ODNI releases Robert Brose paper on Cyberwar and Netwar

On June 11, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence published a paper by Robert Brose entitled, “Cyber War, Netwar, and the Future of Cyberspace.”

Over twenty years ago, Arquilla and Ronfeldt warned that both “Netwar” and “Cyberwar” were coming, and could impact the 21st Century security landscape as significantly as combined arms maneuver warfare had impacted the security landscape of the 20th. Since that time, the concept of “Cyberwar” has received great attention, while the parallel concept of “Netwar” has languished, even as its salience to global security has continued to grow.

This paper suggests that just as Cyber defense organizations have been required to confront Cyberwar, Netwar organizations, or Netwar-savvy Cyberdefense organizations, are increasingly needed to counter Netwar. Revisiting the Netwar concepts of the 1990s, it offers a 21st century Netwar definition; examines Netwar from a non-western perspective, exploring intersections between Netwar and Russian concepts of ‘Information-Psychological,’ Chinese United Front Theory, and Chinese Legal Warfare, and concludes  with thoughts on unique roles that today’s Cyber defence organizations may play in future Netwar conflict. *

The full paper is available for download here.

Source: ODNI