When the Department of Homeland Security’s Advisory Council announces it plan next week for overhauling how the agency combats the spread of disinformation online, its focus will be on “how to achieve greater transparency across our disinformation related work” and how to “increase trust with the public,” according to council meeting minutes released Monday.

Read more at Cyberscoop.com

In the aftermath of the assault on the Capitol, much of the nation’s attention was focused on “why.” But another question is equally important: “What next?”

The problem the authorities faced on Jan. 6 was not an inability to respond, but failure to anticipate the threat. Going forward, counterterrorism efforts should emphasize connecting the dots in the far-right extremist universe — not a simple task, given the dispersed and fast-moving nature of the threat.

Read the rest at The New York Times

Closing the gap between technology leaders and policy makers will require a radically different approach from the defense establishment.

A silent divide is weakening America’s national security, and it has nothing to do with President Donald Trump or party polarization. It’s the growing gulf between the tech community in Silicon Valley and the policy-making community in Washington.

Beyond all the acrimonious headlines, Democrats and Republicans share a growing alarm over the return of great-power conflict. China and Russia are challenging American interests, alliances, and values—through territorial aggression; strong-arm tactics and unfair practices in global trade; cyber theft and information warfare; and massive military buildups in new weapons systems such as Russia’s “Satan 2” nuclear long-range missile, China’s autonomous weapons, and satellite-killing capabilities to destroy our communications and imagery systems in space. Since Trump took office, huge bipartisan majorities in Congress have passed tough sanctions against Russia, sweeping reforms to scrutinize and block Chinese investments in sensitive American technology industries, and record defense-budget increases. You know something’s big when senators like the liberal Ron Wyden and the

In Washington, alarm bells are ringing. Here in Silicon Valley, not so much. “Ask people to finish the sentence, ‘China is a ____ of the United States,’” said the former National Economic Council chairman Keith Hennessey. “Policy makers from both parties are likely to answer with ‘competitor,’ ‘strategic rival,’ or even ‘adversary,’ while Silicon Valley leaders will probably tell you China is a ‘supplier,’ ‘investor,’ and especially ‘potential market.’”

Read the rest at The Atlantic.

Note: This piece originally appeared at Lawfare.

Many analysts, practitioners, and scholars are skeptical of the efficacy of drone strikes for counterterrorism, suggesting that they provide short-term gains at best and are counterproductive at worst. However, despite how widespread these views are, reliable evidence on the consequences of drone strikes remains limited. My research on drone warfare and U.S. counterterrorism—some of which was recently published in International Security—addresses this issue by examining the U.S. drone war in Pakistan from 2004 to 2014. Contrary to the skeptics, I find that drone strikes in Pakistan were effective in degrading the targeted armed groups. And, troublingly, they succeeded in doing so even though they harmed civilians.

Three Key Findings

I have conducted research in Pakistan and the United States over the last few years, gathering new qualitative data on the politics of the war and its effects on the two main targets, al-Qaeda and the Pakistan Taliban. I have also evaluated detailed quantitative data on drone strikes and violence by al-Qaeda and the Pakistan Taliban. This research offers three important findings.

First, the U.S. drone war was damaging for the organizational trajectories of al-Qaeda and the Pakistan Taliban. I found that after the United States surged its surveillance and targeting capabilities in 2008, both groups suffered increasing setbacks; they lost bases, their operational capabilities were reduced, their ranks were checked by growing numbers of desertions, and the organizations fractured politically. These effects appear to have persisted until 2014. In a related paper, my University of Michigan colleague Dylan Moore and I show that during the drone program in the Waziristan region, violence by the two groups fell substantially.

Second, the U.S. drone war disrupted al-Qaeda and the Pakistan Taliban not just by killing their leaders and specialized rank-and-file members, but also by heightening the perceived risk of being targeted. Across a variety of empirical materials, including some collected through fieldwork, I found that both groups were direly constrained by the fear—a constant sense of anticipation—of drone strikes, which crippled routine movement and communication. In addition, leaders and rank-and-file jihadis regularly viewed each other with the suspicion of being spies for the drone program, which contributed to their organizational fragmentation.

Third, the notion of increased recruitment for al-Qaeda and the Pakistan Taliban due to civilian harm in drone strikes is questionable. In the local battlefield, I did not find evidence of any tangible increase in recruitment. Interviews with some surviving mid-level members of al-Qaeda and the Pakistan Taliban negated the impression that the groups benefited from a stream of angry recruits. Instead, a recurring theme was that they experienced desertions and manpower shortages because of the stress of operating under drones. To the extent that new recruits were available, both groups struggled to integrate them in their organizations because of the fear that they might be spies for the drone program.

Beyond Pakistan?

