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Incredibly insightful and proactive piece in @WarOnTheRocks this morning chock full of useful tidbits on the relationship bwtn CYBERCOM and NSA arguing why they need to split: warontherocks.com/2019/04/cyber-…
Here’s some thoughts regarding the arguments made and the points presented:
One of the key points made here is that much of the discussion surrounding a split has overlooked one important factor: interdependence between the two has limited CYBERCOM 
As the two orgs begin to naturally separate as CYBERCOM, and service cyber components, mature (gaining their own infrastructure, tools, staff and fully qualified cyber warriors), CYBERCOM’s workload will become more, not less. As such it has begun preparing in some ways
One could be the Dec. 2018 posting for contract support fbo.gov/?s=opportunity…
The breadth and depth of the requested support is notable, with CYBERCOM asking for the development of strategies, architectures, roadmaps, plans, and solutions to synchronize current and future cyber ops, as well as planning, coordination and technical analysis, among others
Related to the potential overreliance on NSA, the author asserts that in planning for operations, CYBERCOM has relied heavily on the experience of NSA using a similar process for risk mitigation in operations.
The problem here is the missions of the two organizations couldn’t be more different: NSA, a foreign intelligence organization and Cyber Command a warfighting organization.
CYBERCOM has to impose costs on adversaries to be effective, but that means “inflicting noticeable damage to a target in a manner that would typically be considered too noisy, risky, or noticeable in signals intelligence operations,” the author notes.
They go on to write that the operations approval structure of CYBERCOM prioritizes security of the op above all else. As long as CYBERCOM relies on NSA tradecraft and expertise it will continue to use a “paradoxical operations process” opposed to the types of ops it must conduct.
Moreover, the author asserts CYBERCOM has lent “de facto veto authority on offensive cyber operations” to NSA:
Overall, the author writes the dual-hat relationship has diminished CYBERCOM’s appetite for risk and slowed the approval process for military cyber operations.
“What takes adversaries mere minutes to do takes Cyber Command weeks, or even months.”
The author finally asserts “The time has come to allow Cyber Command to stand on its own, and free NSA from the responsibility of nurturing a full-fledged combatant command in addition to pursuing its own mission.”
On the flip side, some have warned that the longer the dual hat arrangement stayed intact, the military culture of CYBERCOM would overtake that of the intelligence folks at NSA
Here’s what Michael Hayden told me in 2017: c4isrnet.com/2017/06/29/her…
Ultimately, what’s clear is there’s still much work to be done on the CYBERCOM front. Here’s what the ranking member of the HASC’s subcommittee overseeing CYBERCOM wrote in prepared testimony a few weeks ago:
Lastly, here’s some of the work I’ve done on the NSA/CYBERCOM spilt over the past two years in case more background is desired:
c4isrnet.com/2016/10/10/wha…
c4isrnet.com/2016/10/11/wha…
c4isrnet.com/2016/10/12/doe…
c4isrnet.com/2016/10/13/wha…
c4isrnet.com/2016/10/10/wha…
c4isrnet.com/2016/10/11/wha…
c4isrnet.com/2016/10/12/doe…
c4isrnet.com/2016/10/13/wha…
Most recently, when the issue was revived again after a period of relative quiet: fifthdomain.com/dod/cybercom/2…
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