Cyber War: The Next Threat to National Security and What to Do About It by Richard A. Clarke, Robert K. Knake

electronic intelligence officers, they had a dilemma. The intelligence guys knew that if they told the “operators” (the fighting units) that the Internet was making a new kind of war possible, they would lose some control of cyberspace to the “warriors.” On the other hand, the warriors would still have to rely on the intelligence geeks to do anything in cyberspace. Moreover, the opportunities cyberspace offered to relatively easily do significant damage to an enemy were too good to pass up. Slowly, the warriors realized that the geeks were on to something.
    By the time George W. Bush was starting his second term, the importance of cyber war to the Pentagon became apparent, as the Air Force, Navy, and intelligence agencies engaged in a bitter struggle to see who would control this new area of warfare. Some advocated the creation of a Unified Command, bringing the units of all three services under one integrated structure. There were already Unified Commands for transportation, strategic nuclear war, and for each of the world’s regions. When it appeared in the early 1980s that there would be a large role for the military in outer space, the Pentagon created a Unified Command for what it then thought of as a new domain for war-fighting, a domain that the United States had to control. U.S. Space Command lasted from 1985 to 2002, by which time it had become clear that neither the U.S. nor any other government had the money to do much in space. Space Command was folded into Strategic Command (STRATCOM), which operates the strategic nuclear forces. STRATCOM, headquartered at abomber base in Nebraska, was also given the centralized responsibility for cyber war in 2002. The Air Force, however, was set on running the actual war-fighting units. The creation of Air Force Cyber Command and the standing given to cyberspace in the Air Force recruitment ads jarred the other services and many in the Pentagon.
    Some were concerned that the Air Force was talking too openly about something they believed should have been kept secret: the mere existence of cyber war capability. Yet there was the civilian Air Force Secretary (a vestigial post from the time before there was a strong civilian Defense Department) saying publicly, “Tell the nation the age of cyber war is here.” There were those damn ads, including one that said, ominously, that in the future a blackout “could be a cyber attack.” Another ad showed the Pentagon and claimed that it was “attacked” millions of times a day in cyberspace, but it was defended by the likes of an Air Force sergeant shown at his keyboard. There were persistent interviews and speeches by Air Force leaders who sounded very aggressive about their intentions. “Our mission is to control cyberspace, both for attacks and defense,” Lieutenant General Robert Elder had admitted. The Director of the Air Force Cyberspace Operations Task Force had been equally candid: “If you are defending in cyberspace, you’re already too late. If you do not dominate in cyberspace, you cannot dominate in other domains. If you are a developed country [and you are attacked in cyberspace], your life comes to a screeching halt.”
    By 2008, those in the Pentagon not wearing blue uniforms had become persuaded about the importance of cyber war, but they were also convinced that it should not just be conducted by the Air Force. An integrated multiservice structure was agreed on in principle, but many were reluctant to “make the Space Command mistake again.” They did not want to create a Unified Command for what mightprove to be a passing fad, as war fighting in space had been. The compromise was that a multiservice Cyber Command would be created, but it would remain subordinated to STRATCOM, at least on paper. The Air Force would have to stop calling its organization a command and would instead have to be satisfied with a “numbered air force,” their basic organizational unit, like Navy’s numbered fleets. The