The Department of the Army Criminal Investigation Division, or CID, in an announcement last week warned the watches may contain malware, potentially granting whoever sent the peripherals “access to saved data to include banking information, contacts, and account information such as usernames and passwords.”

A more innocuous tactic may also be to blame: so-called brushing, used in e-commerce to boost a seller’s ratings through fake orders and reviews.

The CID, an independent federal law enforcement agency consisting of thousands of personnel, did not say exactly how many smartwatches were so far distributed.

The next Army recruiting tool amid a slump? It could be the metaverse.

Wearable tech and downloadable applications have long clashed with the national security ecosystem, where secrecy is paramount. Smartwatches and their software log personal info and location data, can record audio and often lack a sufficient means to validate users.

The New York Times in 2018 reported that Strava, a fitness app that posts a map of user activity, unwittingly revealed locations and habits of military bases and personnel, including those of American forces in the Middle East. And in 2020, Bellingcat reported military and intelligence personnel could be tracked via Untappd, a beer-rating social network.

The investigation division said troops that receive a smartwatch unsolicited should not turn the device on and should instead report the matter to a counterintelligence or security official.

The bill is the first of three major defense bills Congress expects to move forward in less than three days. The Armed Services Committee voted in favor of the bill 58-1 after 14 hours of debate, setting the stage for the full House to vote in July before negotiating final legislation with the Senate. Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., was the lone no vote.

“It is a good bill that will strengthen our national defense and provide for our warfighters,” House Armed Services Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Ala., said at the beginning of the mark up on Wednesday. “It will help build the ready, capable and lethal fighting force we need to deter China and our other adversaries.”

Still, Rogers and other Republican defense hawks previously have criticized the $886 billion defense top line as “inadequate” because it doesn’t keep pace with inflation. The top line is up 3.3% from last year, and is locked in place after Congress negotiated a deal to raise the debt ceiling while cutting non-defense spending to $704 billion.

Rogers has joined Senate Republicans in calling for Congress to circumvent the debt limit deal’s defense spending caps through supplemental spending packages for the Pentagon later this year, though House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., has resisted that idea.

Ukraine and Taiwan

The Armed Services Committee used electronic voting for the first time this year to mark up the defense authorization bill and more than 800 amendments, allowing lawmakers to move through the marathon session slightly faster than in prior years.

The amendments included a provision from Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., that would establish an independent inspector general to oversee Ukraine aid, similar to the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan. Republicans have called for this measure to provide an additional layer of Ukraine aid oversight beyond the Pentagon Inspector General. The committee approved the Ukraine inspector general as part of a package of nonpartisan amendments adopted by voice vote.

Democrats unsuccessfully sought to add $500 million to the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative beyond the $300 million the Biden administration requested. Republicans argued the boost would harm readiness, with Rogers noting the offset “robs just about every operations and maintenance account in existence.” The proposed increase, introduced by Rep. Jared Golden, D-Maine, failed in a 28-31 party-line vote.

The bill stipulates that $80 billion of the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative funds it provides should go toward giving Kyiv long-range Army Tactical Missile Systems, which the Biden administration has so far refused to send.

Additionally, the bill includes some bipartisan recommendations advanced by the House China Committee last month, including an amendment from China Committee Chairman Mike Gallagher, R-Wis., requiring the Defense Department to collaborate with Taiwan on cybersecurity.

Republicans passed 31-28 another China provision introduced by Rep. Ronny Jackson, R-Texas, over Democratic objections. That amendment requires the Pentagon to submit a report on plans to blockade fuel shipments to China in the event of a conflict. Rep. Adam Smith of Washington, the committee’s top Democrat, deemed the provision too aggressive and argued the Pentagon likely has classified plans for this scenario already.

Procurement

The bill authorizes procurement of nine battle force ships: two Virginia-class submarines, one Columbia-class ballistic missile submarine, two Arleigh Burke destroyers, two guided missile frigates, one T-AO fleet oiler and one amphibious transport dock ship.

The Navy did not request the amphibious ship, but the Marine Corps asked for $1.7 billion in its unfunded priority list to finish buying it.

The Armed Services Committee sided with the Marines, arguing the Pentagon’s plans to pause the line would allow the amphibious fleet to drop below the statutory 31-ship requirement. These ships are usually purchased every other year, but an amendment added by sea power subcommittee Chairman Trent Kelly, R-Miss., would authorize incremental funding through FY25 to allow the Defense Department to begin contracting and procuring the next amphibious transport dock in FY24.

Republicans also cited the Pentagon’s decision to pause buying amphibious ships as part of their justification for a provision in the bill that would abolish the Pentagon’s Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation Office and move its duties elsewhere, accusing the office of slowing down the acquisition process.

Lawmakers said the proposed pause could upend workforce and supply chains when Congress is focused on bolstering the shipbuilding industrial base. The bill also invests $251 million in the submarine industrial base in the hopes of getting it on track to build two Virginia-class and one Columbia-class submarines per year.

Republicans also passed an amendment from Strategic Forces subcommittee Chairman Doug Lamborn, R-Colo., that would institutionalize the sea-launched cruise missile nuclear program, while allocating nearly $196 million for its research and development in FY24. Democrats said instating the program would cost at least $31 billion and fundamentally change the mission of attack submarines.

But Lamborn failed to secure enough support to undo Rogers’ provision barring construction at the temporary Space Command headquarters in his Colorado district until Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall makes a long overdue final basing decision and justifies it to Congress. Lamborn withdrew the amendment in the face of opposition from Rogers and two other Alabama lawmakers on the committee, who want the Air Force to place the headquarters in Huntsville.

The bill would thwart Navy efforts to retire three amphibious ships and two cruisers, but it would allow the Air Force to retire 42 A-10 Warthog attack planes after long blocking efforts to do so. And the committee added by voice vote an amendment from Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., to prevent the retirement of Air National Guard squadrons until six months after Congress receives a report on how to fill the gap.

Alfred University, located in upstate New York, sent a letter to the committee, stating it had closed its Confucius Institute.

“I’m glad to see Alfred University finally doing the right thing and shutting down its Confucius Institute,” Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wisc.), who chairs the select committee, said in the statement. “But the Confucius Institute is only one tool in the CCP’s toolbox.”

“We’re going to continue to dig into the facts to make sure that no American taxpayer dollars are supporting research partnerships that the CCP can exploit for its own purposes,” he added.

Confucius Institutes are a part of the Chinese government’s efforts to engage other countries in cultural events, academic seminars and business conferences, according to the Congressional Research Service. The first Confucius Institute opened in the United States in 2005 at the University of Maryland, which closed in 2020.

In May 2022, Alfred University was awarded a $13.5 million contract to support a project with the U.S. Army to “conduct advanced manufacturing and characterization research of high temperature materials,” according to an announcement from Alfred University. That research was meant to help materials withstand the extreme temperatures that occur when cruise missiles travel at hypersonic speeds.

This week’s announcement comes after the committee said it would investigate Alfred University over hosting its institute. Gallagher sent a letter on May 31 to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, where he requested information about the Pentagon’s efforts to protect the United States’ military research.

The 2021 National Defense Authorization Act prohibited the Pentagon from providing funds to colleges and universities that host a Confucius Institute. The 2021 NDAA gave universities a deadline of October 1, 2023, to end their relationships with the Chinese government-linked groups.

To date, three universities continue to conduct “sensitive military research” while hosting a Confucius Institute on its campus, according to the statement. The University of Toledo and University of Utah continue to host the institutes on their campuses. St. Cloud State University has paused its institute’s operations while the university conducts a review, according to the National Association of Scholars.

Alfred University did not respond to request for comment. More than 100 universities and colleges have closed — or are in the process of closing — their Confucius Institutes.

CISA, which monitors cyber threats and recommends policies and tools to combat them, would not say which agencies were attacked, though officials said they’re not aware of any impacts to the military or the intelligence community. The Pentagon did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

There are so far no indications that stolen government data has been leaked, and the government has received no ransom demands, the officials said.

“It is not the case today that the actor has disclosed any information stolen from federal agencies on what are called their leak sites where they often disclose information to demand a payment as part of their extortion scheme,” a CISA official told reporters on June 15. “Impacted federal agencies are conducting appropriate analyses to understand impacts to their agencies and effective data.”

As first reported by CNN, the impacted technology involved MOVEit, a commonly used file transfer software that encrypts and transfers data.

The creator of the technology, Progress Software Corporation, formerly Ipswitch, Inc., partners with 1,700 software companies and 3.5 million developers, according to its website.

CNN also reported that a group of Russian speaking hackers have been hacking this kind of software to target broad groups of users and extort them for money. This group, called CLOP, previously took credit for some of these hacks that affected state governments, the BBC and British Airways, among others, according to CNN.

It wasn’t clear whether the particular attack affecting agencies was perpetrated by the same people.

“We are also moving urgently to ensure that similar types of products and applications are appropriately hardened,” officials said.

CISA said it has responded by adding this recent intrusion to its exploited vulnerability catalog and mandated federal agencies to begin mitigation. It also published an advisory with the FBI.

“Although we are very concerned about this campaign and working on it with urgency, this is not a campaign like SolarWinds that presented systemic risk to our national security or our nation’s network,” said Jen Easterly, CISA’s director.

The Massachusetts Air National Guardsman accused of leaking highly classified military documents has been indicted on federal felony charges, the Justice Department said Thursday.

Jack Teixeira faces six counts in the indictment of willful retention and transmission of national defense information.

