These are huge strategic challenges — and Ryan McCarthy is emphasizing them more than any of his predecessors in at least a decade.

More collective defense cooperation will be on display at the massive AUSA 2019 conference, attended by 92 different nations, including the chief generals of 13 armies.

The Air Force sees the New Mexico training environment as eventually becoming a cyber training range for the entire Defense Department.

The hard part of Multi-Domain Operations isn’t hypersonic missiles or robotic tanks. It’s getting civilian agencies and foreign allies to fight disinformation — long before the shooting starts.

In a massive simulated conflict, the human players adapted rapidly to futuristic technologies and tactics. But their command-and-control software couldn’t keep up.

“If it’s a hurricane, [at the Defense Department], they’ve got the mission assignments. They know, ‘OK, we’ve got to send people to fill sandbags,'” DHS’s Jeanette Manfra explained. For cyber responses, she said, “that part is not mature enough.”

“How do I even know what’s normal and what’s abnormal so I can detect anomalies? We simply don’t know,” says Dean Souleles, chief technology advisor for the Director of National Intelligence.

Army foot soldiers are going into battle with more and more electronics, wirelessly networked both to each other and to distant command posts. So can GI Joe be hacked?

The Army is already struggling to man its new cyber units — and now it wants to expand their ranks and responsibilities for a new mission.

The Army wants to move much faster in cyberspace against espionage, subversion, and disinformation — but that means accepting higher risks.