AIR FORCE CYBER COLLEGE PARTNERS WITH US CYBERCOM

On 6 Jan the Air Force Cyber College (AFCC) became an official partner of the US CYBERCOM Academic Engagement Network (AEN). AEN is an alliance of public and private academic institutions nationwide, collaborating to support and enhance four CYBERCOM Lines of Effort: future workforce, applied cyber research, applied analytics, and strategic issues. The AFCC faculty will help advance DoD’s ongoing strategic dialogue on the cyber domain by engaging with the CYBERCOM staff, the Cyber National Mission Force, and the four service cyber component commands. https://www.cybercom.mil/Media/News/Article/2889614/cybercom-announces-academic-engagement-network-partners/

AIR UNIVERSITY NEWS - AIR FORCE CYBER COLLEGE SELECT FOR PARTNERSHIP WITH US CYBERCOM

AIR FORCE CYBER COLLEGE DILEMMA CASE WORKSHOP

The Air Force Cyber College's Dilemma Case Workshop began on 13 January.  A cadre of 15 participants from within the United States Air Force, the United States Army, academia, and industry were competitively selected from among applicants who responded to a call for abstracts last fall.  Each submitted a promising abstract on a topic related to cyber strategy, policy, or leadership. 

The MGM Werx workshops, like projects like the AFCC virtual cyber seminar, foster an emerging community of practice around information and cyber warfare education. Such projects create space for professional military educators at Air University's different schools to connect, build and showcase their expertise and engage with cyber scholars and practitioners from the wider academic and policy realm.

This was the first of three full-day workshop sessions designed to guide participants in crafting educational cases eligible for use in classrooms to advance analysis of wicked problems dealing with cyberspace.  The final two sessions of the workshop will proceed into next month, assisting participants as they craft their cases and materials.  “The objective is to create educationally relevant and probing scenario packets and teaching materials that can be used in professional military education and other classrooms to help students think deeply about how cyber impacts security issues,” noted Dr. Karen Guttieri, Dean of the Air Force Cyber College.  

Workshop participant and Senior Advisor with the U.S. Cyberspace Solarium Commission, Brandon Valeriano, praised the event saying, “The PME community needs to reform to battle the scourge of cyber warfare. This will only come through the careful development of knowledge about the cyber domain and its impact on other operational domains. Case studies, simulations, and computational wargames are all modern methods to analyze the future of war utilizing empirical investigation and immersive methods to simulate thinking about modern warfare.”

Cyber College faculty are leading the workshop in partnership with MGMWERX and with assistance from Dr. Volker Franke of Kennesaw State University.  Air Force Cyber College’s Dr. Nick Sambaluk is leading the case study series, which has already published five cases available through the Case Studies tab on the college’s website [https://www.airuniversity.af.edu/CyberCollege/Research/].

WEAPONIZING CYBERSPACE

Congrats Dr. Sambaluk. His book is forthcoming with Praeger Weaponizing Cyberspace: Inside Russia’s Hostile Activities.  The Russian regime's struggle for internal control drives multifaceted actions in cyberspace that do not stop at national borders. Cybercrime, technical hacking, and disinformation are complementary tools to preserve national power internally while projecting effects onto myriad neighbors and rivals. Russia's modus operandi in disinformation campaigning is specifically to find and exploit existing sore spots in other countries. In the U.S., this often means inflaming political tensions among people on the far left and far right. Russia's actions have taken different forms, including the sophisticated surveillance and sabotage of critical infrastructure, the ransoming of data by criminal groups, and a welter of often mutually contradictory disinformation messages that pollute online discourse within and beyond Russia. Whether deployed to contribute to hybrid war or to psychological fracture and disillusionment in targeted societies, the threat is real and must be understood and effectively addressed.

AFCC Educates Joint and Allied Special Operators through Joint Staff Collaboration

Air Force Cyber College professors Anthony Franks and Dr. Michael Thomas traveled Joint Warfighter Center in Suffolk, Virginia on November 16 – 17, 2021 to teach Cyber Fundamentals for Special Operations Forces (SOF) Operators to a group of 20 students from the 118^th Air Support Operations Squadron (Air National Guard), Naval Special Warfare Group, US Army Special Operations Command Rangers, Canadian Forces SOF, and Joint Staff J6 Coalition Interoperability Division.

After attending this 2-day course, one member of the Joint Staff J6 Coalition Interoperability Division said, “Within one day we had immediate applicability of the Cyber Fundamentals Course, where we in the Special Operations Command could learn and apply the academic course objectives into future joint and coalition operations for our defense community.”  He went on to say, “This course is a complete homerun, and we want this course to be THE standard that we send ALL Special Operators to, learning about cyber capabilities and the integration of these effects into defense operations.”

AFCC Case Studies in Use by 333rd Training Squadron at Keesler AFB in Mississippi

Cyber College’s vision, developing case studies for us to use in our curriculum and also making them available for others to use, is already coming true. Capt Kevin Goehring of the 333rd Training Squadron at Keesler AFB in Mississippi used an exercise written by Team Cyber’s own Col Kevin Parker, titled “Fly, Patch, and Don’t Lose,” when he recently taught the Undergraduate Cyber Warfare Training (UCWT) course. Col Parker’s case explores the interaction between cybersecurity and Air Force operational missions. Capt Geohring reported that participants “loved the real-world connection and the exposure to cyber and how it ties into operations outside of the unit level.”    

Air Force Cyber College calls for submission of cyber and information dilemma-focused case studies to contribute to our pool of table top and role play exercises to promote critical thinking in the classroom. Successful applicants will be invited to our workshop and completed cases may be selected for funding. 

Unleashing the U.S. Military's Thinking about Cyber Power
M.A. Thomas

In February 2021, a cyber attacker tried to poison the water in Oldsmar, Florida. The hacker gained access to a program used to control a water treatment plant and attempted to increase the amount of lye, which is used to regulate pH levels, in the water to unsafe levels. An alert plant operator saw his mouse moving on its own and stopped the attack. Similar unsuccessful attacks have occurred in Israel, the San Francisco Bay Area, and Ellsworth, Kansas. In October 2021, the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency issued an alert regarding ongoing cyber threats to U.S. water and wastewater systems.

This is an example of a cyber attack with physical effects made possible by manipulation of computers that are increasingly used as controllers of machines, physical systems, and processes. Proof-of-concept “cyber-physical” attacks have been conducted on generators, cars, cranes, and satellites. Attackers can commandeer systems or cause physical damage, as demonstrated by the STUXNET worm, which was used to damage Iran’s uranium enrichment centrifuges and slow the enrichment process. And as the attacks on water systems illustrate, they could even cause bodily harm.

Military Technology Development:  World War

The geographic stability of World War I’s Western Front drove unprecedented levels and forms of technological innovation.  Dr. Nicholas Sambaluk spotlights several key tech areas about a struggle that changed warfare, in a lunchtime talk on 27 September, 2021, with Purdue's uniformed officers. Purdue extends a tuition-paid opportunity for a cadre of uniformed officers, usually seeking engineering degrees of one kind or another, to study for their PhD gratis to the government.  This year, that cadre is 40 officers strong, and the coordinators requested a lecture about historical examples of military innovation.