He was arrested in April on charges of sharing highly classified military documents about Russia’s war in Ukraine and other top national security issues in a chat room on Discord, a social media platform that started as a hangout for gamers. The stunning breach exposed to the world unvarnished secret assessments of Russia’s war in Ukraine, the capabilities and geopolitical interests of other nations and other national security issues.

“As laid out in the indictment, Jack Teixeira was entrusted by the United States government with access to classified national defense information — including information that reasonably could be expected to cause exceptionally grave damage to national security if shared,” Attorney General Merrick B. Garland said in a statement announcing the indictment.

Each count in the indictment is punishable by up to 10 years in prison.

A judge last month ordered him to remain jailed as he awaits trial, saying that releasing Teixeira would pose a risk that he would attempt to flee the country or obstruct justice.

His family has expressed support for him, and his lawyers had pressed the judge to release him to his father, saying he has no criminal history.

Already, automated systems and algorithms help determine credit ratings, loan terms, bank account fees, and other aspects of our financial lives. AI also affects hiring, housing and working conditions.

Ben Winters, Senior Counsel for the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said a joint statement on enforcement released by federal agencies last month was a positive first step.

“There’s this narrative that AI is entirely unregulated, which is not really true,” he said. “They’re saying, ‘Just because you use AI to make a decision, that doesn’t mean you’re exempt from responsibility regarding the impacts of that decision. This is our opinion on this. We’re watching.’”

In the past year, the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau said it has fined banks over mismanaged automated systems that resulted in wrongful home foreclosures, car repossessions, and lost benefit payments, after the institutions relied on new technology and faulty algorithms.

There will be no “AI exemptions” to consumer protection, regulators say, pointing to these enforcement actions as examples.

Consumer Finance Protection Bureau Director Rohit Chopra said the agency has “already started some work to continue to muscle up internally when it comes to bringing on board data scientists, technologists and others to make sure we can confront these challenges” and that the agency is continuing to identify potentially illegal activity.

Representatives from the Federal Trade Commission, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and the and identify negative ways it could affect consumers’ lives.

“One of the things we’re trying to make crystal clear is that if companies don’t even understand how their AI is making decisions, they can’t really use it,” Chopra said. “In other cases, we’re looking at how our fair lending laws are being adhered to when it comes to the use of all of this data.”

Under the Fair Credit Reporting Act and Equal Credit Opportunity Act, for example, financial providers have a legal obligation to explain any adverse credit decision. Those regulations likewise apply to decisions made about housing and employment. Where AI make decisions in ways that are too opaque to explain, regulators say the algorithms shouldn’t be used.

“I think there was a sense that, ‘Oh, let’s just give it to the robots and there will be no more discrimination,’” Chopra said. “I think the learning is that that actually isn’t true at all. In some ways the bias is built into the data.”

EEOC Chair Charlotte Burrows said there will be enforcement against AI hiring technology that screens out job applicants with disabilities, for example, as well as so-called “bossware” that illegally surveils workers.

Burrows also described ways that algorithms might dictate how and when employees can work in ways that would violate existing law.

“If you need a break because you have a disability or perhaps you’re pregnant, you need a break,” she said. “The algorithm doesn’t necessarily take into account that accommodation. Those are things that we are looking closely at ... I want to be clear that while we recognize that the technology is evolving, the underlying message here is the laws still apply and we do have tools to enforce.”

OpenAI’s top lawyer, at a conference this month, suggested an industry-led approach to regulation.

“I think it first starts with trying to get to some kind of standards,” Jason Kwon, OpenAI’s general counsel, told a tech summit in Washington, D,C., hosted by software industry group BSA. “Those could start with industry standards and some sort of coalescing around that. And decisions about whether or not to make those compulsory, and also then what’s the process for updating them, those things are probably fertile ground for more conversation.”

Sam Altman, the head of OpenAI, which makes ChatGPT, said government intervention “will be critical to mitigate the risks of increasingly powerful” AI systems, suggesting the formation of a U.S. or global agency to license and regulate the technology.

While there’s no immediate sign that Congress will craft sweeping new AI rules, as European lawmakers are doing, societal concerns brought Altman and other tech CEOs to the White House this month to answer hard questions about the implications of these tools.

Winters, of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said the agencies could do more to study and publish information on the relevant AI markets, how the industry is working, who the biggest players are, and how the information collected is being used — the way regulators have done in the past with new consumer finance products and technologies.

“The CFPB did a pretty good job on this with the ‘Buy Now, Pay Later’ companies,” he said. “There are so may parts of the AI ecosystem that are still so unknown. Publishing that information would go a long way.”

The ongoing digital belligerence is attributed to a group dubbed “Cadet Blizzard,” allegedly active since 2020, Tom Burt, corporate vice president for customer security and trust, said in the post. The company also connected the group to destructive data-wiping attacks that plagued Ukraine ahead of Russia’s invasion in February 2022.

Russia historically uses cyber to project power, soften targets and meddle in foreign affairs. An International Institute for Strategic Studies report in 2021 placed the country in tier two of its cyber powerhouse rankings, alongside China but behind the U.S.

Advance work in Ukraine blunted Russian cyber advantage, US says

In addition to targeting Ukraine, Cadet Blizzard is focusing efforts on NATO members that are funneling military aid into Eastern Europe, Microsoft said. Countries have committed billions of dollars in equipment, ordnance and combat vehicles to Ukraine to help battle back Russian forces.

“While it has not been the most successful Russian actor, Cadet Blizzard has seen some recent success,” Burt said in the post. “Microsoft’s unique visibility into their operations has motivated us to share information with the security ecosystem and customers to raise visibility and protections against their attacks.”

U.S. leaders have for more than a year urged the private and public sectors to step up their cybersecurity practices and keep an eye out for virtual irregularities.

In the first option, our military builds and deploys “human in the loop” AI systems. These systems adhere to ethical standards and the laws of war but are limited by the abilities of the human beings that supervise them. It is widely believed that such systems are doomed to be slower than any unsupervised, “unethical” systems used by our adversaries. The unethical autonomous systems appear to boast a competitive edge that, left unchallenged, has the potential to erode Western strategic advantage.

The second option is to completely sacrifice human oversight for machine speed, which could lead to unethical and undesirable behavior of AI systems on the battlefield.

Realizing that neither of these options is sufficient, we need to embrace a new approach. Much like the emergence of the cyber warrior in the realm of cybersecurity, the realm of AI requires a new role – that of the “AI operator.”

With this approach, the objective is to establish a synergistic relationship between military personnel and AI without compromising the ethical principles that underpin our national identity.

We need to strike a balance between maintaining the human oversight that informs our ethical framework and adopting the agility and response time of automated systems. To achieve this, we must foster a higher level of human interaction with AI models than simply stop/go. We can navigate this complex duality by embedding the innate human advantages of diversity, contextualization, and social interaction into the governance and behavior of intelligent combat systems.

What we can learn from ancient war elephants

Remarkably, a historical precedent exists that parallels the current challenge we face in integrating AI and human decision-making. For thousands of years, “war elephants” were used in combat and logistics across Asia, North Africa, and Europe. These highly intelligent creatures required specialized training and a dedicated operator, or “mahout”, to ensure the animals would remain under control during battles.

War elephants and their mahouts provide a potent example of a complementary relationship. Much like we seek to direct the speed and accuracy of AI on the battlefield, humans were once tasked with directing the power and prowess of war elephants -- directing their actions and minimizing the risk of unpredictable behavior.

Taking inspiration from the historical relationship between humans and war elephants, we can develop a similar balanced partnership between military personnel and AI. By enabling AI to complement, rather than replace, human input, we can preserve the ethical considerations central to our core national values while still benefiting from the technological advancements that autonomous systems offer.

Operators as masters of AI

The introduction and integration of AI on the battlefield presents a unique challenge, as many military personnel do not possess intimate knowledge of the development process behind AI models. These systems are often correct, and as a result, users tend rely too heavily on their capabilities, oblivious to errors when they occur. This phenomenon is referred to as the “automation conundrum” – the better a system is, the more likely the user is to trust it when it is wrong, even obviously so.

To bridge the gap between military users and the AIs upon which they depend, there needs to be a modern mahout, or AI operator. This specialized new role would emulate the mahouts who raised war elephants: overseeing their training, nurturing, and eventual deployment on the battlefield. By fostering an intimate bond with these intelligent creatures, mahouts gained invaluable insight into the behavior and limitations of their elephants, leveraging this knowledge to ensure tactical success and long-term cooperation.

AI operators would take on the responsibilities of mahouts for AI systems, guiding their development, training, and testing to optimize combat advantages while upholding the highest ethical standards. By possessing a deep understanding of the AI for which they would be responsible, these operators serve as liaisons between advanced technology and the warfighters that depend on them.

Diverse trainers, models can overcome risk of system bias

Just as war elephants and humans possess their own strengths, weaknesses, biases, and specialized abilities, so do AI models. Yet, due to the cost of building and training AI models from scratch, the national security community has often opted for tweaking and customizing existing “foundation” models to accommodate new use cases. While this approach may seem logical on the surface, it amplifies risk by building upon models with exploitable data, gaps, and biases.

This approach envisions the creation of AI models by different teams, each utilizing unique data sets and diverse training environments. Such a shift would not only distribute the risk of ethical gaps associated with individual models but also provide AI operators with a broader array of options, tailored to meet changing mission needs. By adopting this more nuanced approach, AI operators can ensure AI’s ethical and strategic application in warfare, ultimately strengthening national security and reducing risk.

