DOD
Unrestricted Warfare Symposium, Sponsored by JHU’s APL and SAIS
For enterprise technologists and national security professionals and most of all for those who fit both of those descriptions, please check out Johns Hopkins University’s 2009 Unrestricted Warfare Symposium at: http://www.jhuapl.edu/urw_symposium This symposium seeks to advance our understanding of and solutions for some very complex problems related to our nation’s defense. I’ll be speaking on a panel at the conference (on issues of cyber war and cyber defense) and hope to see you there.
The following is from an e-mail from Dr. Ron Luman (Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory National Security Analysis Department Head)
National Security Community Colleagues:
This is a reminder that the Johns Hopkins University’s 2009 Unrestricted Warfare Symposium will be held 24-25 March 2009, and I encourage you to register now at http://www.jhuapl.edu/urw_symposium/.The fourth annual symposium is in Laurel, MD at JHU’s Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), and is jointly sponsored by APL and the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). Last year more than 300 participants from government, industry, and academia interacted with distinguished speakers and expert panelists who addressed national security issues from three perspectives: strategy, analysis, and technology. In 2009, this uniquely synergistic approach will be applied to the challenge of identifying interagency imperatives and capabilities.
The symposium presentations and panels are organized around four potential unrestricted lines of attack – cyber, resource, economic/financial, and terrorism. We’ll begin each session with a discussion of the potential for such attacks and then expert roundtable panelists will discuss imperatives for interagency action, offering ideas for enhancing interagency capabilities. A fifth session will focus on the role of analysis in identifying and assessing interagency approaches for preventing and combating these types of attacks.
I am particularly pleased that The Honorable James R. Locher, III, Executive Director of the Project for National Security Reform, will open the symposium as our keynote speaker, providing the Project’s timely findings and recommendations for interagency reform. Throughout the two days featured speakers and distinguished panelists, include: Dr. George Akst, MCCDC; Mr. Eric Coulter, OSD(PA&E); Dr. Richard Cooper, Harvard University; Dr. Stephen Flynn, Council on Foreign Relations; Representative Jane Harman; Professor Bruce Hoffman, Georgetown University; Professor Michael Klare, Hampshire College; Dr. Michael Levi, Council on Foreign Relations; Dr. Matthew Levitt, Washington Institute; Dr. Pete Nanos (DTRA); Mr. James Rickards, Omnis, Inc.; Mr. Frank Ruggiero (Department of State); Dr. Khatuna Salukvadze, Georgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs; Mr. Dan Wolf, Cyber Pack Ventures Inc.; Mr. Bob Work, CSBA, to name a few.
The attached announcement identifies confirmed speakers and other essential information. We encourage dynamic networking, and to facilitate audience participation, we will again be utilizing electronic groupware to collect comments, insights, and questions. The collection of papers and transcripts of discussions will again be published as Proceedings, in both hard copy and electronic form. The 2006 -2008 Proceedings, the current agenda/speakers, and 2009 registration details can be found at the symposium website: http://www.jhuapl.edu/urw_symposium/.
Your experience in national security and defense will contribute unique perspectives and challenging questions to our understanding of Unrestricted Warfare, and I look forward to seeing you next month.
Best regards,
Ron Luman, General Chair
I hope to see you all there.
Symposium Attachment:
URW2009Flyer 4Feb-1.pdf
Cloud Computing and Net Centric Operations
I’ve just posted a draft paper on my site on the topic of Cloud Computing and DoD’s Net Centric Operations. My intent with this paper is to keep beating it up till it is in condition to publish, and I would value your comments on the paper. Please check it out at:
13Jan2009_Computing_and_Net_Centric_Operations.pdf
One of the things I learned while pulling together this info is that honest people disagree, sometimes vehemently, on exactly what the term Cloud Computing means. For that reason I recommend anyone writing or briefing the topic start with a definition right up front. For the purposes of the paper I’m working on for DoD I mention two ways to look at the term. For most users, they view anything done elsewhere as “cloud” computing. For most technologists and architects they view “cloud computing” as a much more elegant term which implies new ways of providing capability on demand by use of virtualized resources, pools of storage and other scalable computational resources.
Note, I’m very thankful to the dozens of friends and associates who have already commented on this paper. Most initial dialog I had on the paper was via Twitter, which once again proved to me the value of that cloud based capability.
Bob
CTOs, Global Cyberwar and Our Collective Future
If you are a technologist, please take a moment to download the PDF of the report by the U.S. Commission on Cybersecurity. This report, titled Securing Cyberspace for the 44th Presidency, is the best proclamation of the challenges of cyber I have read. It is also a roadmap that will help any trying to navigate these very tough issues.