The U.S. drone war in Pakistan is a crucial case of U.S. counterterrorism policy, but it is one of many other campaigns. The U.S. government is waging such campaigns in Yemen and Somalia, and considering an expansion in the Sahara. In my work, I identify two factors which are important for the dynamics evident in Pakistan to hold generally.

First, the United States must have extensive knowledge of the civilian population where the armed group is based. The counterterrorism force needs such knowledge to generate intelligence leads on their targets, who are often hiding within the civilian population. This comes from detailed population data sharing by local partners, large-scale communication interception, and pattern-of-life analysis of target regions from sophisticated drones.

Second, the United States must be able to exploit available intelligence leads in a timely manner. As members of targeted armed groups consistently try to escape detection, most intelligence has a limited shelf life. The capability to act quickly depends on the bureaucratic capacity to process intelligence, decentralized decision-making for targeting, and rapid-strike capabilities like armed drones.

In Pakistan, the United States met these criteria with an abundance of technology and high-quality local partner cooperation. Starting in 2008, the United States mobilized a large fleet of drones and surveillance technologies to develop granular knowledge of the civilian population in the targeted regions. Despite deep political rifts on the conflict in Afghanistan, the Central Intelligence Agency obtained extensive covert support from Pakistani intelligence against al-Qaeda and the Pakistan Taliban, which enabled it to regularly locate targets. With ample targeting authority and armed drones operating from nearby bases, U.S. forces were able to exploit available leads.

In Yemen, however, the United States has struggled to develop knowledge of the civilian population and act on available intelligence. My interviews with U.S. officials and a leaked government document suggest that, until 2013, U.S. forces did not sustain aerial surveillance of targeted regions, the Yemeni state’s capacity in support of operations remained poor, and the targeting rules were stringent.

Implications for U.S. Counterterrorism Policy

The U.S. government’s preference for drone strikes is motivated by the desire to prevent attacks against the American homeland. My research suggests that the drone program has the potential to inflict enough damage on the targeted armed groups to upset their ability to plot and organize attacks in the United States.

The United States also deploys drone strikes to manage jihadi threats to allied regimes. In such cases, the political value of strikes depends, in part, on the capability of the local partner. An effective drone deployment can go a long way in providing a necessary condition for restoring order. But the local partner must ultimately step up to consolidate state control.

For example, President Obama’s drone policy degraded al-Qaeda and the Pakistan Taliban, securing the American homeland and substantially reducing the threat to the nuclear-armed Pakistani state. The Obama administration’s policy was sufficient because the Pakistani state was relatively capable and could build on the gains made by U.S. counterterrorism strikes. Indeed, Pakistan’s ground operations, although contentiously timed, consolidated those gains.

In contrast, in today’s Afghanistan, the U.S. government cannot rely on instruments of counterterrorism alone. U.S. officials realize that just degrading the Afghan Taliban and the Islamic State is unlikely to stabilize the country. The Afghan government remains so weak that it will struggle to consolidate territorial control even after substantial degradation of its armed foes.

Finally, a key limitation of counterterrorism strikes is that they cannot alleviate the ideological appeal of jihadi actors like al-Qaeda and the Islamic State. Strikes cannot substitute for efforts at countering online jihadi propaganda and de-radicalization. Thus, they should not be seen as a silver bullet that can defeat armed groups operating from safe havens and weak states.

Civilian Protection and Drone Strikes

Civilian harm in U.S. counterterrorism remains a vital challenge. While moral objections to civilian casualties are a powerful reason to reconsider drone operations, my research suggests that strategic concerns, like a surge in local violence or increased recruitment of targeted organizations, are not. In Pakistan, for example, drone strikes harmed civilians while also undermining al-Qaeda and Pakistan Taliban. Similarly, the U.S.-led counter-ISIL campaign in Iraq and Syria was very difficult for the civilian population, and yet also inflicted losses on the Islamic State.

If civilian casualties do not affect the strategic outcomes of counterterrorism campaigns, then the U.S. government must be convinced to protect civilians for purely moral reasons. How responsive might the U.S. government be to such appeals? It is unclear. The Obama administration was not transparent about the use of drone strikes. Under President Trump, the lack of transparency has worsened. Concerned policymakers and human rights activists must continue to push the U.S. government to be more transparent and to protect civilians caught up in counterterrorism campaigns.

In this session from DARPA’s 60th anniversary symposium, D60, Dr. Valerie Browning, director of the agency’s Defense Sciences Office (DSO); keynote speaker Dr. Vincent Tang, program manager for DSO; and a panel of notable experts, including CISAC's Siegfried Hecker, explore the challenges and opportunities for combatting WMD use and preventing proliferation in the emerging global landscape.