Mahouts who trained their war elephants did not do so with the intention of sending these magnificent creatures into battle alone. Rather, they cultivated a deep symbiotic relationship, enhancing the collective strengths of both humans and animals through cooperation and leading to greater overall outcomes. Today’s AI operators can learn from this historical precedent, striving to create a similar partnership between humans and AI in the context of modern warfare.

By nurturing the synergy between human operators and AI systems, we can transform our commitment to ethical values from a perceived limitation into a strategic advantage. This approach embraces the fundamental unpredictability and confusion of the battlefield by leveraging the combined strength of human judgment and AI capabilities. Furthermore, the potential for this collaborative method extends beyond the battlefield, hinting at additional applications where ethical considerations and adaptability are essential.|

Eric Velte is Chief Technology Officer, ASRC Federal, the government services subsidiary of Arctic Slope Regional Corp., and Aaron Dant is Chief Data Scientist, ASRC Federal Mission Solutions.

Have an opinion?

This article is an letter to the editor and the opinions expressed are those of the author. If you would like to respond, or have a letter or editorial of your own you would like to submit, please email C4ISRNET and Federal Times Senior Managing Editor Cary O’Reilly.

But this was not the first time that water has been weaponized in this war. With hydropower an important resource in a region starving for energy, and with self-styled volunteer forces taking command in local “oblasts,” water has become one of the war’s most important assets. That makes dams critical infrastructure on par with nuclear power plants.

It is hard to imagine a type of warfare more unconventional or prehistoric than “hydraulic warfare”— that is, the deliberate flooding during combat. True, this kind of warfare is not new, but an age-old technique used to enhance defenses. During the Eighty Years’ War, Dutch rebel led by William of Orange intentionally flooded low-lying areas to defend against the Spanish invaders. The Chinese breaching of Yellow River levees in 1938 to slow down the Japanese advance was called “The Largest Act of Environmental Warfare in History.”

During World War II, Josef Stalin directed his secret police to blow up a hydroelectric dam in the Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia to slow the German advance. The corresponding flooding was estimated to have killed upwards of 20,000 people caught in its path. Thus, flooding rivers can create a very effective defense but it can also be costly to residents in the flood plain.

Consider what occurred during the early days of the war. To halt the initial Russian advance onto Kyiv, a handful of enterprising civilians, with support from the Ukrainian military, blew up a dam where the Irpin River met the Dnipro. Their aim: to turn a minor river basin into a major obstacle.

The waterway was not particularly large – about 10-30 feet across in many areas – but it was is deep and wide enough make fording nearly impossible, yet still easy enough to cross using pontoon or other military bridges. More importantly, given its proximity to the center of Kyiv, the river was the final natural obstacle between the advancing Russian army and the capital.

After carefully breaching the dam and sending more than 31 billion gallons of water gushing into the Irpin River, the surrounding farmland from the reservoir was flooded.

About a month later, the Russians gave up their assault on Kyiv and withdrew all their forces from Kyiv and its surrounding areas. They never got a sizable force across the Irpin River. No, blowing the dam alone did not save the city, in and of itself, but it did slow the advance and bought the Ukrainians time to defend themselves.

Of course, blowing up the Kakhovka dam and hydroelectric plant in southern Ukraine has led to flooding orders of magnitudes higher than the flooding of the Irpin: tens of thousands of homes lost, farm fields lost, populations without drinking water, minefields uprooted and floating to unknown locations, and the second largest nuclear power plant in Europe put at even more risk. Ukrainian officials have called it “ecocide” — the mass destruction of ecosystems.

Yet such targeting of waterways and hydro-plants has become not an outlier of modern warfare, but a common feature. More than a year later, the Irpin remains flooded, homes and farmlands destroyed or unusable, and the dam has yet to be fixed. But nearly all Ukrainians, to include those caught in the flood path, would agree that it was necessary and worth the cost.

While we tend to fixate on the more AI-powered weaponry ordinary Ukrainians are tinkering on in their basements – the 3D-printed drones and such – we must not forget that war is a battle against the elements and one’s natural surroundings; in this case, the rivers and other waterways that crisscross Ukraine.

Yes, sophisticated tanks and fighter jets are important to shift the lopsided balance of power in this war. But water is equally critical. Nuclear facilities rely on water to cool them. Civilians rely on potable water to survive, while flooded farms and fields cripple food stocks.

Hydraulic warfare is literally washing away people’s livelihoods and is every bit as destructive, if not more, than traditional munitions.

Kyiv’s military, and NATO, must plan accordingly.

Lionel Beehner is a senior director at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs. Liam Collins is a Fellow at New America and was the founding director of the Modern War Institute at West Point. John Spencer is chair of urban warfare studies at the Modern War Institute, co-director of MWI’s Urban Warfare Project, and host of the Urban Warfare Project Podcast.

The full rollout, expected in August, is the latest step in the $136 million Navy Enterprise Service Desk venture, meant to modernize and consolidate more than 90 IT help desks into one central node. General Dynamics Information Technology announced it was awarded the NESD indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity contract in late 2021.

Sailors, Marines and civilians with a common access card and who can be verified through the Global Federated User Directory will be able to contact Amelia via phone or text. The program should serve more than 1 million users around-the-clock responses based on a depth of training and insider know-how. Additional applications, such as in a classified environment, could follow.

“Predominantly, we’ve had to have agents around who had knowledge of ‘how do I fix a specific issue,’” Travis Dawson, GDIT’s chief technology officer for the Navy and Marine Corps sector, told C4ISRNET in an interview. “Well, that issue can be documented, right? And once it’s documented, we can go ahead and have that resolved via automation, without the human interaction.”

While Amelia is taught to answer questions and complete repetitive tasks, Dawson said it is capable of more, such as sensing frustration in user queries.

“In the AI world, I will tell you, they get really sensitive when you call conversational AI a bot,” he said. “A bot has a back-ended script, right? So it’s only going to tell you the answer that it knows. If it doesn’t tell you, you sit at a dead end.”

Pentagon takes own ‘Pulse’ with internal data dashboard

Should Amelia be unable to answer a question or fix a problem, it is capable of forwarding the matter to a live agent — the sort of human-to-human interaction traditionally associated with connectivity woes or locked accounts. In testing, Amelia has helped slash the number of abandoned calls “significantly,” and the “first-contact resolution rate has been pretty high, in the higher 90 percentile,” according to Dawson.

“People are able to get their answers quicker than they have historically,” he said.

The Pentagon is spending billions of dollars on AI advancement and adoption. The technology is being applied to both the battlefield and the boardroom. It can assist target identification onboard combat vehicles, and it can parse mass amounts of personnel and organizational info.

GDIT, a division of General Dynamics, the fifth largest defense contractor in the world by revenue, in May launched a tech-investment strategy with focuses on zero-trust cybersecurity, 5G wireless communications, automation for IT operations, AI and more.

The company provided C4ISRNET a rendering of Amelia as a female sailor in uniform. No explanation of the name or gender selection was given.

“The requirement moving forward was to have the integration of an AI capability,” Dawson said. “And with automation that’s out there today, Amelia fit the bill.”

The so-called hunt-forward mission, handled by experts on the Cyber National Mission Force, was conducted inside Southern Command’s area of responsibility, which comprises more than two-dozen countries such as Argentina, Brazil, Jamaica and Nicaragua.

“We had our first defend-forward mission, a hunt-forward mission, in SOUTHCOM just recently, which is amazing,” Brig. Gen. Reid Novotny said June 8 at the Potomac Officers Club’s Cyber Summit in McLean, Virginia. “The whole point of the defend-forward mission is to learn something on someone else’s network, a partner network, another nation’s network, so we can bring back that information and make sure our networks are more secure.”

Novotny did not say when or where, exactly, the hunt-forward took place. Inquiries made by C4ISRNET to CYBERCOM on Thursday were not immediately answered.

US Army revamps program executive offices to sharpen cyber focus

Hunt-forward missions are defensive measures taken by CYBERCOM at the invitation of another government. The international endeavors are often disclosed well after the fact — or not at all, depending on agreements made. The Cyber National Mission Force has deployed dozens of times across at least 22 countries, including Ukraine, ahead of Russia’s latest invasion; Albania, in the wake of Iranian cyberattacks; and Latvia, where malware was unearthed.

The intelligence gathered on the trips is used to strengthen both foreign and domestic cybersecurity practices.

Maj. Gen. William Hartman, the commander of the mission force, in May said adversaries often use “spaces outside the U.S. as a test bed for cyber tactics.” Hunt-forward missions, he continued, help identify and classify “that activity before it harms the U.S., and better posture the partner to harden critical systems against bad actors who threaten us all.”

Vladimir Rogov, a Moscow-installed official in southeast Ukraine’s partly-occupied Zaporizhzhia province, said fighting resumed there early Monday after Russian defenses beat back a Ukrainian advance the previous day.

Rogov claimed that “the enemy threw an even bigger force into the attack than yesterday.” The new attempt to break through the front line was “more large-scale and organized,” he said, adding: “A battle is underway.”

Rogov’s comments came after Moscow also claimed to have thwarted large Ukrainian attacks in the eastern Donetsk region, another of the four regions that President Vladimir Putin claimed as Russian territory last fall and partially controls.

Russia’s Defense Ministry claimed it had pushed back a “large-scale” assault Sunday at five points in Donetsk province.

