NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY, Ft. Meade, Md. — Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter said Friday that the Pentagon one day may establish a separate branch of service for cyber warfare. But for now, it’s still trying to figure out how to get its new breed of warriors to fit in with the Defense Department’s traditional concepts of air, land and sea combat.
“Right now we’re walking before we run,” Carter said, speaking before a room 10 rows deep of soldiers who have been assigned to build U.S. Cyber Command.
Before the Pentagon could move forward with a new branch, it would have to address some of the internal cultural challenges already evident in the traditional approach to cyber warfare.
When the Defense Department stood up the command in 2010, it was nested within the sprawling National Security Agency in Fort Meade, Md., to take advantage of NSA’s institutional knowledge on high-tech spying and countermeasures.
“We started where we thought we had strength,” Carter said.
But the idea of a Pentagon “cyber warrior” drew jeers from traditional combat soldiers: So much so that when then-Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta announced in February 2013 that the department would award a distinguished service medal for U.S. troops serving as cyber warfare operators or drone pilots, his successor, Chuck Hagel, a Vietnam veteran, made it one of his first orders of business to overturn the award.
In the last few years, however, cyber warfare has come to the Pentagon’s front door: Beyond the “Cyber Caliphate” hacking through U.S. Central Command’s social media accounts and the internal espionage by NSA contractor Edward Snowden, the Defense Department is hit daily by hackers trying to get through its online defenses and pry open its secrets.
For the last three years, the director of National Intelligence has named cyber warfare the top strategic threat the U.S. faces, and last week the Defense Department announced it would bypass traditional government hiring systems to speed the hiring of 3,000 more cybersecurity personnel.
“Threats in the cyber realm are an urgent national security priority, and America has no equivalent to two wide oceans that have helped safeguard our country’s physical, maritime and aviation domains for centuries,” said Central Intelligence Agency Director John Brennan, who was speaking at a separate event at the same time as Carter’s presentation.
But a better understanding of the stakes hasn’t smoothed over the transition of cyber warriors into the Pentagon, nor has it smoothed over Cyber Command’s role in regard to the NSA. Even as Carter spoke, off to his right, rows of NSA staff looked on silently, avoiding the possibility they would get filmed at the live speech, whereas the troops were not only filmed, but they were encouraged by Carter to acknowledge that they been publicly thanked for their cyber skills.
For the NSA, which operates on the principle that the best defense is being invisible, and Carter, who wants to operate Cyber Command with a commitment to openness and needs to find a way to incentivize its next generation of tech-savvy soldiers, it was just one indicator of the growing pains ahead. As Carter said, the DOD-NSA relationship “is still a work in progress.”
During his speech, Carter told the assembled troops that while they “may not be at risk” in the way that U.S. forces in Afghanistan are, “you really are our front lines.”
But just outside the room where Carter spoke was a long, black stone wall with a large white wreath, with the words “They Served in Silence” etched in. The agency had added two more names to the list of cryptologists who had died in the line of duty: Navy Cryptologic Technician Technical Chief Christian M. Pike, who deployed to Afghanistan to support Echo Platoon of Navy Seal Team Five and was killed during a firefight in 2013; and Air Force Staff Sgt. Richard A. Dickson, who died in Afghanistan in April 2013 as the plane he was in while conducting surveillance crashed.
If the Pentagon does one day spin off a separate “cyber force,” in the same way it birthed the Air Force from the U.S. Army Air Forces after World War II, it won’t be anytime soon, Carter said.
“There may come a time when that makes sense.” For now, Carter said, DOD’s agencies “are trying to figure out how to welcome this new breed of warrior to their ranks … It doesn’t fit in the traditional armed services.”
