"Sometimes the most significant legislative measures get the least attention at the time of passage. That may be the case with the Cyberspace Solarium Commission mentioned in the National Defense Authorization Act that was passed on June 18 by the U.S. Senate. Tucked into the bill crafted and sponsored by Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.), the commission may not garner many headlines, but it could galvanize a strategic paradigm shift.
If the idea survives the House-Senate conference process and gets signed into law — and we very much hope it does — it could lead to the creation of the institutions, doctrines, resources, and strategy that the United States needs desperately in the realm of cybersecurity. As New York Times national security correspondent David Sanger argued in a recent essay, the United States is woefully unprepared for the age of cyberconflict.
"...The nuclear threat was so new that it demanded fresh thinking about history. So too with cyberwarfare.The nuclear threat was so new that it demanded fresh thinking about history. So too with cyberwarfare. Eisenhower was drawn to the Solarium exercise precisely because history offered little explicit guidance other than the bracing clarification that the United States was in uncharted territory. As one of us has written elsewhere:
Upon being sworn into office, Eisenhower’s assessment of the national security challenges facing his Administration emphasized the unprecedented nature of the situation. Drawing on his own extensive military experience, Eisenhower realized that never before in history had the United States been in the role of a global superpower, in a bipolar system, in a nuclear age. … The prospect of global nuclear annihilation was not the only defining feature of this ahistorical age. Never before had the United States faced the challenge of maintaining domestic economic growth simultaneously with a substantial standing military that included permanent deployments overseas.
"The Soviet leader, Joseph Stalin, died a few weeks after Eisenhower took office, adding even more uncertainty to the equation. Similarly, today, there is much that is unprecedented about cyber threats. Cyber is both a domain and an instrument. Unlike nuclear weapons — which demand the mobilization of tremendous resources by a nation-state — cybertools are available to otherwise impoverished and ill-resourced nations and nonstate actors. Unlike large-scale attacks with conventional weapons from a visible enemy, cyberattacks can wreak unfathomable carnage with uncertain origins and attribution.
"Unlike armaments that belong exclusively to nation-states that maintain a monopoly on the use of force, some of the most advanced cyberweapons belong to private-sector companies. Unlike weapons of mass destruction, where there are strong taboos that have inhibited large-scale use, cyberweapons are used every day by states and nonstate actors and against states and nonstate actors."
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