Jim Garamone at the DoD News offers the below piece:
WASHINGTON, June 26, 2018 — The adage “forewarned is
forearmed” has entered the digital era at the Defense Intelligence Agency, as
leaders, collectors and analysts there seek to adapt to the changing security
and technological world, the agency’s director said at the Defense One Tech
Summit here today.
DIA has the mission of compiling information and
intelligence on foreign militaries and the operational environment the American
military will confront, Army Lt. Gen. Robert P. Ashley Jr. told Defense One editor
Patrick Tucker.
The agency is in the business of giving leaders strategic
warning. “What are the emerging technologies that are coming out that we need
to be thinking about?” Ashley said. “The other part of that is to inform the
decision-makers and what they have to build to counter them.”
Hypersonics, anti-satellite capabilities, and sophisticated
ground, sea, air capabilities must be countered, and the agency looks to gather
information and intelligence on them Ashley said. The general talks often about
analytic modernization. This concept deals with data. “How do we deal with big
data? How do we deal with the wealth of information that is out there and
available?” he said.
So much information is available that it is difficult for
humans to digest it all, he pointed out. “One of the things we are working on
now are analytic data teams,” he said. “How do we take a traditional analyst
and link him up with a data scientist?” Ashley said he sees the job of an
analyst morphing into that of a political scientist and data scientist in the
future.
Growth of Space Domain
The agency is broadening its collection to deal with the new
military domain of space. Ashley said he sees the domain growing over the next
decade. “If you look to the National Defense Strategy, the central problem that
it seeks to solve is [that] the technological gap that we have had the lead on
is slowly collapsing,” the general said. “The goal is to maintain primacy and a
leading role.”
Since 2001, the only domain the American military has been
challenged on is the land domain, through improvised explosive devices and
combat in cities. American dominance in the sea, air, cyber and space domains
was not seriously contested by terror groups. “The re-emergence of great power
competition – Russia and China – you start seeing a closing gap in all domains,
and they are being contested,” he said.
Military capabilities to interdict satellites both in space
and on the ground is possible, the general said. “In the warfighting doctrine,
you have to account for the resilience you build into the domains, you have to
build in redundancy, and in some cases, if it is degraded or denied, how do you
fight in that realm?” Ashley said.
Reflexive Control
The general also discussed a concept current in the agency
with regard to Russia – reflexive control – and it deals with hybrid warfare.
The Russians use this to intimidate, coerce and scare nations into doing what
is in Russia’s best interests. Ashley said the concept is an outgrowth of
Soviet doctrine that the Russians continued to work on after the brea-up of the
Soviet Union.
“Reflexive control is information operations [conducted] in
such a way to drive you toward a decision or outcome that you think is yours,”
he said. “[The Russians)]seed the information in such a way to drive you toward
that decision.”
Identifying this is tough, the general said, using Russian
involvement in Western elections as an example. “What’s happening now is you
have a great deal of sensitivity across the European nations – they are
actually looking for [reflexive control]. They are looking for those themes to
ensure they will be able to put the truth out and counter to that.”
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