United States Cyber Command

The UK government has chosen a new commander for the country's National Cyber Force.

The military agency is similar to US Cyber Command and carries out UK offensive cyber operations.

The commander's name has not been publicly released.

They'll replace Air Vice Marshal Tim Neil Hopes, who held the position since October 2023.

in that, for example, basing strategies, all of our logistical locations are just not as viable as they were before.

And I've said for months or years now, actually, that we should have long ago undertaken the kind of urgent institutional changes in our military services, Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, now Space Force, even Cyber Command and Special Operations Command.

We should have long since shown what we should have learned from ukraine by making wholesale changes to our force structure first the entire concept of war then our force structure then how we train how we educate our leaders what we buy and how we buy it personnel policies all the rest these are the elements of institutional change which we did by the way in 2006 as the situation in iraq got more and more dire i was between the three and four star tours and privileged to drive that for the army with the Chief of Staff of the Army's full support.

And it started with a field manual on counterinsurgency.

For sure, yeah.

Uh, now look, staying with the US and some, uh, some news out of there, which is, um, there's been a provision inserted into the Defense Authorization Act, uh, which is looking, uh, which looks to give permission to Cyber Command, uh, to contract private companies to do s- what they're calling access generation, which, I mean, the United States is the world leading exporter of, like, absolutely cracking euphemisms.

Uh-

[laughs]

... and access generation is, uh, is one of them.

Uh, the idea here seems to be that Cyber Command can say, you know, "Go forth, contractor.

Go forth, prime contractor, and collect shells for us." This seems like not the most insane way.

If you're gonna engage the private sector to do military-based stuff to, uh, you know, uh, uh, actually exert some state, uh, power here, the initial access phase seems like the sensible place to apply it as opposed to the actual cyber effects phase.

Um, I've s- I've seen articles about, you know, CISOs having very high-stress jobs and making these decisions.

But there was a really great article that came out in Bloomberg, uh, recently, a couple weeks ago, America's Cyber Forces Grapple With Cluster of Deaths by Suicide, and it discussed how in- within Cyber Command and related commands within...

in the military, there are pe- there are people that are, are going through a lot of, of, of mental health challenges, and these, these jobs of offensive cyber operations can be very, very difficult.

You're in these places where there are...

The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2027 includes a provision authorizing the DOD to use cyber contractors to carry out military cyber operations.

Under the bill, Cyber Command would be tasked with creating a pilot program to test out the arrangement.

Critics of the bill have called the provision the privatization of military hacking operations.

Cybersecurity agencies from the Five Eyes countries have told hacked companies to drop the PR spin from their data breach notifications.

With improved cybersecurity defenses, the United States' cyber militia network collects open source intelligence, picks up on rumors of a possible Chinese cyber attack on the United States and its allies.

The information further corroborates intelligence gathered by the United States Cyber Command and the FBI, as well as other government organizations.

As tensions in the Indo-Pacific intensify, the United States government issues orders to the cyber militia network to be on standby, assuming China will use cyber attacks as part of its opening salvos in a potential Taiwanese contingency.

On that fateful day, at 0800 a.m. Eastern Standard Time, around 9 p.m. in Taiwan, a series of cyber attacks are detected across the United States.

I think that there needs to be a major... reassessment of U.S. foreign policy.

And Iran does, you know, there were three countries mentioned by the head of U.S. Cyber Command several years ago that have the capability to take down all of our critical infrastructure and satellites.

Russia and China were specifically identified.

I think North Korea was not mentioned, but that was the third country being referenced.