“Cyberwar” is an imprecise and ugly term. Equal parts misleading and ambiguous, the term cyberwar has somehow battled its way into our modern lexicon and is used vaguely to describe acts of virtual aggression. Most often, cyberwar is used to describe an ill-defined and inevitable sate of computer-centric conflict between two nation states or groups.…

Private entities are pouring money and manpower into creating the best technologies to help mitigate a host of threats in the cyber realm. The US federal government is increasingly following this strategy. Yet, even cutting edge technology cannot determine one of the most critical and elusive intelligence questions: motivation. What drives the adversary? What does…

The rubric of terrorism studies embeds terrorist TTPs (Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures) within the overall context of motivations and intent that a terrorist are/is presumed to have. This is further fundamentally subordinate to the over-arching al-Qaeda framework. However, if we consider characters such as the ‘dishevelled or nihilist terrorist’ (Flaherty, 2012), then terrorist TTPs have…

Lessons learned from US agents who operate in enemy territory have been captured for years and transformed into a code of conduct popularly known as “Moscow Rules.” Those old rules existed for a reason. Real-world experience proved their effectiveness when agents had to operate in the presence of adversaries. Since modern cyber defenders are also…