I've been involved in things cyber for a long time. My deepest
involvement began in December 1998, almost 10 years ago to the day.
In all that time I've seen lots of studies and lots of papers and many
treatments of the issues. But I've never seen one that captures the
complexities and the need for specific actions as well as this one.
I'd really recommend you read every word, if you want to be considered literate in this field. But if it will be a little while till you get to it, here are some key points:
The three major findings are: 1) Cybersecurity is now a major national security problem for the U.S., 2) Decisions and actins must respect privacy and civil liberties, and 3) only a comprehensive national security strategy that embraces both the domestic and international aspects of cybersecurity will make us more secure.
The report makes a few points about the Bush Administration's Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative (CNCI). In general the give credit to that initiative, and call it good. I agree, it is a great activity I've previously written about that is led by one of the most effective people in government today and has done great work. But as the comission points out, the work of the CNCI is good but not sufficient.
The biggest shock for me in this study: The amount of funding on R&D for cyber security. I have been looking into the many activities underway, and maybe that look made me deceive myself into thinking it was a well funded effort. According to the comission, however, they estimate that the total R&D funding in the federal government for cybersecurity is about $300million. Less than two-tenths of one percent of the total federal R&D.
The report has a great section on identity manangement.
I am convinced the organizational approaches outlined in the study are the right ones as well. There is only one place in our government where we can lead solutions to this challenge. Where is that? Hey read the report!
What else do I recommend CTOs do besides read the report? I think one way we can all help the cybersecurity effort is to think through which standards bodies are the most important to engage with regarding security. A few are here:
http://www.ctovision.com/2008/05/standards-organizations-ctos-should-track.html
The Technology Implications of the Obama Win
There are several megatrends sweeping the technology industry today. Some of them are about to be accelerated.
I like to use five key topic areas to track megatrends in IT:
– Globalization and increasing internationalization of IT and demographic shifts
– Increasing open development of software and hardware
– Power, Cooling and Space (PCS) impacting data centers and every place computing is done
– Increasing pace of technology development and probability of disruption
Over the past two months two major events have occurred which are impacting these trends.
The
first was the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the resulting cascading
effects on the financial industry. The impact on IT spending and the
movement of more enterprises to grid/cloud computing because of that
are still being assessed, but for some thoughts see: Wall Street Crisis
The second was the Presidential election of Barack Obama.
Melissa Hathaway Op-Ed on Cyber Security
I wanted to post this in totality for a couple reasons. One is it is something all of us should read. Although I believe most readers of this blog will find no surprises in this op-ed, Melissa has a real talent for capturing information in easy to understand ways and I think we can all borrow lessons from the way she explains things.
Securing Enterprise Data and Computer Power
In March I posted an entry on a significant enhancement in the computing realm, the thin client. That post focused on how thin client computing is changing the net assessment in computer security (see: http://www.ctovision.com/2008/03/computer-securi.html ).
I've been really pleased to watch thin client computing take off. How widespread is adoption now? In August Sun announced that they had nearly doubled their shipments of thin clients from the previous quarter. That's pretty cool. In fact, it is Kurzweilian.
Day Three of the Synergy Conference
This is the third and final post on some observations from the 2008 Synergy conference (co-hosted by Stratcom).
The day opened up with a great update on operational intelligence in the modern age, with Mr. John J Powers of the Defense Intelligence Operations Coordination Center (DIOCC) providing a first hand look at the DIOCC, its mission, and recent successes. The question and answer period generated some great dialog and feedback and suggestions from some of the greats in the community, including Mr. Terry Casto and Ms. Lynn Schnur.
JJ's discussions were followed by a panel of CTO-types introduced by Ms. Nancy Wheeler of the GETA. Panelists included Mr. Malcolm Hyson (CTO Microlink LLC), Dr. Alex Karp (CEO Palintir Technologies), Dr. John Triechler, CTO Applied Signal technology), Mr. Guljit Khurana (President and CEO, Centrifuge Systems) and me.
Our panel was followed by the highlight of the day, a presentation by Dr. Prescott Winter, CTO of NSA. I capture some more detailed notes on his presentation below.
Dr. Winter was followed by CAPT Eva Scofield, the Director of Intelligence (J2) for JTF-GNO. This is the position I held from Dec 1998 till 2002. She did a great job of characterizing the threat. I hope all were listening and I hope the world remains alert and focused on this growing menance.
Closing comments were provided by the Stratcom's Director of Intelligence (J2), Captain Jeffrey L. Canfield, USN. Unfortunately, I had to miss that presentation to catch a flight. I imagine Jeffrey did his usual great job of both extracting the key points of an entire confernece and drawing conclusions we should all take away. I'll have to get with him later to see if he can get me up to speed.
