Defense Spending In China Will Rise By 6.6%

On the same subject

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  September 6, 2018 | International, Naval

  US Navy must be able to compete in ‘gray zone’ conflict, says top service officer

  By: David B. Larter WASHINGTON — The U.S. Navy has to be able to confront great powers in areas short of open warfare, the service's top officer said Wednesday at the second annual Defense News Conference. China and Russia have employed tactics to harass neighbors and challenge the U.S. Navy, from the former's island building projects in the South China Sea to the latter's harassment of U.S. forces at sea, which it has used to score political points with its population. Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John Richardson told the crowd that competition with other great powers has to be seen on a spectrum and that the Navy must compete in all realms to stay ahead. “This competition is [defined] by a spectrum,” Richardson said. “You've heard terms like ‘gray war,' ‘competition below the level of conflict': All of these sorts of phrases try to grasp at this very smooth spectrum, from competition all the way to conflict. Our response to that going forward is going to be key to ensure that we are not only competitive but ahead. It's not sufficient to be competitive, we want to be winning.” The Navy has to be competitive in all its warfare domains to achieve the objectives laid out in the recent National Defense Strategy, spearheaded by Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, that moves the military away from low-end counterterror operations and refocuses on high-end conflict. Full article: https://www.defensenews.com/smr/defense-news-conference/2018/09/05/us-navy-must-be-able-to-compete-in-gray-zone-conflict-says-top-service-officer

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  September 4, 2018 | International, C4ISR

  The rising importance of data as a weapon of war

  By: Adam Stone As Navy Cyber Security Division director, Rear Adm. Danelle Barrett casts a wary eye over the rising importance of data as a weapon of war. Data is an ever-more-critical battlefield asset, given the rising internet of things, including a rapidly growing inventory of unmanned intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance assets across the Navy. Protecting all that data from enemy exploitation represents a potentially massive cyber challenge. This spring, the Navy announced “Compile to Combat in 24 Hours,” a pilot project to leverage web services and a new cloud architecture in the service of data security. C4ISRNET's Adam Stone spoke to Barrett about the potential there, and about the emerging IT security landscape in a data-centric military. C4ISRNET: Data has become increasingly valuable, especially in terms of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance. How valuable is it? How do you describe the significance of data these days? REAR ADM. DANELLE BARRETT: If you look at what goes on in industry and how they use big data for decision making, to be predictive and proactive: that's exactly the kind of environment that we want to get to. Being able to trust those data, to access the data, expose the data, reuse the data — that becomes actually the hardest part. C4ISRNET: Let's talk about that. Sharing data involves risk. Talk about that risk landscape. BARRETT: The more data that you have out there and the more places you have it, obviously you have an increased attack surface. Adversaries will go after your data to try to get an advantage. So, you want to protect data down to the lowest layer and you want to make sure that you have defense in depth built in, and resiliency to be able to work through any kind of attack or interruption in your data flow. We build our architectures around being resilient using the NIST [National Institute of Standards and Technology] model of “detect, react and restore.” You build in as much resiliency as you can. C4ISRNET: Can you say, specifically, how that's done? BARRETT: I'll give you an example of something that we're testing in our architecture to try to improve the data down to the data element layer. We have an effort called “Compile to Combat in 24 Hours.” We're looking at modernizing our afloat architecture and, as we do that, we're decomposing big monolithic applications, if you will, into web services similar to what you'd get on an iPhone: smaller capabilities, smaller web services as opposed to these big monolithic applications. As you do that, you can ensure that you're using standard ports and protocols, so you don't have applications on the ship that are reaching back over nonstandard ports, which would present an increased attack surface. If you can standardize on your ports, you can sense those better and monitor those better. Then you then go down to the data element layer. Say you standardize on extensible markup language, XML, you can then apply the SAML protocol that is inherent to that to protect your data at that lowest layer. We're testing that concept in an architecture now. Full article: https://www.c4isrnet.com/it-networks/2018/08/31/the-rising-importance-of-data-as-a-weapon-of-war/

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  February 14, 2019 | International, C4ISR

  What the Pentagon’s new AI strategy means for cybersecurity

  By: Justin Lynch The new Pentagon artificial intelligence strategy serves as a roadmap for how the American military will embrace machine learning in future cyber operations, which could be a boon for companies who invest in the technology. Released Feb 12, the Pentagon's strategy shows how the American military will rely on artificial intelligence as a defensive tool. “We will increase our focus on defensive cybersecurity of hardware and software platforms as a precondition for secure uses of AI,” the Pentagon's new strategy states. “ In order to ensure DoD AI systems are safe, secure, and robust, we will fund research into AI systems that have a lower risk of accidents; are more resilient, including to hacking and adversarial spoofing.” A particular focus of the new strategy is researching “emergent effects,” which is what happens when two artificial intelligence systems interact. The Army's Aberdeen Proving Ground, for one, is conducting studies into how artificial intelligence can protect soldiers' tactical networks and communications from cyberattacks. The Pentagon's artificial intelligence strategy comes as both the American military and hackers have embraced machine learning for cyberattacks. According to an analysis by Fifth Domain, more than half of the new challenges and programs announced by the intelligence community's research arm in 2018 involve machine learning or predictive analytics, which represents a potential boon for cybersecurity researchers. In December, the Pentagon announced that Air Force Lt. Gen. Jack Shanahan would be head of a new artificial intelligence center. Hackers are using artificial intelligence during cyberattacks, Sam Curry, the chief security officer at Cybereason, a threat intelligence firm, told Fifth Domain. Curry said that a particular risk with artificial intelligence is the use of “second order chaotic systems,” where events cause data inputs to change, using the stock market as an example. “Second order systems with badly applied, overreacting machine learning are prone to exploitation,” Curry said. With the release of the artificial intelligence strategy, the Pentagon is attempting to combat significant investments in machine learning by other countries. “Other nations, particularly China and Russia, are making significant investments in AI for military purposes, including in applications that raise questions regarding international norms and human rights,” the strategy says. “The costs of not implementing this strategy are clear. Failure to adopt AI will result in legacy systems irrelevant to the defense of our people, eroding cohesion among allies and partners, reduced access to markets that will contribute to a decline in our prosperity and standard of living, and growing challenges to societies that have been built upon individual freedoms.” https://www.fifthdomain.com/dod/2019/02/13/what-the-pentagons-new-ai-strategy-means-for-cybersecurity/