Moderator Dr. Valerie Browning – DARPA, DSO
Keynote Dr. Vincent Tang – DARPA, DSO
Panelists Mr. Peter Bergen – Journalist, Dr. Siegfried Hecker – Center for International Security and Cooperation, Stanford University The Honorable Andrew “Andy” Weber – Former Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear, Chemical, and Biological Defense Programs

Evolving drone technology will enable countries to make low-cost but highly credible threats against states and groups that do not possess drones, Stanford political scientist Amy Zegart found in new research.

Could the mere threat of using an armed drone ever coerce an enemy to change their behavior – without attacking them?

Yes, says Stanford political scientist Amy Zegart, who argues in a new research paper that countries that simply possess deadly, armed drones could change an adversary’s behavior without even striking them. Zegart is the Davies Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and co-director of Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation.

“Armed drones are likely to offer coercion ‘windows of opportunity’ in at least one important circumstance: states that have armed drones confronting states that do not,” she said. “As wars grow longer and less conclusive, armed drones enable states to sustain combat operations, making threats to ‘stay the course’ more believable.”

Zegart believes that drone technology is becoming a more effective instrument to change a state’s behavior than yesteryear’s more costly option of using ground troops or large-scale military movements in war or conflict.

“Drones may be turning deterrence theory on its head,” said Zegart, referring to the cost-benefit calculation a potential aggressor makes when assessing an attack.

Zegart’s focus is on next-generation drones, which are essentially unmanned fighter jets and are currently in development. She is not examining the use of existing drones like quadcopters and Reaper and Predator unmanned aerial vehicles.

Foreign military officers surveyed

Zegart’s research is based on surveys of 259 foreign military officers conducted between 2015 and 2017. Participants were highly experienced foreign military officers who were attending classes at the National Defense University and Naval War College.

A drone is an unmanned aircraft that can be piloted remotely to deliver a lethal payload to a specific target.

Today, Zegart said, many scholars are studying whether drone proliferation across the world could change the future of warfare.

“But even here the focus has been the implications for the use of force, not the threat of force,” she said.

New drones are more lethal than ever, offering greater speeds, ranges, stealth and agility, according to Zegart. The U.S. is ahead, but not alone, in using drones. Nine countries have already used armed drones in combat, and at least 20 more are developing lethal drone programs – including Russia and China.

“It is time for a rethink” about drones, Zegart said. Technological advances will soon enable drones to function in hostile environments better than ever before.

“Drones offer three unique coercion advantages that theorists did not foresee: sustainability in long duration conflicts; certainty of precision punishment, which can change the psychology of adversaries; and changes in the relative costs of war,” she said.

Threats involving a high cost may be actually less credible than assumed, said Zegart. Her findings challenge the belief of “cost signals,” a military strategy where a country threatens another with a high-cost option, such as ground troops, which is intended to show resolve.

Drones may actually signal a nation’s resolve more effectively because – as a low-cost option – they can be part of an enduring offensive campaign against an enemy.

“The advent of armed drones suggests that costly signals may no longer be the best or only path to threat credibility,” she said. As wars grow longer and less conclusive, a particular country’s test of resolve becomes “more about sustaining than initiating action.”

“In situations where a coercing state has armed drones but a target state does not, drones make it possible to implement threats in ways that impose vanishingly low costs on the coercer but disproportionately high costs on the target,” Zegart said.

Combat, coercion

Zegart said that throughout history, whenever a new military technology emerges, adversaries have basically faced two choices – either concede or innovate to overcome the other side’s advantage.

“There is no reason to expect drones will be any different. The more that drones are used for combat and coercion, the more likely it will be that others will develop drone countermeasures,” she said.

New weapons often evolve technologically before “game-changing ideas” occur about how to use them, Zegart added. This was true of submarines before World War I, tanks after World War I, airplanes (which originally replaced surveillance balloons and were not used to drop bombs until 1911), and nuclear weapons during the Cold War.

“While physicists in the Manhattan Project developed the first atom bomb in just three years, it took much longer to develop the conceptual underpinnings of deterrence that kept the Cold War cold,” she said.

Drones raise important questions about the role of machines in decision-making during conflict, Zegart said. For example, much has been debated and written about the ethical and legal issues raised by U.S. drone strikes, the usefulness of drone operations against terrorist groups and whether the Pentagon or CIA should control and operate the drones.

Such questions are likely to grow more “numerous and knotty” as drones and other technologies evolve, she said.

Media Contacts

Amy Zegart, Hoover Institution and Center for International Security and Cooperation: zegart@stanford.edu

Clifton B. Parker, Hoover Institution: (650) 498-5205, cbparker@stanford.edu