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
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."
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:
@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/…
Musing about the differences and similarities between paleontologists vs. threat intel – a thread with above all unanswered Qs.
1/7 In a wonderful TEDx talk palaeontologist Jack Horner asks the question: “where are all the baby dinosaurs?” "Why is there no smaller version of a Tyrannosaurus Rex in museums?"
2/7 The answer was first provided in an article published in 1975 by Prof. Peter Dodson. He revealed that dinosaurs didn’t grow like reptiles but instead grew like birds. Bird species quickly grow to 80% of their mature size before their crest starts to grow.