Military Review English Edition July-August 2016 | Page 37

CYBERSPACE INNOVATION

Cyber Institute at West Point, New York, wrote in
War on the Rocks that the U.S military needed an open
innovation process. They opined the existing military
acquisition processes are no match for current and
future cyberspace threats, which create the need for the
military to rapidly field innovative responses.2
We are in the midst of a sea change in the conduct of
warfare. In the past, commanders used information to
shape operations. Today, we are witnessing how information and operating environments are overlapping and,
in some cases, are one and the same. In Ukraine, Russia
dominated the electromagnetic spectrum, disrupting Ukrainian military communications, geolocating
Ukrainian battalions with unmanned aerial vehicles,
and then destroying those battalions with devastating
artillery strikes.3 Russians also shut down Ukrainian
power-distributor computers and attacked phone lines
to prevent customers from reporting outages.4
Perhaps even more important, adversaries are using social media more effectively than U.S. forces to shape public
perceptions and facilitate military operations. For example, the Russian government’s social media dominance has
shaped what information is available to Russian citizens
and where they are getting information. Similarly, the
Islamic State leverages social media as a strategic weapon
to shape the public narrative and to recruit and finance.
Such growing use of electronic warfare, cyber warfare, and
information operations in hybrid war predicates the need
for valuing innovation in cyberspace operations.
The U.S. Army is losing ground daily by not leveraging the innovations of our adversaries and those of the
civilian sector. The Army cyberspace community, like
most, is witnessing the need for paradigm shifts in how
leaders think about, advantage, and foster innovation.
There is a need to relook how the Army innovates internally while leveraging industry in new ways to innovate
using external solutions. The old models are outdated,
and what one sees in cyberspace makes these paradigm
shifts an imperative for the entire military.
As Chapman, Hutchinson, and Waage demonstrate,
the Army possesses the talent that can provide the pathway
to innovation. Leaders must use this internal talent to grow
a culture of innovation that will ensure current and future
mission success. To address the challenges of complex and
continually evolving information and operating environments, we must examine many of our own paradigms for
how we address innovation across the force.
MILITARY REVIEW  July-August 2016

Innovation Defined
In November 2014, then Secretary of Defense
Chuck Hagel announced the Defense Innovation
Initiative to highlight the Department of Defense’s
(DOD’s) need to adopt innovative practices and means
of operating in increasingly contested environments.
Hagel noted, “We are entering an era where American
dominance in key warfighting domains is eroding,
and we must find new and creative ways to sustain,
and in some areas expand, our advantages even as we
deal with more limited resources.”5 Current Secretary
of Defense Ash Carter has sustained the momentum.
DOD continues to expand cooperative efforts with
Silicon Valley through initiatives such as Defense
Innovation Unit–Experimental (DIUx) that seek to
build and strengthen relationships with new and existing innovators.6 In doing so, the secretary highlights
that many military innovations can and should come
from our industry partners.
In many ways, innovation has become a nebulous
term that describes all things new from automobiles
to mattresses. Innovation is simply anything novel and
useful that one implements. Geoffrey A. Moore describes application innovation as “creating differentiation
by finding and exploiting a new application or use for
an existing technology.”7 Meanwhile, Elaine Dundon
speaks of “the profitable implementation of strategic
creativity.”8 For cyberspace operations, we offer the
following definition of innovation: the implementation
and integration of new concepts, processes, and material that enhance mission capability. Organizations can
enhance innovation through collaboration, flexibility,
creativity, and resourcing.

Innovation in Cyberspace
The mercurial nature of cyberspace presents
a number of novel challenges to the warfighter. A
constant influx of emerging technologies, practices,
and techniques define the information and operating environments. The time between acquisition and
obsolescence adds to this complexity. Threats come
from highly capable and resourced nation-state actors,
terrorist and criminal organizations and individuals,
and hacktivists. The cost barriers to entry continue
to decline for adversaries: a successful hack only has
to be right once; a capable defense has to be right 100
percent of the time.
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