So, according to Wikileaks and now the White House, the US was behind both Flame and Stuxnet. Do you think those were developed at Cybercom, or any other military entity where the majority of personnel are made up of non-college-educated 19-22 year olds?
I think you think that I'm saying that cyberwarfare development can only be done as an independent branch, and that the current make up of Cybercom will be adequate for our future needs regarding cyberwarfare, as evidenced by the development of Flame and Stuxnet.
Please note that I'm not, in any way, criticizing the ability of Cybercom to perform its current duties or how it functions as component parts of established branches. That's not what I'm saying.
In fact, I'm saying the opposite - that the development of more cyberwarfare weapons and defenses will put pressures to establish a separate branch to solely focus on the development of cyberwarfare weapons and defenses.
as a side-note, this is incorrect. any fit-rep done in a combat zone is considered a "combat fitrep", regardless of billet.
....that is what the vast majority of officers in "combat zones" receiving "combat fitreps" do. Unless you happen to be a grunt / combat engineer officer at the rank of captain or below.
Thank you for correcting me in that regard. As I said, I don't know anything of the nuts and bolts of the military, and I admit as much.
Even so, as cyberwarfare becomes more important, I think the promotion of officers trained and experienced in cyberwarfare will be necessary to do concurrently with officers trained and experienced in more conventional types of combat. What I mean by that is that instead of having an officer focusing on, say, tank combat competing for a slot with an officer focusing on cyberwarfare within the same branch that, instead, a separate branch will allow the best in these two different battlefields to rise concurrently.
that will be a need, but why do you assume that their voice will be on the JCS rather than the NSC, or the DNI?
Because I think that as time goes on we will have to make distinctions between cyberwarfare, cyberintelligence, and cybersecurity. Once those distinctions require more specialization of effort, bureaucracies will form to allow the managing of those divisions of labor. And when that happens, a Cyber Force can be established that focuses solely on the aspect of cyberwarfare, while other agencies can handle other specializations, such as cyberintelligence or cybersecurity. Or a Cyber Force can establish military aspects of cyberintelligence and cybersecurity, while other agencies handle non-military aspects of those things. Which depends on the type of culture we want to develop, and our evolving needs.
Sure, at this moment, our capabilities and demands don't require such divisions of labor, which is why Cybercom is fine for now. In 50 years time, though, as technological advances increase, I think that we will be required to specialize more, and create a bureaucracy that handles those specializations.