‘The fight is on’ as top cyber officials try to revamp the military’s digital workforce

Top cyber officials on Tuesday outlined the stakes around the military’s digital hiring pipeline as the broader force attempts to implement a sweeping new talent-management model and the war with Iran nears its one-month mark.

In early March, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine told reporters that members of U.S. Cyber Command were among the “first movers” in the current war against Iran, dubbed Operation Epic Fury. The command also played roles in other major ops during the second Trump presidency, including supporting the bombing of Iranian nuclear facilities in Operation Midnight Hammer and the capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro in Operation Absolute Resolve.

While details about those secretive digital ops are scarce, other officials have previously noted that cyber involvement in such conflicts have wrought a “cultural shift” for the force and a more prominent seat at the modern warfare table.

On the first day of the Cyber Workforce Summit in Washington this week, multiple officials charged with various elements of the U.S. military’s digital domain focused on how to efficiently get qualified people into the force, underscoring the current relevance of a capable cyber arsenal.

“Let there be no mistake, currently the fight is on,” said Army Lt. Gen. Paul Stanton, leader of Cyber Defense Command and director of the Defense Information Systems Agency, though he did not disclose specific operations he was referring to.

“Our cyber warfighters are in persistent daily contact with adaptive adversaries,” he said. “Forging the force is a warfighting imperative. How we as leaders answer the call, how we find the right people, validate their skills against a qualification standard and keep them in the fight is a pressing readiness issue.”

Their comments come as the military looks to reinvent its digital talent pipeline with a new force generation model, which aims to build a better cyber force under an initiative dubbed Cybercom 2.0. The effort seeks to link Cybercom closely with the military branches to recruit, train and retain digital troops. 

Katie Sutton, principal cyber advisor to the secretary of defense, said that effort centers around a “domain mastery” replete with operational experience that allows talented digital operators to develop skills for years “without having to hang up their keyboard to get promoted,” diverse training paths to meet an evolving digital landscape, such as AI, and the organizational ability to adapt to a changing environment.

This structure is built on several “attributes,” she said, such as creating cyber assessments to identify talent and incentivizing service with bonuses that reward top skills because “we’re competing with industry and particularly Silicon Valley.” 

“If you’re a top tier operator in the cyber mission force, we’re now going to start treating you like one in how we incentivize you,” Sutton said.

Other aspects of Cybercom 2.0 include continued tailored training, personnel management processes that allow for skill-building and different experiences, and other organizational changes intended to stand up specialized teams with cyber-focused tactical headquarters elements and a model “to prevent burnout.”

Sutton said that implementation of Cybercom 2.0 is “underway,” specifically that its “vision” has been translated into “detailed plans” and that initial working groups “are chartered and active.” 

When asked whether there should be a separate digitally-focused military service or Cyber Force, a hotly contested topic in the national security community, she said “Cybercom 2.0 is supportive of either model” as it immediately focuses on talent management “while preserving decision space down the road for future organizational models” should they be needed.

While the principles of building a ready force may be timeless, Stanton said, he echoed that the application of such efforts has to adapt to the ever-changing nature of warfare. 

Part of that includes designing systems with zero-trust cybersecurity principles, advanced data engineering, and automation to “free our most talented warfighters from the mundane so that they can dominate decisive operations,” Standon said. “We have to use the tools to unleash the talent.”

In his remarks, Stanton lamented what he called the “old process,” one heavy on bureaucracy and long enough to let talented cyber prospects slip out of the hands of government work. 

Position description creation, job postings, resumes pile-ups, board discussions, arduous human resources processes “and six months later, everybody that had the talent is already on somebody else’s team,” he said. “That ain’t gonna work.”

Instead, he’s “blown up” that old way of doing things and is implementing something he called “surgical hiring,” a process where technical professionals are paired with HR personnel to more quickly identify cyber talent, while also leveraging existing congressional authorities and academic connections to “develop and build the right, qualified individuals.”

Under this method, Stanton said that his team offered 47 contingent job offers “on the spot” at one recent event and within three weeks brought “32 people in the workforce.”

As recruiting cyber talent becomes more refined, recruiters still face an uphill battle when competing with lucrative roles in the private sector. Another top official acknowledged the issue in response to a question from DefenseScoop, but said it was part of a broader cyber ecosystem where government and private industry are constantly trading skills and talent.

“Ultimately, we will never be able to truly effectively compete against some of the higher paid cyber workforce that is out in industry,” said Vice Adm. Heidi Berg, head of Fleet Cyber Command. She recounted a recent conversation she had with a young non-commissioned officer leaving her team for a private company, attempting to possibly convince them to stay, but upon learning of their compensation Berg realized the military couldn’t keep them. 

“At the same time, they had almost 10 years of solid service and I think that’s again, part of that equation is, you don’t retain everyone,” she said. “That’s part of the broader ecosystem that really, I think, does contribute to our national security and is a good thing.”

On the military side, part of the “value proposition” for cyber service involves authorities that digital operators are allowed to carry out, but civilian counterparts legally can’t, and the chance to participate in ops “directing and driving your nation is a really exciting thing,” Berg said. 

Officials recognize that industry offers skills that troops might not have. The military has launched a “couple of pilot programs,” she said, that allow private sector workers to serve in the Reserve or National Guard. Other incentives from the military include high-end training, a push for maximum, equitable compensation across the service, and geographic stability, according to Berg.

“I find that particularly for many people,” Berg said, “money ends up being part of the equation, but not all of the equation.”