CYBERSTRATEGYIn Pentagon's Overhauled Cyber Strategy, Offense is the New Defense

By Jeff Seldin

Pentagon military planners will no longer be holding back when it comes to deploying forces and capabilities to defend the United States and its allies in cyberspace.

The Defense Department Tuesday unveiled an unclassified version of its updated cybersecurity strategy, calling for the nation’s cyber forces to persistently seek out and engage adversaries including China and Russia, as well as terrorist organizations and transnational criminal groups, to minimize threats to the U.S.

It also emphasized the need to work with a variety of partners, across the U.S. government and even with the private sector, to make sure U.S. cyber efforts do not go to waste.

“Cyber capabilities held in reserve or employed in isolation render little deterrent effect on their own,” according to the unclassified strategy. “These military capabilities are most effective when used in concert with other instruments of national power, creating a deterrent greater than the sum of its parts.”

The release of the unclassified version of the Pentagon’s 2023 Cyber Strategy comes more than three months after the classified version was shared with U.S. lawmakers.

At the time, the Pentagon said the new strategy would see U.S. cyber forces “campaign in and through cyberspace below the level of armed conflict to reinforce deterrence and frustrate adversaries.”

The concept, described by senior cyber defense officials as “persistent engagement,” has repeatedly been on display.

Earlier Tuesday, U.S. Cyber Command announced one of its teams had just completed a two-month-long operation in Lithuania, working with the NATO ally to search for and disrupt or minimize threats to networks belonging to the Ministry of the Interior.

Other recent deployments include “hunt forward” operations in Albania and Latvia earlier this year. And according to Cyber Command officials, there have been 50 such deployments to some 23 countries going back to 2018.

U.S. military officials have said information gained during these operations has not only helped allies but proved invaluable as the U.S. tries to protect its own networks — including during the country’s 2020 presidential election, when the U.S. applied lessons it learned from helping officials in Montenegro a year earlier.

“There is a recognition that we will, as a department, need to disrupt malicious cyber activity coming at the United States,” said Mieke Eoyang, the Pentagon’s deputy assistant secretary for cyber policy.