MILITARY'S TOP CYBER OFFICIAL DEFENDS MORE AGGRESSIVE STANCE

The U.S. military’s top cyber official is defending the government’s shift toward a more aggressive strategy in cyberspace, saying the mission has evolved over the last decade to become more proactive and offensive in order to keep pace with sophisticated threats.

Gen. Paul Nakasone, the commander of U.S. Cyber Command and the director of the National Security Agency, writes in a piece published in the magazine Foreign Affairs that the military’s cyber fighters have moved away from a “reactive, defensive posture” and are increasingly engaging in combat with foreign adversaries online.

“We learned that we cannot afford to wait for cyber attacks to affect our military networks. We learned that defending our military networks requires executing operations outside our military networks. The threat evolved, and we evolved to meet it,” wrote Nakasone in a piece co-authored with Michael Sulmeyer, his senior adviser.