The claims could not be independently verified, and Ukrainian officials did not confirm any assaults, but the reports fueled speculation that a major Ukrainian ground operation could be underway as part of an anticipated counteroffensive.

A video published by the Ukrainian Defense Ministry showed soldiers putting a finger to their lips in a sign to keep quiet. “Plans love silence,” it said on the screen. “There will be no announcement of the start.”

The Center for Strategic Communications of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said on Telegram that Russian forces were “stepping up their information and psychological operations.”

“In order to demoralize Ukrainians and mislead the community (including their own population), Russian propagandists will spread false information about the counteroffensive, its directions and the losses of the Ukrainian army. Even if there is no counteroffensive,” a statement on Telegram read.

Ukrainian officials have kept Russia guessing about when and where it might launch a counteroffensive, or even whether it had already started. A possible counteroffensive, using advanced weapons supplied by Western allies, could provide a major morale boost for Ukrainians 15 months after Russia’s full-scale invasion.

Recent military activity, including drone attacks on Moscow, cross-border raids into Russia and sabotage and drone attacks on infrastructure behind Russian lines, has unnerved Russians. Analysts say those actions may represent the start of the counteroffensive.

Driving out the Kremlin’s forces is a daunting challenge. Russia has built extensive defensive lines, including trenches, minefields and anti-tank defenses. The front line stretches for 1,100 kilometers (684 miles).

Ukraine could launch simultaneous pushes in different areas, analysts say.

Michael Clark, the former head of the Royal United Services Institute think tank, said the “increased tempo” of activity in recent weeks likely marked the start of the counteroffensive and that June is likely to see the start of Ukraine’s ground operation.

“There’s something going on,” he told the BBC.

Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov claimed that 250 Ukrainian personnel were killed in the fighting in Donetsk province, and 16 Ukrainian tanks, three infantry fighting vehicles and 21 armored combat vehicles were destroyed.

“The enemy’s goal was to break through our defenses in the most vulnerable, in its opinion, sector of the front,” Konashenkov said. “The enemy did not achieve its tasks. It had no success.”

The Russian Defense Ministry said the alleged Donetsk attack started Sunday morning. It was unclear why it waited until early Monday to announce it.

Ukraine often waits until the completion of its military operations to confirm its actions, imposing news blackouts in the interim.

For months, Ukrainian officials have spoken of plans to launch a counteroffensive to reclaim territory Russia has occupied since invading the country on Feb. 24, 2022, as well as the Crimean Peninsula, which it seized in 2014.

At least two factors have been at play in the timing: better ground conditions for the movement of troops and equipment after the winter, and the deployment of more advanced Western weapons and training of Ukrainian troops to use them.

The Russian Defense Ministry spokesman said Ukraine used six mechanized and two tank battalions in the Donetsk attacks. The ministry released a video claiming to show destruction of some of the equipment in a field.

In a rare specific mention of the presence of Russia’s top military leaders in battlefield operations, Konashenkov said the chief of the general staff of the Russian armed forces, Gen. Valery Gerasimov, “was at one of the forward command posts.”

Announcing Gerasimov’s direct involvement could be a response to criticism by some Russian military bloggers and by Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of Russian mercenary group Wagner, that Russia’s military brass hasn’t been visible enough at the front or taken sufficient control or responsibility for their country’s military operations in Ukraine.

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Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine: https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

Cattler now wrangles some 80 intelligence organizations from 31 NATO members, organizing their efforts somewhat like the director of national intelligence provides guidance to U.S. intelligence agencies. His main focus right now? Russia’s all-out war on Ukraine and its hybrid war against Ukraine and NATO, as well as the rest of Europe. This conversation has been edited for brevity and clarity.

Q: What does the hybrid fight look like right now?

A: Let’s start with the NATO definition of hybrid threats: Combining military and nonmilitary means to take covert and even overt action that involves everything from disinformation and cyber attacks, economic pressure, energy, coercion, irregular armed groups and even use of regular military forces.

These hybrid methods are used to blur the lines between war and peace, and to attempt to sow doubt in the minds of target populations, really with an aim to destabilize and undermine societies. And what we’ve observed is that the speed, scale and intensity of these hybrid activities has increased in recent years.

Ukraine has been victim to hybrid attacks … since even before 2014 when Crimea was illegally annexed. In some ways, the beginnings of the Russian deployment for the annexation was also a bit of a hybrid operation, in that there were “little green men” there. They didn’t wear identifying badges on their uniforms, clearly intended to create some confusion or to sow some doubt, to cause [Western] decision-making to be a bit delayed, hopefully, to deny consensus, and so on … that could prevent the outcome, this illegal annexation of Crimea.

And then in the years in between, you’ve seen everything from sustained cyber attacks of varying scales, denial of service data, exfiltration and so on, and then attempts to really undermine the Ukrainian people’s confidence in the government, undermine elections, try to steer the government in a direction against a Euro Atlantic alignment, whether for the EU or for NATO.

Q: And the Russian message now?

A: What they’re saying is that external support to Ukraine, if not illegal, prevented under international law, is actually against peace, which is really hard to comprehend when you’ve initiated an illegal war of aggression. Asking the country that you’ve illegally invaded to lay down their arms as a humanitarian gesture is a bit of a stretch, and then also to say to nations — that have the right under international law to come to Ukraine’s defense and assistance — that they may not provide that aid, because it extends the war and increases the human cost? Certainly, we don’t agree with it. But this is the voice in this so far from Moscow.

Q: What of their attempts to message that the Western alliance is experiencing war fatigue?

A: I think war fatigue is a real thing. … You have it in Russia. You see it now, with people refusing to be mobilized and called up. You see it in feedback from soldiers that have been mobilized against their will, or that had been promised one thing, like being in the rear providing rear security or logistics, and then wind up in Bakhmut with little to no training and very poor equipment.

I think there’s a potential that you could see war fatigue elsewhere. In Ukraine, they have been subjected to very, very substantial, not just hybrid attack, but also direct physical attack, with many, many allegations of Russian war crimes and crimes against humanity. And that all does weigh on the society.

Q: But the message that the West is getting tired of war?

A: Look … we need to make clear that we will stand by Ukraine for as long as it takes, that we understand that it’s not just about protecting ourselves with stronger resilience, but it’s very important in a hybrid sense. Meaning that we’ve got the capability to withstand disinformation and propaganda, but also an understanding that there are costs that we feel due to higher inflation, energy prices, and so on.

When will the war in Ukraine end? Experts offer their predictions.

But it’s the right thing to do, not just to help Ukraine, but also to help ourselves when we look at the longer term security implications of the war, because Russia has made clear … in January of 2022, at least, that what they actually wish to see is a revision of the international security order and, especially on their border, to roll back NATO to make changes in the security environment that are not, in fact, in line with international law and the sovereign rights of states.

Now, Ukraine feels it directly because they’ve now suffered this expanded invasion. But I think this is also a key reason why so many nations have stepped up and have made the political statement of resolve and also have acted on that statement by providing this assistance now for more than 444 days.

Q: U.S. soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines have been told to prepare for war with China. Why should they be paying attention to what Russian troops are doing in Ukraine?

A: I think we can and should be able to handle and think about more than one thing at a time. The resolution of the war in Ukraine, I mean, just from the legal aspect of it alone, has bearing on other potential disputes around the world, even potentially including China and Taiwan. You could think of Russia and Georgia, and also, Moldova and Transnistria (an unrecognised breakaway state that is internationally recognized as a part of Moldova). There are a few other frozen conflicts around the world where these sorts of resolutions really matter.

And I think there’s been a good argument made in a lot of really strong public analysis that if Ukraine prevails, and the international order is preserved, that also helps maintain an international legal system and peace and stability … so these are very important.

Please remember that we … have a set of very important values. The idea that people have an inherent right to be free, that nations have a right to be sovereign, independent and make their own decisions, and that human rights are preserved on an individual level are things that I know we hold very dear.

And so I think this war in Ukraine is important to us whether we are Ukrainian or not. The war matters because of the things that are happening that we wish to stop and what the war means in the longer term for Ukraine, for Euro Atlantic security and also for international security.

Q: Has this war also been important for learning how Russia fights?

A: Yes, I think it is pretty clear in the way the Russians fight that a lot of the military way of thinking seems to be very Soviet in its mindset, in terms of command and control … in the operational art, the way they organize, the way they choose to fight and the way that they employ weapons.

Look at the use of artillery, for example. It’s very high volume with less precision, but then at huge cost in terms of the ammunition expenditure and also the damage on the ground. These are things that are not usually associated with modern warfare. They’re more commonly associated with World War II and even, in some cases, World War I. So they continue to do more and more poorly on the battlefield.

Q: Does the U.S. risk seeing Russia as too weak, whereas before they saw Russian troops as sort of 10 feet tall? Have we gone in the other direction after seeing their performance in Ukraine?

A: I think most of us did not think the Russians were 10 feet tall. … But they had credible capabilities … both strategic and conventional. ….

Some make a mistake when they say that because Russia has been unable to translate the military activity into the strategic political effect, that means that they’re not doing anything. Completely false. They’ve done a tremendous amount of damage. And that damage is devastating on a practical human level. And that’s why I say I think it’s a mistake to lose sight of that.

And then further, they still retain great nuclear capability. They have the largest nuclear inventory in the world. And that does represent an existential threat, potentially, that needs to be really closely monitored and understood. That’s still retained. And this is a force that in some ways, is larger.

