Sun Tzu in Cyberspace
Abstract
This paper asks how cyberspace capabilities will most likely contribute to strategy. The cyberspace domain, much as the arrival of the air domain before it, provides a mix of known and unknown strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Cyberspace is often treated as transformational or exceptional relative to other domains and its evolution challenges current assumptions regarding organizational roles and responsibilities, doctrine, tactics, techniques, and procedures both inside and outside the Department of Defense. All of these issues are being addressed in a simultaneous and iterative manner as the collective understanding of the cyberspace domain matures. This paper is based on the premise that strategy provides the conceptual foundation for most of these issues. Considering how cyberspace capabilities contribute to strategy provides insight into the ultimate question-- to what purpose do we operate in cyberspace? This, in turn, provides direction for further research into future technologies, organizational constructs, roles, responsibilities, tactics, techniques and procedures. Sun Tzu's The Art of War provides a useful analytical framework for answering this question because its timeless and conceptual nature is not tied to a specific environment or context. With Sun Tzu as a guide, this paper takes a skeptical position towards cyberspace's exceptionalism relative to the experience of other domains and instead argues that an effective way to look to the future is to learn from the past. As Michael Handel notes, "Ultimately, the logic and rational direction of war are universal anthere is no such thing as an exclusively "Western" or "Eastern" approach to politics and strategy; there is only an effective or ineffective, rational or irrational manifestation of politics or strategy."
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Dec 16, 2008
- Accession Number
- ADA540083
Entities
People
- Scott W. Rizer
Organizations
- Air War College