Building the Ethical Cyber Commander and the Law of Armed Conflict

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I. INTRODUCTION II. WILL CYBER CONFLICT BECOME CYBER WAR? III. ACCELERATING REAL-TIME DECISION MAKING A. Innovative Staffing Techniques B. Human Computer Interfaces C. Autonomous Decision-Making Processes D. Are Ethical and Legally-Compliant ADPs Feasible?. IV. CURRENT CYBER EDUCATION EFFORTS IN ETHICS AND LOAC V. RETHINKING ETHICAL EDUCATION AND TRAINING A. Ordinary Soldiers--The Case Study B. Ordinary Soldiers--The P2P Lesson Plan VI. CONCLUSION I. INTRODUCTION The importance of ensuring that action conforms to the overarching political, social, and legal norms held by most democracies' means that instruction in and the law of armed conflict (LOAC) is standard fare in educational and training institutions throughout the world. (2) What are considered military ethics appear to vary significantly depending upon the country and the armed service in which they are taught, and in large part appear to focus on the teaching of specific virtues, such as integrity and loyalty, rather than the broad philosophical enquiry found commonly in classes in civilian institutions. (3) There are variations, of course. Military as taught in the Netherlands appear to be consistent with the Dutch approach of reducing the amount of force used in operations and emphasizing cooperation, and are therefore geared towards a more critical ethical perspective. (4) Military as taught in Israel favor embedding the ethical lessons in professional development projects linked to officers' sense of professional identity. (5) Given the complementary nature of just war theory and LOAC, (6) it is not surprising that many academies include some instruction on ethical models on the use of force, but this is far from universal. (7) To further complicate the ethical picture, despite the universal acceptance of the 1949 Geneva Conventions (8) and the large number of countries that have ratified Additional Protocol I, (9) understandings of LOAC can differ in their interpretation and application. (10) This potentially impacts the ways in which young students process their ethical education and training. Conceivably, any instructional failure to strongly link and LOAC together might not have a discemable negative impact upon the ethical and legal conduct of operations in the geophysical world. The reinforcing effects of civilian control over militaries, traditions, discipline and regulations, and the continuing influence of ingrained social, religious and moral values will likely provide a sufficient framework within which most soldiers and officers can function ethically and legally in their regular operations. (11) However, because of the technological and virtual basis of the human-created domain of cyberspace, future cyber operations are potentially very different from their geophysical world analogs. (12) The potential differences are great enough that different approaches may need to be taken by militaries in educating and training personnel eventually destined to become cyber commanders. For these new methods of cyber conflict training and education to be effective in developing ethical cyber commanders, and LOAC must be integrated. This need for integration is addressed in a lesson plan titled Ordinary Soldiers, which was developed by historians, educators, and lawyers under the guidance of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum and the West Point Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies. This lesson plan not only provides a model for teaching and LOAC in a complementary manner, its format replicates aspects of how undergraduates interact with their peers in an environment influenced by information technology--an environment which parallels the operational cyber environment of the future in many ways. This article will first review the current nature of conflict in cyberspace, and then assess current trends in the development of cyber means and methods to form a picture of potential operational characteristics of cyber conflict, including the need for accelerated, but still LOAC-compliant, decision-making by cyber commanders. …