Cyberpower and National Security

April 28, 2009 By BobGourley

ndu4 Last week at the InfowarCon my friend Dan Kuehl handed me a copy of Cyberpower and National Security. Cyberwar has been a topic Dan has been exploring in some detail for quite a while. I first met Dan in 1996 when I was a student at the USMC Command and Staff College, and at that time Dan was already writing and exploring concepts related to cyber power and information warfare. His deep focus and insights into this still emerging mission area continues today.

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About the book, it is big. Not just in pages (it weighs in at 642 pages). It is big in info. Chapters are written by some of the greatest thinkers of the Cyber War mission area. Folks like Dan Kuehl, Edward Skoudis, Greg Rattray, Martin Libicki, Irving Lachow, Tim Thomas, Tom Wingfield and of course the editors Franklin Kramer, Stuart Starr and Larry Wentz. These and the other contributors are all well respected thought leaders and each provide insights I believe will be of use to today’s strategic planners.

As for the content, it starts with a great foundation and overview of what is meant by Cyberspace (building on Dan Kuelh’s well articulated definition) and also spells out key issues that policy makers and national security strategists must tackle. It then analyzes and explores changes in cyberspace including projections into the near future, and ends with an analysis of the impact of all these changes- including the considerations we must think through in our strategic deliberations.

I now consider this book a critical foundational work that should be studied by anyone who seeks to dialog on modern national security issues. This book does for the strategic domain what the Common Audit Guidelines did for the operational cyber domain.

I know NDU will continue to examine these topics, and look forward to more material from them. I also look forward to continuing to enage with others in academia via the Cyber Conflict Studies Association, a group that includes many of the authors of this Cyberpower and National Security work.