Cyber operations: the new balance

Joint Force Quarterly, July, 2009 by Stephen W. Korns

New normalcy can also be seen as a reaction to what author Nassim Nicholas Taleb describes as "black swan" events--those highly improbable occurrences beyond the realm of normal expectations. What was previously accepted as impossible--even preposterous--is suddenly reality, leaving the Nation grasping for comprehension under forced acceptance. In this context, new normalcy becomes an extempore self-interrogatory, compelling the citizenry to unwillingly decipher and assimilate the residue of a perceived calamitous breakdown in the normal way of life. New normalcy thus serves as the tenuous bridge to the reality of an unknown, fundamentally altered future. Perhaps Eisenhower best captured this nuance as "groping to know the full sense and meaning of these times in which we live." (11)

U.S. joint military doctrine includes new normalcy as a central concept. From this perspective, new normalcy is the condition achieved whereby an adversary is rendered unable to oppose U.S. strategic objectives. After achieving the operational endstate, new normalcy becomes a strategic goal in transition from conflict, which disrupts normal life, to a new level of stability. To achieve new normalcy, the U.S. military, supported by interagency and multinational partners, transitions from major combat operations to stabilization, security, transition, and reconstruction. In addition, adaptive force packages counter any insurgency resistance as the new normalcy begins to take shape.

Although primarily understood from a policy development point of view, there is also a socioscientific basis for comprehension of new normalcy. Thomas Kuhn posits that when the current normal condition cannot explain or resolve an anomaly, a crisis ensues, leading to a fundamental paradigm shift, concluding in a new state of normalcy. In Kuhn's normative transformation theory, a professional community "alter[s] its conception of entities with which it has long been familiar, and ... shift[s] the network of theory through which it deals with the world." (12)

Cyber New Normalcy

At a 2005 hearing, Senator Olympia Snowe alluded to waking up one morning to "yet another new normalcy, just as we did on September 12, 2001." (13) These words symbolically parallel growing national sentiment regarding the fear of a major cyber disaster--thus, the dramatic rise in predictions of a "cyber Pearl Harbor" or an "e-9/11" event. Vint Cerf even likens the rampant spread of malware to a "pandemic ... that could undermine the future of the Internet."14 In the end, Cerf reflects circumspectly, "It seems every machine has to defend itself. The Internet was designed that way. It's every man for himself." (15)

Some in the national security community question whether current U.S. cyber strategy can meet the challenges of modern cyber threats. For instance, a December 2008 Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) report on cybersecurity concludes that protecting cyberspace is "a battle we are losing." (16) In testimony before Congress, Jim Lewis, a member of the panel that wrote the CSIS report, stated that "the U.S. is disorganized and lacks a coherent national [cybersecurity] strategy." (17) Similarly, a 2008 Defense Science Board report concludes that "there is scant real progress to better secure our information infrastructure." (18) The former Director of National Intelligence believed the country is "not prepared to deal with current cybersecurity threats." (19) A former special assistant to the President for critical infrastructure protection warns: "Are we ready for a large-scale cyber disruption or attack? I believe the answer is clearly no." (20)