From the first test flights at Kitty Hawk to the nuclear fission research that led to the Manhattan Project, US military planners have continuously sought technology as a means to an end. Cyber warfare cannot replace boots on the ground yet US digital networks - the backbone of US commerce, communications, and infrastructure - are vulnerable to attack by enemies of the state. Today, cyberspace represents the latest game changer in the conduct of warfare, and the paranoid minds of military planners are anxiously taking note. Cyber technology is evolving faster than strategy can keep pace, a problem reminiscent of the dilemma first encountered by air power leaders at the dawn of the Cold War. Aviation pioneers claimed that air power would reverse the body count of conventional war. Unfortunately, instead of using technology to win the fight at hand, the Air Force grew into an institution whose objective was better, newer technology. Without a foundational strategy, the Air Force quickly became a capabilities-obsessed, cost-prohibitive hydra. Military cyberspace strategy could encounter a similar fate. If cyber advocates commit to cyber technology too soon, they run the risk of repeating history, replacing strategic objectives with technology and marginalizing themselves in the process. This paper describes how US policy makers can craft an enduring cyber strategy, one that espouses a doctrine of deterrence and adaptability. If policy makers want to make cyber strategy relevant to current and future threats, then they must first characterize cyber war within the larger nature of war. For this we can turn to Carl von Clausewitz's epic treatise, On War. Cyber war is not an end-state in itself, just as war itself is not an end-state. Cyber war, like war, is an extension of politics, the objective of which is to compel one's enemy to bend to your will. Cyberspace is not the first technology to reshape the battlefield, but it could be a capability that dies on the vine unless cyber leaders and policy makers adopt a flexible and relevant cyber strategy. This paper contributes to the discussion of what a sensible cyber doctrine will require through a qualitative approach shaped by historical cases involving emergent air power technology, as well as a strategy of deterrence resurrected from the Cold War.
