessary further development and relevance of Computer Network Operations (CNO), jargon for a whole range of activities, including computer network attack (CNA) and espionage (CNE). This is all entirely in keeping with the ‘sensible’ tone of the paper, as Ken suggested, as well as a continuation of current activities, even if these are rarely articulated.
There are interesting references to the destabilising influence of CNO on deterrence, the loss of technological superiority relative to BRIC countries, and the use of technologies in influence operations. I was also struck by a reference to the attribution problems not only with cyber, but with terrorism, which seems to me a very 5GW perspective on political violence.
The Green Paper is a decent pointer to what the military thinks it should be up to over the next few years, and cyberspace is somewhere it definitely wants to be a player.
