The United States used cyberweapons in Venezuela to take power offline, turn off radar and disrupt hand-held radios, all to help U.S. military forces slip into the country unnoticed early this month, according to American officials.
It was part of a renewed effort to integrate computer warfare into real-world operations.
The military has often used cyberweapons in discreet operations — like damaging Iran’s nuclear centrifuges by altering their functioning or taking a Russian troll farm offline — but the Pentagon has been working to find new ways to fuse computer network warfare with the rest of the military arsenal.
The Pentagon tested the approach in Venezuela and during strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities last year.
In an interview, Katherine E. Sutton, the Pentagon’s top cyberpolicy official, declined to discuss Venezuela or other recent operations, but said the military was focused on how to integrate cybereffects into broader military operations. She said those capabilities had been used alongside traditional military power to “successfully layer multiple effects” on the battlefield.
“The integrated approach represents the future of cyberwarfare,” Ms. Sutton said.
The goal, she said, is to seamlessly weave those capabilities into broader military operations to enable more precise strikes, degrade an adversary’s ability to command its forces and support the U.S. military as it maneuvers on a battlefield.
“Since cyber is inherently a domain of information, we can disrupt the adversary’s decision-making cycle and create windows of opportunity for conventional forces to exploit — for example, degrading an adversary’s command and control and helping achieve an information advantage,” she added.
Ms. Sutton is scheduled to testify before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Wednesday at a hearing on how to improve the Pentagon’s training of its cyberforces.
Congress is considering whether to create a separate military force for cyberoperations, akin to how the Space Force was carved out from the Air Force during the first Trump administration.
Whether or not a new force is created, Ms. Sutton said, the Pentagon is moving forward with plans to overhaul how U.S. Cyber Command trains and deploys its service members.
While the United States has been honing its cyberabilities, other countries are not far behind. China, in particularly, has shown that its security agencies can penetrate deeply into American computer networks. China’s Volt Typhoon operation aimed to be able to shut down critical infrastructure near military bases to slow an American response to any crisis in the Pacific.
But while China has demonstrated advanced stand-alone capabilities, the United States has proved it is able to use cybereffects at the same time it conducts military operations.
In Venezuela, American officials said, U.S. Cyber Command was able to shut down the transmission towers that allowed the Venezuelan military’s hand-held radios to work, took some radar off-line and turned off the power. Those operations made it far more difficult for the Venezuelan military to identify or engage the American forces who entered the country to seize the president, Nicolás Maduro.
Some critics have questioned how important the cyberweaponry was. Some, citing Venezuelan government statements, have said that the American military struck at least one power station. In addition, Venezuela’s most powerful air defense radar had never been operational.
But current and former American officials say that cyberweapons are the most effective when they are combined with other military and intelligence operations.
“Cyber warfare has evolved at a higher level in warfighting, because it is now being integrated with kinetic warfighting elements in attack plans,” said Mark Montgomery, a retired rear admiral who helped lead the Cyberspace Solarium, a congressionally mandated commission. “This is a big deal.”
Ms. Sutton said that when combined with real-world military operations, cybercapabilities can have a greater effect than if they are simply used on their own to target an enemy’s own electronic weapons.
“Historically, a lot of the policy discussions have been about cyberactors against malicious cyberactors,” she said. “When we talk about cyberintegration, we must think about how cyberoperations can achieve strategic effects.”
With private industry offering software engineers and cybersecurity experts well-paying jobs, the military has often had a hard time retaining service members who have cybersecurity expertise.
“The traditional military career models have struggled with the unique needs of generating cyberforces, leading to challenges in recruiting the right people, retaining that top talent and providing the specialized training that we need to be successful going forward,” Ms Sutton said.
The Pentagon is intent on overhauling the Cyber Command by creating career paths that emphasize “domain mastery” over general expertise. Ms. Sutton said that the department is focusing on how to improve service members’ specialization within fields like cloud computing, industrial control systems and artificial intelligence.
“We need to ensure we have the ability to develop deep experts in critical niche technical fields,” she said.
Ms. Sutton said the Defense Department is already implementing “Cyber Command 2.0.”
Ms. Sutton said the changes were critical “to build agility into our force so we can pivot as needed and stay ahead of emerging techniques as they come out.”
Julian E. Barnes covers the U.S. intelligence agencies and international security matters for The Times. He has written about security issues for more than two decades.
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