Just because an army is less capable doesn’t mean that it can’t cause significant damage, as this one has done and continues to do so.

Q: And you’ve been having to warn American and international companies about another threat from Russia: critical infrastructure threats.

A: To be clear, I’m not attributing the Nord Stream I or II attacks to Russia. But I’m just pointing out that you see that … the investigation has already preliminarily, to the extent it can, confirmed that it was sabotage and not a naturally caused outage in the two pipelines.

And we’re increasingly mindful that the way our societies have evolved, whether for information technology, communications, financial transfers, or for energy, now natural gas and oil transfers, but increasingly in the future, offshore windmills and solar panel arrays and so on, that we need to pay attention to the potential that Russia could choose to attack that infrastructure.

We already see them mapping undersea infrastructure. We know that they have capabilities that they’ve sought to preserve and expand over time to do the sorts of activities whether for intelligence, or for more hostile activities, more hostile actions against that infrastructure. And we have to look for it because, as I said in the definition, economic … leverage and energy leverage are two tools that we would consider to be in the hybrid toolkit.

Part of our public outreach has, in fact, been to the private sector — to the energy industry, to telecommunications industry, to IT service providers, network operators, and so on — to try to explain the potential of these threats because they have a large stake in the risk.

They do own some of it, and they also have some capabilities on their own to help us monitor, to provide that situational awareness and to see some anomalies, potentially to detect problems in the system. And I think, in some cases, they’re likely to be first, in fact, to see these things. …

I think it was the open ocean that they used to consider was the protection — that they had to provide armor for a telecommunications cable close to the beach so an anchor couldn’t drag across it and cut it. … Or maybe put a bigger fence or have some physical standoff around a landing station, so a terrorist attack would be less effective. Or there can’t be a break in, because I’ve got guards, and I’ve got cameras and things.

And what we’re saying to them now is: You have to potentially worry about a state capability that could reach out and touch your infrastructure.

Q: You’re essentially asking them to armor every foot of those undersea cables and put some sort of sensor on them to detect interference?

A: I wouldn’t quite go that far. … That’s reasonably unreasonable, because the cost would be phenomenal. … But that’s where you have to really then think through what do I do for surveillance? What do I do for monitoring? Maybe I use AI for anomaly detection or to look for patterns of surface ships, aircraft hovering around key nodes and that sort of thing. How do I use my network monitoring? If I’m on Google or … Deutsche Telekom, British Telecom, maybe there are things I could do other than just monitoring my network. I think there needs to be a good healthy discussion between the public and private sector about … ways to mitigate it that are feasible and affordable.

Lospinoso recently told a Senate Armed Services subcommittee how artificial intelligence can help protect military operations. The CEO/programmer discussed the subject with The Associated Press as well how software vulnerabilities in weapons systems are a major threat to the U.S. military. The interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Q: In your testimony, you described two principal threats to AI-enabled technologies: One is theft. That’s self-explanatory. The other is data poisoning. Can you explain that?

A: One way to think about data poisoning is as digital disinformation. If adversaries are able to craft the data that AI-enabled technologies see, they can profoundly impact how that technology operates.

Q: Is data poisoning happening?

A: We are not seeing it broadly. But it has occurred. One of the best-known cases happened in 2016. Microsoft released a Twitter chatbot it named Tay that learned from conversations it had online. Malicious users conspired to tweet abusive, offensive language at it. Tay began to generate inflammatory content. Microsoft took it offline.

Q: AI isn’t just chatbots. It has long been integral to cybersecurity, right?

A: AI is used in email filters to try to flag and segregate junk mail and phishing lures. Another example is endpoints, like the antivirus program on your laptop – or malware detection software that runs on networks. Of course, offensive hackers also use AI to try defeat those classification systems. That’s called adversarial AI.

Q: Let’s talk about military software systems. An alarming 2018 Government Accountability Office report said nearly all newly developed weapons systems had mission critical vulnerabilities. And the Pentagon is thinking about putting AI into such systems?

A: There are two issues here. First, we need to adequately secure existing weapons systems. This is a technical debt we have that is going to take a very long time to pay. Then there is a new frontier of securing AI algorithms – novel things that we would install. The GAO report didn’t really talk about AI. So forget AI for a second. If these systems just stayed the way that they are, they’re still profoundly vulnerable.

We are discussing pushing the envelope and adding AI-enabled capabilities for things like improved maintenance and operational intelligence. All great. But we’re building on top of a house of cards. Many systems are decades old, retrofitted with digital technologies. Aircraft, ground vehicles, space assets, submarines. They’re now interconnected. We’re swapping data in and out. The systems are porous, hard to upgrade, and could be attacked. Once an attacker gains access, it’s game over.

Sometimes it’s easier to build a new platform than to redesign existing systems’ digital components. But there is a role for AI in securing these systems. AI can be used to defend if someone tries to compromise them.

Q: You testified that pausing AI research, as some have urged, would be a bad idea because it would favor China and other competitors. But you also have concerns about the headlong rush to AI products. Why?

A: I hate to sound fatalistic, but the so-called “burning-use” case seems to apply. A product rushed to market often catches fire (gets hacked, fails, does unintended damage). And we say, ‘Boy, we should have built in security.’ I expect the pace of AI development to accelerate, and we might not pause enough to do this in a secure and responsible way. At least the White House and Congress are discussing these issues.

Q: It seems like a bunch of companies – including in the defense sector — are rushing to announce half-baked AI products.

A: Every tech company and many non-tech companies have made almost a jarring pivot toward AI. Economic dislocations are coming. Business models are fundamentally going to change. Dislocations are already happening or are on the horizon — and business leaders are trying to not get caught flat-footed.

Q: What about the use of AI in military decision-making such as targeting?

A: I do not, categorically do not, think that artificial intelligence algorithms — the data that we’re collecting — are ready for prime time for a lethal weapon system to be making decisions. We are just so far from that.

The Program Executive Office for Intelligence, Electronic Warfare and Sensors, or PEO IEW&S, headed by Mark Kitz, will by Oct. 1 absorb defensive cyber operations, cyber analytics and detection, cyber platforms and systems, and the technology applications office. Those efforts are now associated with the Program Executive Office for Enterprise Information Systems, or PEO EIS, run by Ross Guckert.

The move coincides with the start of the government’s fiscal 2024, as well as a separate consolidation of network portfolios involving the Program Executive Office for Command, Control and Communications-Tactical, or PEO C3T, overseen by Maj. Gen. Anthony Potts.

The portfolio changes across all three PEOs were discussed May 24 at a conference with industry known as Technical Exchange Meeting X, in Philadelphia. No jobs are expected to be cut, and contracts should flow as normal.

“Synergy, our optimization of the organization here, is really important for us as a cyber enterprise,” Kitz said.

The next Army recruiting tool amid a slump? It could be the metaverse.

Using the Pentagon’s acquisition budget management tool, PEOs engage with external stakeholders to track the full lifecycle of budget data for procurement. Offices were established by the Defense Department in the 1980s as a means to control costs and improve delivery performance, and oversight of specific initiatives are reassigned from time to time as missions and priorities change.

PEO IEW&S is already home to several Army cyber efforts. In August, the office unveiled a cell dedicated to offensive cyber and space capabilities called Program Manager Cyber and Space.

The Army is always looking at how it can get upgraded hardware and software into soldier hands. That, among other factors, is motivating the office reorganization, or optimization, according to Young Bang, the principal deputy assistant secretary of the Army, or ASA, for acquisition, logistics and technology, or ALT.

“As the Army is modernizing, and we’re transforming, we looked at the structure and said, ‘Hey, are things really linked together to be more efficient, to support things like the unified network?’” Bang said at the conference. “We had a lot of discussions across the ASA(ALT) community and the PEOs. We talked about those types of things.”

Additional shuffles may be on the horizon, he said.

Among the moves unveiled by the administration was a tweak to the United States’ strategic plan on artificial intelligence research, which was last updated in 2019, to add greater emphasis on international collaboration with allies.

White House officials on Tuesday were also hosting a listening session with workers on their firsthand experiences with employers’ use of automated technologies for surveillance, monitoring, evaluation, and management. And the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Educational Technology issued a report focused on the risks and opportunities related to AI in education.

“The report recognizes that AI can enable new forms of interaction between educators and students, help educators address variability in learning, increase feedback loops, and support educators,” the White House said in a statement. “It also underscores the risks associated with AI — including algorithmic bias — and the importance of trust, safety, and appropriate guardrails.”

The U.S. government and private sector in recent months have begun more publicly weighing the possibilities and perils of artificial intelligence.

Tools like the popular AI chatbot ChatGPT have sparked a surge of commercial investment in other AI tools that can write convincingly human-like text and churn out new images, music and computer code. The ease with which AI technology can be used to mimic humans has also propelled governments around the world to consider how it could take away jobs, trick people and spread disinformation.

Last week, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said Congress “must move quickly” to regulate artificial intelligence. He has also convened a bipartisan group of senators to work on legislation.

The latest efforts by the administration come after Vice President Kamala Harris met earlier this month with the heads of Google, Microsoft, ChatGPT-creator OpenAI and Anthropic. The administration also previously announced an investment of $140 million to establish seven new AI research institutes.

The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy on Tuesday also issued a new request for public input on national priorities “for mitigating AI risks, protecting individuals’ rights and safety, and harnessing AI to improve lives.”