Notes from Dr. Winter's presentation:
Dr. Prescott Winter, CTO/CIO of NSA, provided an overview of the NSA IT story and the many changes to the way we do business. He provided a very good, succinct vision and a compelling argument for continued change towards integration. He is fully aware of the great progress that has been made to date and does not discount that. But he knows more needs to be done and is helping us all move forward. We need to move more users into an integrated ops intel space where new information models can be used. The SIE, Single Integrated Environment, for example, is a new model and new operating environment.
A key vision has been to integrate what users see with what intelligence knows. This is an integrated ops/intel space that is serving the mission with an integrated picture that wraps the user. He is moving towards this vision by engaging today's architecture and looking for gaps and addressing those, engaging with industry to know more about the future of technology and how they can address gaps, integrating the NSA investment programs (as you identify stacks of services you must have investment plans that appropriately resource and optimize them). he is also engaging technologists from throughout the organization by working with PEOs and the AE of NSA.
Pres is working hard to move NSA from a net centric model to an info centric model. He is also changing the access model from compartment based to attribute based. On the issue of data ownership, he is doing everthing he can to change the old model of data ownership to data stewardship. This is a behavioral issue. On the issue of SOA and Services, he is moving the entire stack of IT to a services model.
Pres is a champion of the ODNI's info sharing strategy and vision and is working hard to help execute and implement. He is working hard to change attitudes and behaviors from need to know to need to provide. He is working to engineer solutions that will help make data discoverable and available to every member of the selected community that needs that information.
Day One at Synergy Conference
This post provides a summary of day one of the STRATCOM Synergy conference. The conference is focused on integrating combat ops/intelligence implications for national intelligence processes. Conference leader Brigadier General Billy Bingham (USAF, ret) opened the conference by reviewing what was discussed last year’s Synergy conference. He also laid out the goal for this year’s conference, to keep moving things forward and to ensure we are “Integrating operations and intelligence so we can achieve our nation’s objectives in the most efficient means possible. ”
The morning included a presentation by the STRATCOM J5 (Brigadier General Mark Owen). He was followed by Major General Michael Ennis, Deputy Director of the National Clandestine Services for community HUMINT at CIA. The afternoon was filled with discussions and briefings that brought home the perspectives of operators from the Ops/Intel world, including a panel filled with ops/intel professionals which discussed lessons learned. Perspectives on ops/intel synergy on the front lines were provided by a seasoned Marine Corps professional. Key areas where ISR models clash were highlighted by a seasoned Air force ISR Colonel. An update was provided on army operational intelligence.
The following provides some takeaway’s from the discussions:
Brigadier General Owens mentioned the many missions of STRATCOM, including nuclear deterrence, and also cyberspace. In his view, STRATCOM’s mission in cyber is to ensure freedom of action in cyberspace. He also signaled a strong intention of the Commander, STRATCOM to return the J2 position to the importance it once had. He also signaled a strong intent to do that while integrating ops and intel into the mission. He talked about the terms he likes to use, those of intelligence and warfighters, since the operators are warfighters.
General Ennis gave personal stories underscoring how important it is for ops and intel to work together. He said great staffs have always worked that way and now at CIA it is all ops and intel together, at JSOC it is all ops and intel together. He thinks it is wrong to use the old models of ops and warfighters. That too frequently forces a separate structure. In the old days there was an ops cell and an intel cell and they were separate. Today, in efficient operations, the intel and ops cells are together. General Ennis is a strong believer in new tools and thinks three in particular are dramatically changing the way we are working together. Blogs, Wikis and the class of tools that lets users go after content in search vice just headlines. By Blogs and Wikis he meant the many open source/Internet based wikis that can provide context and situational awareness. For example, the MCIA cultural intelligence initiative makes extensive use of these tools. He also provide some thoughts on the term “information sharing.” There are things he doesn’t like about that term because sharing implies the data is yours to own and to decide when to share. He believes in joint interagency platforms for ensuring responsiveness, relevance and unity of effort. Regarding Open Source, he would like to see an interagency open source center that is focused on hard problems. Regarding IT, he believes a common IT backbone is critically important to mission success.
The afternoon speakers hit on many great topics related to ISR and the different cultures in the Services and how they clash over ISR. There were many great stories and lessons, and several meaty recommendations. But the bad news is all the stories sound the same as they have for years and the lessons learned are the same ones we have been relearning for years. I guess the point of the conference is that we need to embody those lessons somehow.
More later
CTOvision Blog 