“The force that is postured, resilient, and able to converge its capabilities across all domains will win. We must be that force.” — Gen. David Perkins, Commanding General, U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command
The Army must be prepared to fight across multiple domains and contested areas, to deter potential adversaries and rapidly defeat enemies. Multi-Domain Battle and the associated capabilities will ensure that future Soldiers and Joint Teams can fight, win, and survive on tomorrow’s battlefields. The future of the Cyber domain is one of the most difficult aspects of the Future Operational Environment (OE). It is the domain most impacted by speed, scope, and convergence. The 2050 Cyber Army Conference, co-sponsored by the Army Cyber Institute and the United States Military Academy, on 13-14 September 2016 at West Point, New York, tackled this domain, defining Cyber Future Attributes and Alternative Cyber Futures.
Cyber Future Attributes:
The challenges of “cyber-casting” impose a shroud of uncertainty around the cyber future out to 2050, but Mad Scientists described a series of consistent attributes about that elusive future:
Ubiquity. Cyber will be “everywhere” and so pervasive that in the future “cyber is no longer cyber.” The functional distinction of things “cyber” will diminish as cyberspace connectivity (e.g., the Internet of Things) pervades every aspect of our infrastructure. From a military perspective, the pervasiveness of cyberspace will challenge the Army to reconceptualize time and space across all of the domains – including cyberspace — to win future battles and wars.
Volatility. The pervasiveness and leverage of cyberspace infrastructure will likely have a destabilizing impact on global – and local – stability. Digitization and social media, for example, will blend “weaponized data” and potentially micro-target anyone on the planet. The multiplicity of potential actors – and the expansion of the means at their disposal – can only be problematic for a stable operational environment.
Uncertainty. The explicit mechanism of connectivity and “cause-and-effect” in cyberspace infrastructure will be buried in the sheer mass of users, nodes, connections, and data within it. Increasing portions of cyberspace action, moreover, may be shaped through artificial intelligence tools and machine to machine communications, without direct human oversight or review. A destabilization of certainty and trust is inevitable as foundational data and fundamental algorithms powering the Internet of Things are attacked and inexplicably fail. Vulnerabilities at the fringes of the global supply chain, moreover, will present weak links in the cyber infrastructure, posing doubt about the reliability and assured performance of cyberspace infrastructure.
Complexity. Cause-and-effect relationships in the cyber domain will not be readily apparent, and the quantity of these relationships will shift merely “complicated” systems into the “complex” category. Blended attacks originating from every aspect of cyberspace ubiquity will present new levels of complexity. Very complex automated systems across the Internet of Things, moreover, will present an immense and vulnerable attack surface. The more efficient these systems become, the easier they will be to hack. Simplicity will be a limited virtue, frequently defeated by creativity and flexibility. Adversaries may steal ideas from an attacker’s playbook, for example, as a useful tool against targets of their own.
Convergence. Data and digitization continue to move beyond information and technology communication to all aspects of our physical, cognitive, and social experiences. The consequent attribute of the cyber future will be convergence…
…between land and cyberspace operations.
…between all the legacy domains, as cyberspace constitutes the connective ether that readily transfers effects from one domain to another.
…between time and space as enhanced information and communication technologies decrease the time and expand the reach of cyber actions.
…between electromagnetic (EMS) and cyberspace action.
…between defensive and offensive cyberspace operations to ensure one function informs the other.
…between information management (IM) and knowledge management (KM) as large data is leveraged to achieve advantage. 
…between Army operational and institutional activities, creating an unprecedented level of interaction where operations impact institutional activities and vice-versa.
Alternative Cyber Futures:
Given the uncertainty associated with cyber-casting, a useful approach for evaluating the future out to 2050 is to describe a range of alternative futures and attempt to identify key discriminators that distinguish between them. Although that was not an explicit task of the Mad Scientist Conference, in a project for the Atlantic Council Cyber Statecraft Initiative, Jason Healy identified five alternative cyber futures describing a range of conflict and collaboration. 
Since Mad Scientist discussions touched on most of these potential outcomes, we leveraged this analysis in the 2050 Army Cyber Conference Report.
The potential alternative cyber futures are as follows:
1. “Status Quo.”