Air Force Lt. Gen. Timothy Haugh, the current deputy commander of Cyber Command, would replace Army Gen. Paul Nakasone, who has led both organizations since May 2018 and was expected to step down this year, according to a notice sent by the Air Force this week and confirmed by a person familiar with the announcement. The person spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss personnel matters not yet made public.

If confirmed, Haugh will take charge of highly influential U.S. efforts to bolster Ukraine’s cybersecurity and share information with Ukrainian forces fighting Russia’s invasion. He will also oversee programs to detect and stop foreign influence and interference in American elections, as well as those targeting criminals behind ransomware attacks that have shut down hospital systems and at one point a key U.S. fuel pipeline.

Politico first reported that Haugh was picked.

Haugh’s nomination to lead both NSA and Cyber Command reflects the White House’s intention to keep one person in charge of both organizations. That arrangement is known as a “dual-hat” posting.

Some key Republicans have long wanted to split the leadership, saying each organization is important enough to require a full-time leader. Nakasone has long advocated for keeping the dual hat, saying it gives him and future leaders access to more powers more efficiently.

The Biden administration established a small study group last year to review the leadership structure. The review signaled support for keeping the position as is.

An official familiar with the matter said the group’s review found that having a single head in charge of both agencies better mirrored how U.S. allies’ cyber and intelligence operations were structured and made it easier to act quickly on information — a critical aspect of countering cyberwarfare. The official spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity to be able to discuss sensitive matters.

The group also found that within the U.S., having a single head also streamlined decisions and enabled the U.S. to more quickly act on intelligence, rather than have the information move through the leadership of both structures before recommendations could be made on a response.

The group reviewed case studies of intelligence and cyber operations to determine whether the dual hat structure was necessary and briefed the defense secretary, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and relevant congressional committees on its findings, the official said.

According to a service biography, Haugh is a career signals intelligence officer and recipient of the Bronze Star, given to service members for heroism or outstanding achievement in a combat theater. He has been deputy commander at U.S. Cyber Command since August.

Lt. Gen. Maria Gervais on May 21 told attendees of the GEOINT Symposium in St. Louis that the Army, the military’s largest branch, must “leverage immersive-type environments to expand awareness of the numerous opportunities available when you serve,” especially in a recruiting environment that is “the toughest it has ever been since the inception of the all-volunteer force 50 years ago.”

The service missed its fiscal 2022 recruiting goal by roughly 15,000 new soldiers, leaving it shorthanded. Another shortfall is expected for 2023.

Among the most promising new technologies that could help reverse the trend, Gervais said, is the metaverse: a heady subject that is different things to different people, but boils down to the meshing of in-hand peripherals with immersive digital spaces, social interaction from wherever and an online presence foreign to older crowds.

“We already do some things, but our reach is extremely limited. And we need to do better connecting with our younger generations,” Gervais said. “The metaverse could be a way to extend our reach, improve our brand awareness through advertisement placement, and creating an experience, which could pique the interest and expand the awareness of serving in the military for our youth.”

US Army to ‘overhaul’ recruiting school amid personnel shortage

Searches for “metaverse” peaked in late 2021 and early 2022, according to Google Trends, and has since tapered off.

A virtual experience could more easily draw in Generation Z and its successor, Generation Alpha, according to Gervais, who previously led the Synthetic Training Environment Cross-Functional Team, tasked with polishing the latest in highly accurate military mapping and simulation. The Army earlier this year extended its deal with Maxar Technologies, geospatial intelligence specialists, to work on One World Terrain, a critical piece of the Synthetic Training Environment.

Whereas previous generations were targeted with ads in print and on television — such as the revived “Be all you can be” campaign — and through community outreach, the youngest cohorts require new finesse, Gervais said. The service’s own first-person shooter video game, America’s Army, was shut down in 2022 after more than a decade of sustainment. The series, decried by some as propaganda, showed players the ins and outs of combat as well as soldier life.

“Recruiting the next generation of soldiers and leaders will take the Army investing in modernizing the way it operates,” Gervais said. “They interact differently, and they desire to be engaged differently. And we must transition from our Industrial Age accessions processes and policies and move towards a digital-informed accessions and training process.”

Last year, the New Zealand Defence Force received about NZ$4.9 billion. Inflation to December 2022 was just over 7%, according to Statistics NZ.

New Zealand’s Army has the largest share of funding among the armed services, receiving NZ$1.1 billion. The Army received about NZ$1.1 billion last year.

The government is allocating about NZ$1 billion — compared to NZ$941 million last year — to the Royal New Zealand Air Force.

The Royal New Zealand Navy is set to get about NZ$714 million — an increase from last year’s NZ$667 million.

An additional NZ$574 million will go toward protecting New Zealand’s territorial sovereignty and contribute to regional and global security efforts. And more than NZ$30 million is meant to assist with “the employment of New Zealand’s Armed Forces overseas, and to enable the provision of military capabilities overseas.”

The Government Communications Security Bureau, which specializes in gathering intelligence from electronic communications, is to receive almost NZ$402 million — a 25% increase from last year.

The Defence Ministry is set to get about NZ$1.3 billion for the “procurement of major military capabilities.” This includes NZ$605 million for five new C-130J-30 Hercules airlifters to replace the existing C-130H fleet, which has been in service with the Air Force since 1965, and almost NZ$14 million for P-8A Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft. The third P-8A of four ordered is to arrive in New Zealand on May 19.

The budget also includes more pay for military personnel, with increases ranging from NZ$4,000 to NZ$15,000, beginning July 1 and costing NZ$419 million over four years. Defence Minister Andrew Little said the increase has led to the withdrawal of some resignation letters.

The budget for resource and border protection operations increases from NZ$610 million to NZ$634 million.

A domestic effort that partly supports public awareness of the proficiency and practice of the military will receive a modest increase from NZ$62.1 to NZ$64.2.

Budget documents noted that the funding increase this year follows obsolescence-driven serviceability issues that caused the unavailability of SH-2G(I) Seasprite helicopters, thus reducing naval aviation readiness, and the inability to service Boeing 757 engines, leading to a reduction in strategic air mobility readiness.

In his article ‘Combating US cyber adversaries calls for whole-of-government approach’, which appeared in C4ISRNET on 17 May 2023, U.S. Rep. Mark E. Green highlights that cyber criminals take advantage of gaps in our visibility over domestic infrastructure and the need for a strong, cross-sector, and whole-of-government approach.

He also points out that interagency cooperation can be improved through the State Department’s new Bureau of Cyberspace and Digital Policy, and that efforts are needed to improve collective cybersecurity.

His observation that over 80% of critical infrastructure is privately owned and operated indicates that a whole-of-nation effort is needed, not simply a whole-of-government effort. Furthermore, close partnerships within the private sector are needed, as is the ability to share timely, actionable, and contextualized information to stop cyber-attacks in their tracks.

These important aspects canvassed by Rep. Mark Green apply equally to Australia, where several government initiatives and legislation that address cyber assurance, reporting, and security have been introduced. However, with Australia’s critical infrastructure entities increasingly being targeted by sophisticated cyber-attacks, we must ask the question - is that enough?

Defensive strategies cannot be formulated in isolation by individual critical infrastructure entities; a collective security posture is needed. In addition, a community-based approach is needed to support government efforts in materially uplifting cyber resilience across the critical infrastructure ecosystem.

The challenges for directors and boards of critical infrastructure operators have increased and additional obligations have now been placed on them and their entities. The onus is on them to act to mitigate risks, which involves balancing risk mitigation measures, and the associated costs within the entity’s operational context.

The extent to which the government can share information across the entire critical infrastructure community must be questioned in light of the high classification of much of that information. It can provide assessments of the threats and will need to increase that effort; however, that is likely to be of a highly technical nature, which many critical infrastructure businesses will not be able to process or understand.

Existing sharing initiatives, led by government, are heavily focused on the sharing of technical threat information and due to low maturity of most small-to-medium enterprises, galvanizing community engagement across the public and private sectors has not been as smooth as anticipated.

Australia’s critical infrastructure providers now span 11 sectors and 22 asset classes, as well as their embedded supply chains; most of these organisations don’t have the capability to share ‘machine-to-machine’ intelligence. Nor has the capability existed in industry to share cyber threat intelligence and build collective cyber defence.

Industry needs an internal trusted facilitator for the intelligence exchange and to ensure the overall quality of information flowing out to the critical infrastructure community.

Existing Information Sharing and Analysis Centres, or ISACs, do not address the breadth of critical infrastructure sectors, only supporting a few of the eleven sectors. Cyber threats span all sectors and a more holistic approach to sharing information on cyber threats and attacks is required. Furthermore, as mentioned above, many public and private sector organisations lack the knowledge, resources or capabilities to effectively participate and gain value from threat-sharing initiatives.

What is needed for the critical infrastructure community over and above the good work already done by government? First, trusted cyber threat intelligence sharing that ensures an industry-led trusted environment to securely and independently gather and disseminate cyber threat intelligence across all critical infrastructure sectors. Second, a commercially safe environment where Intellectual Property and liability protections exist. Third, operational processes and technical capabilities that enable sharing of contextualised cyber threat intelligence and the ‘turn-key’ capabilities that address member needs. And fourth, a transparent and open culture that encourages behaviours of participation, collaboration, and cooperation between members.

