Defense Writers Group
15 September 2023
Moderator: Welcome to this Defense Writers Group with Mieke Eoyang, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Cyber Policy. As I told her in the elevator on the way up, now that I’m no longer a Times reporter and am allowed opinions, I think the work that DASD Eoyang is doing is incredibly important and I’ve found her to be a forceful and intelligent advocate of her issues. And every time I talk to her, I get smarter so I hope that you all are here to do the same thing.
I’ll ask the first question, then we’ll go around the table for others. Eight of you emailed in advance. We’ll do those first. Then whatever time is left at the end we’ll go to others.
My opening question is somewhat general but very important. You and I have talked before about the importance of definitions. Cyber weapon, cyber tool; cyber war, cyber what.
Could you walk us through the most significant changes between the earlier Cyber Policy and the one that you released? I see major shifts in offense and defense and STRATCOM and all that, but rather than me try to be a Talmudic scholar and interpret it, I’d love to have you do that for us.
DASD Eoyang: I really appreciate the question because I think there are a lot of folks who are wondering why did we do an
update 2023 strategy off of the 2018 strategy. In many ways, the 2023 strategy does represent some continuity with the 2018 strategy, but given that we have a National Security Strategy, a National Defense Strategy, and a National Cyber Strategy, there was a framework of strategic guidance into which we needed to think about how do we bring cyber to bear across all of those things.