• Description: Cyberspace conflict tomorrow looks like that of today: there are high levels of crime and espionage, but no massive interstate cyber warfare
• Relationship of Offense and Defense: Favors Offense over Defense
• Intensity and Kind of Conflict: Conflict is as it is today: bad, but not catastrophic, with crime and spying
• Intensity and Kind of Cooperation: There is a healthy but limited sharing on response, standards, and cyber crime
• Stability: Relatively Stable
• Likelihood: Moderate
• Why this is Possible: Current trend line and massive attacks have not occurred yet, despite fifteen years of expectations
2. “Conflict Domain.”
• Description: Cyberspace reflects a wide range of human conflict, just like air, land, space and maritime domains
• Relationship of Offense and Defense: Favors Offense over Defense
• Intensity and Kind of Conflict: There is a full range of conflict (i.e., crime, spying, embargos, and full-blown international conflict)
• Intensity and Kind of Cooperation: To be stable, cyber cooperation requires norms and regimes, just as in other domains
• Stability: Somewhat Stable
• Likelihood: High
• Why this is Possible: Other domains have generally supported a range of human activity, from commerce to conflict
3. “Balkanization.”
• Description: Cyberspace breaks down into national fiefdoms: there is no single internet, just a collection of closely guarded and poorly interconnected national internets
• Relationship of Offense and Defense: Unknown / Depends
• Intensity and Kind of Conflict: Nations are possibly blocking access to content, to and from each other, although there may be fewer outright attacks
• Intensity and Kind of Cooperation: Cyber cooperation requires international agreement in order to interconnect national Internets
• Stability: Unknown / Depends
• Likelihood: Low
• Why this is Possible: Countries continue to build border firewalls, which UN control of the Internet could exacerbate
4. “Paradise.”
• Description: Social and technological innovations make cyberspace an overwhelmingly secure place; where espionage, warfare, and crime are extremely difficult
• Relationship of Offense and Defense: Favors Defense much more than Offense
• Intensity and Kind of Conflict: All conflict is greatly reduced, although nations and other advanced actors retain some capability
• Intensity and Kind of Cooperation: Cooperation is critical if stability depends on norms, or unneeded if it depends on new technology
• Stability: Long-Term Stable
• Likelihood: Low
• Why this is Possible: New technologies or cooperation, long promised, could make security much easier
5. “Cybergeddon.”
• Description: Cyberspace, always un-ruled and unruly, has become a “failed state” in a near-permanent state of disruption, including high levels of hacker, criminal, and terrorist activity
• Relationship of Offense and Defense: Favors Offense much more than Defense
• Intensity and Kind of Conflict: Every kind of conflict is not just possible, but ongoing, all of the time
• Intensity and Kind of Cooperation: Cooperation is either useless, as attackers always have the edge, or impossible, like trying to govern a
failed state
• Stability: Long-Term Unstable
• Likelihood: Low
• Why this is Possible: Offense continues to outpace defense, as any new defensive technology or cooperation is quickly overcome
The key discriminator that drives alternative cyber futures in this model is the technology contest outcome between offensive and defensive cyber operations.
Conclusion:
The assessment of cyber offense ascendancy at the 2050 Army Cyber Conference reinforces Jason Healy’s estimate that the “Conflict Domain” outcome is currently most likely. 
Recent actions by authoritarian regimes to attempt to control internet access and other uses of cyberspace –- together with concerns that the cyber domain, as currently constructed 
and managed, is simply too vulnerable and dangerous –- argue for a “Balkanization” outcome. Only if the disruptive material solutions previously described substantially mitigate future cyber vulnerabilities will the “Paradise” outcome be feasible.
For more information on warfare in the cyber domain from the 2050 Cyber Army Conference, see:
The Community of Hackers, Makers, and Innovative Thinkers Panel
Matthew Weaver’s presentation, entitled Pervasive Capability – Our Only Hope
as reported in last year’s 
We have confirmed our previous analysis of trends and factors that are intensifying and accelerating the transformation of the OE. The rapid innovation, development, and fielding of new technologies promises to radically enhance our abilities to live, create, think, and prosper. The accelerated pace of human interaction and widespread connectivity through the Internet of Things (IoT), and the concept of convergence are also factors affecting these trends. Convergence of societal trends and technologies will create new capabilities or societal implications that are greater than the sum of their individual parts, and at times are unexpected. 
