Ensuring US Dominance in Cyberspace in a World of Significant Peer and Near-Peer Competition

In late 2015, China announced the creation of its Strategic Support Force (SSF) to unify the People's Liberation Army's (PLA) cyber, space, and electronic warfare capabilities,¹ an effort that parallels the creation of United States Cyber Command (USCYBERCOM) in 2009.² Just like the United States, in recent years China has begun to describe cyberspace as a separate domain of warfare and strategic competition.³ Both China and the United States believe that their respective defense establishments should play a central role in protection of national assets from threats in cyberspace.⁴

According the US Department of Defense, the creation of the SSF likely represents China's "first step in developing a cyber force that creates efficiencies by combining cyber reconnaissance, attack, and defense capabilities into one organization."⁵ This likewise parallels the mission of USCYBERCOM—namely, of achieving and maintaining superiority in cyberspace by unifying cyberspace operations, securing data and systems, and providing military options to leadership.⁶ Indeed, Chinese military authors cite the development of USCYBERCOM as having successfully combined cyber functions under a single command structure, including the combination of offensive and defense capabilities.⁷

Just as US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta noted in 2012 that it is the responsibility of the Department of Defense to "defend the nation" in cyberspace,⁸ the Chinese view the role of the PLA's SSF as "safeguard[ing] China's interests in new domains such as … cyberspace."⁹ Furthermore, USCYBERCOM explicitly differentiates its responsibility to "defend the nation" in cyberspace from its offensive capabilities and its support for active military operations.¹⁰ Similarly, Chinese military doctrine writers also differentiate between peacetime defensive operations and wartime military support and offensive operations.¹¹ At the same time, newer, evolving doctrine in both nations also recognizes that in the cyber domain—as well as in others—the current status quo represents more of a state of "continuous competition" rather than the traditional war-versus-peace paradigm¹² and also understands the cyber battlespace as one where the lines between defense and offense are increasingly fluid.¹³

Given that one primary goal of the SSF is to accelerate the development of Chinese offensive and defensive cyber capabilities,¹⁴ and given the rise of a number of other peer and near-peer competitors in cyberspace,¹⁵ as well as the inherently asymmetric nature of cyber capabilities, a key question for the United States is how it can maintain the relative dominance it has enjoyed in this new domain of warfare going forward.¹⁶ The reality today is that America's relative hegemony in cyberspace as a domain of warfare is being (and will continue to be) contested in cyberspace. Today, the United States faces strategic threats in cyberspace from China as well as from Russia, two longtime key adversaries in this domain.¹⁷ The United States and its allies also face tactical threats from a range of actors including increasingly active nation-states like North Korea and Iran as well as a wide array of non-state actors, from criminal gangs to terrorist groups.¹⁸ And some of these latter actors are working on behalf of, or alongside, the nation-states that are also operating against the United States in the cyber domain.¹⁹

This paper argues that the best route to continued success for the United States in the cyber domain is to (1) create a more defensible national ecosystem at home and in partnership with key allies; (2) continue to invest significant resources in cyber intelligence collection, offensive and defensive cyber capability development, and game-changing capabilities, including cognitive computing and quantum systems; and (3) create a sustainable deterrence capability in the cyber realm.

Creating a More Defensible National Cyber Ecosystem

In the modern era, it is critically important that governments fundamentally rethink their architectures for cyber defense. The reality is not only that nation-states like the United States and China view cyberspace doctrinally as a domain for warfare but also that globally cyberspace has become an actual domain of...