The Critical Infrastructure - Information Sharing and Analysis Centre was launched on 6 February this year to address those four aspects, and is establishing a cyber-intelligence sharing community to help boost the cyber resilience of all critical infrastructure providers in Australia, from the largest to the smallest. CI-ISAC offers a mechanism for national collective cyber defence for the critical infrastructure community - a cyber-intelligence sharing community focused on industry owners and operators of Australia’s critical infrastructure to deliver collective cyber defence.

CI-ISAC intends to augment existing initiatives and not detract from the excellent work already underway. CI-ISAC is not introducing any new frameworks or assurance initiatives; rather, it is putting in place an industry-led vehicle and capabilities around operational cyber threat sharing to drive cyber defence outcomes. This enables members to manage their risk more effectively by getting insights across all critical infrastructure sectors.

ISACs represent an opportunity for Industry to self-organise and manage their own challenges — engaging with Government on their own terms – to improve Australia’s overall cyber defences. The strength and utility of an ISAC is directly related to the number of members it brings together and the diversity of insights and knowledge that these members bring to the ISAC’s intelligence-sharing platform. A single Australian ISAC offers a cross-sectoral perspective and a united ability to interact with Government initiatives.

Furthermore, a single CI-ISAC facilitates resource pooling, expanded access to support, and improved overall cyber posture. Above all, it improves the quality of analysis and contextual information sharing. The network effects of a large, cross-sectoral ISAC benefit members by leveraging mature players to build turn-key capabilities which can be used to assist less mature, financially constrained industry members and accelerate their cyber maturity. This, coupled with central supporting functions, consolidates expertise, and maximises utilisation of highly skilled and low-density cyber professionals. CI-ISAC Australia offers economies of scale and efficient utilisation of central expertise.

This contextual information sharing is vital as technical indicators in isolation do not inform risk-based decisions to enable a proactive response. CI-ISAC builds context around threat information shared by members, validating and enriching insights from members and supporting decision-making for all members. Additionally, CI-ISAC is bore-sighted on the operational requirements of its members with reporting and analysis aimed to match the “operational cadence of businesses.”

These approaches will materially raise the level of collective defence of CI-ISAC members. Uplift is by industry, for industry, with a focus on threats targeting Australia, but informed and augmented with strategic global partnerships.

Signed,

David Sandell, CEO and Managing Director, CI-ISAC

CI-ISAC is a not-for-profit entity that connects companies and governments, allowing them to share information on cyber-attacks and strengthen their collective responses.

Have an opinion?

This article is an letter to the editor and the opinions expressed are those of the author. If you would like to respond, or have a letter or editorial of your own you would like to submit, please email C4ISRNET and Federal Times Senior Managing Editor Cary O’Reilly.

The last several years have shown us concerning developments in our adversaries’ approach to cybercrime. While reported cyber incidents decreased last year, our adversaries have grown more sophisticated in their approach. As we evolve our defenses, our adversaries evolve their tactics.

This is a game of one-upmanship and we’re losing.

For example, multi-extortion tactics—where an attacker exfiltrates data to extort a victim before their data is locked in a ransomware attack—occurred in about 70% of ransomware cases, compared to only 40% in mid-2021. Our adversaries’ ability to exploit the very technology Americans rely on day in and day out is extremely concerning.

Cyber criminals and malicious nation states do not distinguish between industries, business size, or geographical location. These attackers use domestic-based infrastructure to launch attacks on U.S. soil. Leveraging domestic cloud infrastructure, email providers, and other services, bad actors disguise themselves as legitimate network traffic to evade detection.

Preventing and disrupting these attacks will require enhanced public-private partnerships. In the 2018 National Cyber Strategy, the Trump administration called out this challenge and the need to address it. Meanwhile, the Biden administration continues to grapple with a response to this growing threat trend in its 2023 National Cybersecurity Strategy. This is a time for decisive leadership, not hesitation.

While cyber criminals take advantage of gaps in our visibility over domestic infrastructure, foreign nation states, such as Russia, give them safe harbor and shelter them from prosecution. In April 2021, the Biden administration levied sanctions on Russia in part for cultivating and shielding cyber criminals. These sanctions, while necessary, have clearly not been enough to deter Russian-based attacks.

To mitigate the risk of the increasingly complex cyber threat landscape and to deter the harboring of cyber criminals by nations, the U.S. must take a strong, cross-sector, and whole-of-government approach.

Serving as Chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee and on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, I see the immense value of our government agencies working together to address the threat both from home and abroad. Unfortunately, cyber defense is often siloed within each government agency, leaving gaps in communication and interagency cooperation.

The creation of the State Department’s new Bureau of Cyberspace and Digital Policy gives us a tremendous opportunity to improve this interagency cooperation. To make the best of this opportunity, the State Department must prioritize efforts to engage the international community in addressing the growing threat from cybercrime as well as cyber aggression from nation states like China. This should be done in close coordination with the Office of the National Cyber Director, which Congress created to streamline efforts across the government, including with our international partners. Doing this will improve our collective cybersecurity.

As Chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, I have oversight responsibility over the Department of Homeland Security, including the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. CISA plays a vital role in protecting our domestic infrastructure, but over 80% of critical infrastructure is privately owned and operated. This means success is dependent on a voluntary relationship framework, not duplicative bureaucratic red-tape. CISA must build trust and establish close partnerships with the private sector and other government stakeholders, like the State Department and ONCD, to share timely, actionable, and contextualized information to stop cyber-attacks in their tracks.

The need for increased information sharing between the federal government and private industry is not new; it has been a foundational dilemma in cybersecurity for years. CISA’s recent efforts, such as the Joint Cyber Defense Collaborative, are steps in the right direction. But it’s clear that this effort is a work in progress, and Congress must play a role in refining the process.

This is just a small facet of a complicated threat picture. However, an overarching strategy to guide individual agency and sector efforts across government and industry will help combat cyber threats. The Biden administration’s National Cybersecurity Strategy has the potential to be that strategic guide, as long as a strong and clear implementation plan follows.

When it comes to our nation’s cyber defenses, time is of the essence. Every minute our networks are not properly defended and prepared to meet new threats gives our foreign adversaries the upper hand.

Cybercriminals and nation states do not consider the agencies involved or the boundaries between sectors when they plot and carry out attacks, so it is imperative that our government agencies and the private sector work together to defeat them before it’s too late.

Rep. Mark Green, a Republican, is a physician and combat veteran of Afghanistan and Iraq, where he served three tours. He is chair of the House Homeland Security Committee and serves on the House Armed Services and Foreign Affairs Committees.

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As a result, they now need to perform at higher levels, work more closely together, comply with challenging new mandates, and modernize legacy systems. Additionally, organizations must do this in the face of a confusing array of choices, and in a rapidly evolving landscape of emerging technologies like blockchain, robotics and artificial intelligence.

AI-powered surveillance sought for US Central Command

One of the emerging technologies already affecting the sector is digital twins, particularly in supply chain management. A combination of enabling technologies and analytic capabilities, digital twins produce a virtual model of a process, system, or object, informed by real-time data.

A new report from Accenture, based on interviews with senior military, defense and aerospace officials, acknowledges the benefits of digital twins for defense supply chains, including cost efficiency, situational awareness, force readiness, fleet management and sustainability.

Digital twins tap real-time and historical data sources to enable learning, reasoning, and dynamic recalibration for improved decision-making. These emerging predictive capabilities can help reduce risk and empower leaders to make more informed decisions, faster.

However, the same report also found four primary barriers to successful digital twin deployment by defense organizations seeking to explore digital twins on a path to more advanced management of their supply chain challenges. Only by identifying and adapting to these challenges can success by guaranteed.

The knowledge deficit

The value of digital twins is in combining the power of technology and human ingenuity to support decision making. Unfortunately, the global defense community currently has a relatively low level of awareness around digital twins, even at the leadership level. Defense organizations should work to ensure senior leaders know about their effectiveness and understand that adoption is led by them, not their IT organization.

Skill deficits can also be addressed through internal learning, new on-demand talent models and through strategic partnerships with vendors and academic and research institutions.

The data dilemma

Real-time data is the oxygen for digital twins, and often, organizations allow their concerns over the quality, volume and complexity of data and the time and costs involved in managing it to supersede its deployment. Many do not realize they can build digital twins with the data they have today and evolve models and inputs over time.

The security paradox

Digital twins deliver more value to the military ecosystem when they extend beyond one organization and integrate with the entire supply chain. However, security concerns can make this difficult to do. Given this and the nascency of digital twin applications in defense supply chains, governance is lagging and perpetuates fears around security and compliance.

The way around this is to update policies and agreements on data security to ensure they also support supply chain data sharing. It also requires refining data security accreditation standards to clarify compliance with sharing rules, and ultimately prioritizing cloud adoption to connect and protect data in a consolidated manner.

The supplier gap

As momentum for digital twins grows, defense organizations will need additional criteria around digitalization and data literacy, as well as modernized contracting protocols, to select suitable suppliers. They will need agreements on data ownership and sharing to provide end-to-end visibility while enabling suppliers to protect intellectual property.

Digital twins can support a process of continuous reinvention, as organizations leading the effort strive to improve data literacy through coaching, commercial incentives, adoption of learnings and modern technologies and tools for supply chain management.

As the world adapts to volatility around markets, the environment and geopolitical events, defense organizations must prepare for more dynamic, informed management of supply chains. Digital twins will become central to supply chain management in defense and are likely to set apart leaders and laggards in military readiness and effectiveness in the years ahead. Tomorrow’s defense leaders are today forging ahead to harness the strategic value of digital twins.