This convergence will embolden global actors to challenge US interests. The perceived waning of US military power in conjunction with the increase in capabilities resulting from our adversaries’ rapid proliferation of technology and increased investment in research and development has set the stage for challengers to pursue interests contrary to America’s.
We will face peer, near-peer, and regional hegemons as adversaries, as well as non-state actors motivated by identity, ideology, or interest, and individuals super-empowered by technologies and capabilities once found only among nations. They will directly attack our national will with cyber and sophisticated information operations. 
Technologies in the future OE will be disruptive, smart, connected, and self-organizing. Key technologies, once thought to be science fiction, present new opportunities for military operations ranging from human operated / machine-assisted, to human-machine hybrid operations, to human-directed / machine-conducted operations; all facilitated by autonomy, Artificial Intelligence (AI), robotics, enhanced human performance, and advanced computing. 
(the most ubiquitous are drones and robotics that have been particularly successful in Iraq, Syria, and Ukraine). Our adversaries will often combine technologies or operating principles to create innovative methods of attack, deploying complex combinations of capabilities that create unique challenges to the Army and Joint Forces. 
Adversaries, regardless of their resources, are finding ways to present us with multiple tactical dilemmas. They are combining capabilities with new concepts and doctrine, as evidenced by Russia’s New Generation Warfare; China’s active defensive and local wars under “informationized” conditions; Iran’s focus on information operations, asymmetric warfare and anti-access/area denial; North Korea’s combination of conventional, information operations, asymmetric, and strategic capabilities; 
ISIS’s often improvised yet complex capabilities employed during the Battle of Mosul, in Syria, and elsewhere; and the proliferation of anti-armor capabilities seen in Yemen, Iraq, and Syria, as well as the use of ballistic missiles by state and non-state actors. 
While these attacks caused little damage, a Russian drone dropping a thermite grenade caused 
Commanders must now sequence battles and engagements beyond the traditional land, sea, and air domains, and seamlessly, and often simultaneously, orchestrate combat effects across multi-domains, to include space and cyberspace. The multiple tactical dilemmas that our adversaries present us with create operational level challenges. Adversaries are building increasingly sophisticated anti-access/area denial “bubbles” we have to break; extending the scope of operations through the use of cyber, space, and asymmetric activities; and are utilizing sophisticated, and often deniable, methods of using information operations, often enabled by cyber capabilities, to directly target the Homeland and impact our individual and national will to fight. This simultaneous targeting of individuals and segments of populations has been addressed in our 
We will have to operationalize Multi-Domain Battle to achieve victory over peer or near-peer competitors. Additionally, we must plan and be prepared to integrate other government entities and allies into our operations. The dynamism of the future OE is driven by the ever increasing volumes of information; when coupled with sophisticated whole-of-government approaches, information operations — backed by new capabilities with increasing ranges — challenge our national approach to warfare. The importance of information operations will continue, and may become the primary focus of warfare/competition in the future. 
When adversaries have a centralized leadership that can send a unified message and more readily adopt a whole-of-government approach, the US needs mechanisms to more effectively coordinate and collaborate among whole-of-government partners. Operations short of war may require the Department of Defense to subordinate itself to other Agencies, depending on the objective. Our adversaries’ asymmetric strategies blur the lines between war and competition, and operate in a gray zone between war and peace below the perceived threshold of US military reaction. 
A broader array of nuclear and weapons of mass destruction-armed adversaries will compel us to re-imagine operations in a CBRN environment, and to devise and consider new approaches to deterrence and collective security. Our understanding of deterrence and coercion theory will be different from the lessons of the Cold War. 
The Homeland will be an active theater in any future conflict and adversaries will have a host of kinetic and non-kinetic attack options from our home stations all the way to the combat zone. The battlefield of the future will become far more lethal and destructive, and be contested from home station to the Joint Operational Area, requiring ways to sustain operations, and also to rapidly reconstitute combat losses of personnel and equipment. The Army requires resilient 
Future conflicts will be characterized by 
and is engaged in a modernization effort that rivals the intellectual momentum following the 1973 Starry Report and the resultant changes the “big five” (i.e., M1 Abrams Tank, M2 Bradley Fighting Vehicle, AH-64 Apache Attack Helicopter, UH-60 Black Hawk Utility Helicopter, and Patriot Air Defense System) wrought across leadership development and education, concept, and doctrine development that provided the U.S. Army overmatch into the new millennium. 
