NEWPORT, R.I. – The Center for Cyber Conflict Studies at U.S. Naval War College hosted a workshop titled, “Systemic Cyber Defense: Integrating Economics, Information, Innovation and Operationalization,” May 1-2 at the college.
The workshop was the third in a trilogy that aimed to advance systemic thinking about the defense challenges raised through – and accelerated with – cyberspace.
The meeting furthered the work of two previous workshops. The first focused on three distinctly different futures for democratic states and their national defense services; The second focused on the difficulty in handling the security implications of cyber for the key pillar of democratic states – their economic well-being.
To close the circle from broad systemic challenges to implementation, this third workshop allocated eight panels across two days covering the following four areas:
- The undertheorized cyber-economics defense challenge;
- The increasing complex role of IT-related resources directly to the defense and survival futures of modern civil society states embroiled in the cybered conflict;
- The emergent global trends that require increasing and persistent innovation to maintain national power and viable national security forces;
- The first-to-final mile implementation challenges needed to make new solutions nationally operational, especially in services such as the Navy and its sister institutions.
The objective of these panels was to facilitate a systematic examination and updating of widely held assumptions by major cyber, national security and economic communities about how cyber affects national well-being with an increasingly contested cyberspace.
This workshop concluded with an expert panel returning to the issue of what is to be done now to best prepare at strategic and operational levels for national systems and services to defend their states.