Max Smeets Profile picture
Oct 28, 2021 11 tweets 3 min read Read on X
Working on an in-depth study of the US spending on cyber ops & cybersecurity infrastructure with Brita Achberger (with main focus on DoD RDT&E spending). Going through the DoD docs from 2008 until 2020, we found 75 relevant budget items across services.
Verifying and analyzing this data has been a lot harder than we initially expected (items moving, lack of clear item descriptions, cross-item analysis, classification etc.) Some preliminary graphs.
President Budget Request for 'Cyber Activities'
The figure above captures a generally known trend of cap. build up. The requested budget more than quadrupled from 2.3$ billion in 2012 to 9.6$ billion in 2020. It is expected to further grow in the coming years. Actual budget spending is not far off from req. budgt
Presidential Budget Request IT/CA Classified vs. Non-Classified
Presidential Budget Actuals 'Cyber' RDT&E Budget Items
'Cyber' RDT&E Budget Items by Budget Activity Codes
Science and Technology 'Cyber' RDT&E Budget Items
Management and Support 'Cyber' RDT&E Budget Items
Application of Existing Scientific and Technical Knowledge 'Cyber' RDT&E Budget Items

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More from @Maxwsmeets

Sep 8, 2022
Much praise from the (policy) community with respect to Albania cutting diplomatic ties with Iran over the July cyber attacks.

But there are lot of open questions here regarding scale, response & motive

A thread 🧵
First, what this cyber attack truly "unprecedented" in scale? And was this attack 'massive'?

whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/…
(We can expect more government statements to follow the coming days: eg. )
Read 15 tweets
Jan 11, 2022
I was reflecting a bit on what has been published in the (academic) field of cyber conflict, and tried to organize my thoughts into 2 categories: what issues are highly contested vs widely accepted amongst scholars?

Mini thread on what I came up with thus far:
1. What are statements that are highly contested?
A. Cyber operations provide strategic value
B. Cyber operations are novel instruments of power
C. Cyber conflict is qualitatively different from intelligence contests
D. Cyber operations are escalatory
Read 11 tweets
Nov 22, 2021
I realized actually quite a few academic books were published in 2021 on cyber conflict/competition relevant topics – or will be published in 2022. Decided to run a short thread with books I’m aware of (& publicly listed):
1. @pncornish (ed.) The Oxford Handbook of Cyber Security, 2021, global.oup.com/academic/produ…
2. @jamessshires, The Politics of Cybersecurity in the Middle East, 2021, hurstpublishers.com/book/the-polit…
Read 19 tweets
Oct 28, 2021
Main insights we wrote down from FY2021 and FY2022:
FY2021:"The DoD has also increased investments in [..] cyber operations to boost resiliency against adversaries, as evidenced by standing up the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center to adapt to the pending growth of machine learning, and to capitalize on big data.."
FY2021: "Another key action for FY 2021 is to develop an organizational construct to support joint training enablers by Q4 FY 2021."
Read 12 tweets
Sep 6, 2021
A few (initial) general observations about recent scholarship in the field of cyber conflict:
1. Massive increase in European journals & scholars publishing on cyber conflict related topics - eg @CSP_journal , @EJIntSec, @BJPolS
2. Case studies & illustrative examples have diversified (not unrelated to previous point).
Read 8 tweets
Sep 6, 2021
If you'd like to keep track of the latest scholarship in the field of cyber conflict, here's a list of all the articles published in the top 150 Poli Sci journals from Jan 2020 - Jul 2021:
@Prof_J_Branch , "What's in a Name? Metaphors and Cybersecurity" 2021 - On the cyber domain as a foundational metaphor. cambridge.org/core/journals/…
@TobiasLiebetrau & Christensen, "The ontological politics of cyber security: Emerging agencies, actors, sites, and spaces" 2021 - on complex and transformative dynamics of ICT and new actors - cambridge.org/core/journals/…
Read 32 tweets

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