Matthew Gollings is Accenture’s Global Defense Industry Lead. He also leads Accenture’s Defence & National Security Team in Australia and New Zealand.

Have an opinion?

This article is an Op-Ed and the opinions expressed are those of the author. If you would like to respond, or have an editorial of your own you would like to submit, please email C4ISRNET and Federal Times Senior Managing Editor Cary O’Reilly.

Leaders such as Army Col. Jarrett Mathews, acquisition director of the SOCOM task force over the “hyper-enabled operator,” seek new tech to give even individuals the assets they need to see, sense, act and react to ever-changing conditions on the ground.

Mathews showed the audience here at the Global SOF Foundation’s SOF Week not a bearded, muscled operator kicking in doors and shooting but a business suit-clad “operator” navigating the streets of a foreign nation, deciphering spoken language, signage and even graffiti to sus out threats while running their mission.

Prompted by an audience question, Mathews outlined a no-limits picture of what he’d love to put in that operator’s hands.

“I would like a fully-capable, human-machine teaming with an information system that had access to the whole of the Internet,” Mathews said.

The colonel isn’t delusional, he knows that technology isn’t here yet, but Mathews and his team are looking to industry to make it a reality.

“We want these operators to be super users of their environment,” Mathew said.

The concept went public nearly three years ago, Defense News sister publication C4ISRNET previously reported. Since then, the team that Mathew now leads has advanced the language processing capabilities of its voice-to-voice program and started work on translating text via smartphone photo capture and eventually through other devices.

The voice-to-voice program is currently deployed in two undisclosed theaters of operation, Mathews told the crowd. And they’re working now to add languages to the software.

The team has also begun development on an augmented reality piece for viewing the environment with layers of data.

And he’s got some proof that they’re on the right path. As part of their program, the team set out to create a secure capability that can operate without Internet access called “Voice to Voice Language Translation.” The translation allows the user to speak into a smartphone and the software will translate that speech into the desired language and “speak” it aloud.

The team took a calculated risk in trying to demonstrate the software earlier in the day following the morning keynote address. It was clunky, not exactly translating word for word, and required some tech support – a signal that more work is needed.

But Mathews later noted that work with the Stanford Research Institute has allowed base-level translation on smart devices disconnected from the Internet with a higher quality than Google Translate.

The next phase is the Visual Environment Translation, through which a camera can decipher text, even graffiti, which is still in its nascent stages.

Using augmented reality technology, the team also looks to get past tourist-like smartphone photographing, which can draw attention. Instead, they would embed these features into something more inconspicuous, such as a Google Glass-like device that a user could wear, Mathews said.

For that operator running in an austere area with little access, or unsecured access to cloud computing, Mathews and his staff are pushing the boundaries of “edge computing” through a combination of radio frequency sensors and secure video/imagery “pipelines” that piggyback on existing WiFi and Bluetooth networks.

Working as kind of a second brain for the user, Mathews office is developing an “automate the analyst” program. The program aims to help users have not only those voice and text options but feeds from mapping software, social media and other feeds to have a clear picture on what’s happening around them.

The goal is to have all of that without the ever-present hovering “eye-in-the-sky” drones that may not be an option on some of these very small footprint missions.

Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro, on hand for the celebration, said he ordered the creation of the Defense Innovation Unit-inspired group nearly two years ago and was already impressed with the talent it had attracted and the projects it had taken on.

The Marine Innovation Unit will have about 270 reservists by the end of the fiscal year; about 80% are officers and 20% enlisted Marines, MIU commanding officer Col. Matthew Swindle told Defense News following the unit activation ceremony.

Unlike most reserve units, rank and occupational specialty were irrelevant in selecting which Marines would join; about 1,000 Marines applied and were each carefully considered based on their education and experience from their day jobs. The unit is meant to pull together Marines who also have expertise and connections in the worlds of business management, cyber, artificial intelligence, robotics, data analytics, venture capital and more — expertise the active component needs but lacks.

Swindle said some of the Marines in the unit would be put on long-term orders to work as Marine liaisons in other innovation centers like the Strategic Capabilities Office, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Air Force Research Laboratory, the Army Futures Command and more.

But the bulk of the work will center around requests that active-component Marine commands send over. MIU members will help them characterize specific problems and then scour their networks to see if anyone is working on a suitable solution; if not, they’ll reach out to industry to find vendors who can rapidly solve the Marines’ needs. Once a solution is in the works, the team will move on to the next project.

Calling the Marine Innovation Unit “the latest embodiment of the Marine Corps’ legacy of innovation,” Del Toro said he was relying on this group to facilitate rapid acquisition of the tools the service needs to stay technologically ahead of the Chinese navy.

The first big win the unit achieved — just days before the ceremony — directly supports the service’s Force Design 2030 modernization effort.

As part of that push, the Reserve’s 4th Assault Amphibian Battalion was facing cuts. In seeking a new mission for these reservists, the Marine Corps decided to transition the legacy assault amphibious vehicle unit into one that would experiment with small craft in support of the new Stand-In Forces and Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations concepts, Swindle explained.

But the Marine Corps needed to find small craft for them to use.

Swindle said the idea came out of last May’s Modern Day Marine conference in Washington. By June and July, MIU was already huddling with the Defense Innovation Unit and the Marine Corps Warfighting Lab, and by August they had kicked off a commercial solutions opening through DIU. Throughout the fall they winnowed down from 34 vendors to 11 vendors to just four vendors in a demonstration. As of earlier this month, just shy of one year later, Commandant of the Marine Corps Gen. David Berger signed off on buying the boats, Swindle said, marking the end of a process that might have taken four or five years under traditional acquisition models.

Though the unit just formally stood up, Swindle said MIU already has more than 130 projects in various stages of completion. Many concern Marine organizations struggling with information management — they collect a lot of data but can’t use it — or those wanting to conduct a rapid acquisition effort but can’t figure out how to get started.

Swindle offered one example of an ongoing project with the deputy commandant for information.

“Of the multiple forms of information and intelligence that comes in, there are some that we have very classified, bespoke things that only the DoD and the U.S. government do. But there’s also a lot of things that are going on just in plain sight on social media — there are multiple terabytes of data [daily] that are generated; well, how do you make sense of that? What’s the prevailing narrative? What’s going on that’s important to a combatant commander or to a [Marine Expeditionary Force] commander? That’s a really wicked problem to solve,” the colonel said, but it’s also one that could lend itself to creating a consortium with other defense organizations facing the same problem, and for which a commercial solution may already exist.

Rep. Pat Ryan, a Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee and whose district includes Stewart Air National Guard Base, also spoke at the event. He called the Marine Innovation Unit’s mission “personal,” both from his experience as a soldier and then as a small business owner trying to work with the Defense Department.

He said during a speech that “I have personally experienced a lot of the frustrations and pain points” that small businesses still face 15 years later.

“One of the biggest ones was just getting access to the problem, meaning, being able to sit down with folks in the field and understand what are your greatest needs, and then to have access to some of the classified information that you’d need to actually be able to solve those problems,” he told Defense News.

Ryan added that “the urgency of the China threat has been a wakeup call for a lot of folks” and that perhaps a clear threat plus the help of the Marine Innovation Unit could create a real change for the Marine Corps.

The so-called hunt-forward operation, conducted by the Cyber National Mission Force, was the second such endeavor in the former Soviet state. It wrapped up “recently,” U.S. Cyber Command announced May 10.

“During the hunt activities in Lativia, the cyber teams found malware, analyzed it and have an increased understanding of the adversary’s [tactics, techniques and procedures],” according to a statement by the command. C4ISRNET inquired about the malware and its potential attribution.

The mission force worked alongside the CERT.LV, Latvia’s primary cyber emergency response team, and the Canadian military. Canada has spearheaded a NATO reinforcement mission in the European nation since 2017.

“With our trusted allies, the U.S. and Canada, we are able to deter cyber threat actors and strengthen our mutual resilience,” Baiba Kaškina, general manager of CERT.LV, said in a statement. “This can only happen through real-life defensive cyber operations and collaboration. The defensive cyber operations conducted allowed us to ensure our state infrastructure is a harder target for malicious cyber actors.”

The CNMF has deployed nearly four dozen times to 22 countries — including Ukraine, ahead of Russia’s invasion, and Albania, in the wake of Iranian cyberattacks — to strengthen far-flung networks and return with insights that can be applied stateside.

The U.S. considers China and Russia its most significant cyberthreats. Iran and North Korea also make the list, to a lesser degree.

Kaškina described Latvia as a favorite target of “Russian hacktivists and Russian state-supporting hacking groups.” The Latvian government has blamed Russian outfits for phishing and distributed denial-of-service attacks.

Hunt-forward operations are defensive efforts taken at the invitation of a foreign government. They are part of CYBERCOM’s persistent engagement strategy, a means of being in constant contact with adversaries while ensuring proactive, rather than reactive, moves are made.

“Adversaries often use spaces outside the U.S. as a testbed for cyber tactics, which they may use later to access U.S. networks,” U.S. Army Maj. Gen. William Hartman, the commander of the mission force, said in a statement. “But with our hunt forward missions, we can deploy a team of talented people to work with our partners, find that activity before it harms the U.S., and better posture the partner to harden critical systems against bad actors who threaten us all.”

Latvia supports Ukraine in its fight to repel Russian troops, committing to the embattled nation anti-aircraft Stinger missiles, guns, drones, ammunition and more.