“… the study concluded that autonomy will deliver substantial operational value across an increasingly diverse array of DoD missions, but the DoD must move more rapidly to realize this value. Allies and adversaries alike also have access to rapid technological advances occurring globally. In short, speed matters—in two distinct dimensions. First, autonomy can increase decision speed, enabling the U.S. to act inside an adversary’s operations cycle. Secondly, ongoing rapid transition of autonomy into warfighting capabilities is vital if the U.S. is to sustain military advantage.” — DSB Summer Study on Autonomy, June 2016 (p. 3)
Scope. It may be necessary to increase not only the pace but also the scope of these decisions if these technologies generate the “extreme future” characterized by Mad Scientist Dr. James Canton as “hacking life” / “hacking matter” / “hacking the planet.” In short, no aspect of our current existence will remain untouched. Robotics, artificial intelligence, and autonomy – far from narrow topics – are closely linked to a broad range of enabling / adjunct technologies identified by Mad Scientists, to include:
Co-Evolution. Clearly humans and these technologies are destined to co-evolve. Humans will be augmented in many ways: physically, via exoskeletons; perceptionally, via direct sensor inputs; genetically, via AI-enabled gene-editing technologies such as CRISPR; and cognitively via AI “COGs” and “Cogni-ceuticals.” 
Human reality will be a “blended” one in which physical and digital environments, media and interactions are woven together in a seamless integration of the virtual and the physical. As daunting – and worrisome – as these technological developments might seem, there will be an equally daunting challenge in the co-evolution between man and machine: the co-evolution of trust.
Trusted man-machine collaboration will require validation of system competence, a process that will take our legacy test and verification procedures far beyond their current limitations. Humans will expect autonomy to be nonetheless “directable,” and will expect autonomous systems to be able to explain the logic for their behavior, regardless of the complexity of the deep neural networks that motivate it. These technologies in turn must be able to adapt to user abilities and preferences, and attain some level of human awareness (e.g., cognitive, physiological, emotional state, situational knowledge, intent recognition). 
All things in the future OE will be smart, connected, and self-organizing. The commercial Internet of Things (IoT) will turn into a militarized Internet of Battle Things (IoBT).
Narrow Artificial Intelligence (AI) is here today and is beginning to show up on the battlefield. Near peer competitors and non-state actors will have access to these technologies on pace with the United States due to commercial and open source availability of algorithms.
AI and humans must co-evolve. It is not clear that the singularity (i.e., AI leading to a “runaway reaction” of self-improvement cycles, ultimately resulting in a super intelligence far surpassing human intelligence) will be realized in the period leading up to 2050. Human teaming with AI enablers will be the best instantiation of general intelligence supporting Commanders on the future battlefield. Next steps towards singularity are systems that can reflect, have curiosity, and demonstrate teamwork.
The physical and virtual spaces will merge. Augmented and virtual reality will become more than a gaming platform focused on entertainment but a global communication platform delivering unique expertise to the battlefield to include medical and language skills.
Convergence is a key attribute in all aspects of the future battlefield. Expect convergence of capability, sensors, power onto systems, uniforms, and in the far term humanity itself.
The next fight will be characterized by electrons vs electrons. All belligerents will seek to hide themselves and blind their enemies. The fight after next will be characterized by AI vs AI (algorithm vs algorithm). How AI is structured and integrated will be the strategic advantage.
Information Warfare is taking on new meaning. Humans now have a personal relationship with their information and virtual reality and holograms in your living room will create new opportunities for swaying populations.
Major competitions in the war after next include – cyber-attack vs AI, stealth vs detection, directed energy vs hardening, space vs counter-space, strikers vs shielders.
We are in a 10 year window of a change in how we think about space. Space is now competitive as 
There is a real tension between the idea that ubiquitous sensors and real time upload of data onto the cloud will make it impossible to hide and that the near equal access of capabilities across all parties will make war constant.
The definition of maneuver should be expanded to include maneuvering ideas as well as forces to a position of advantage. A globally connected world and social media platforms have amplified the importance of ideas and the information dimension.
Bio convergence with advanced computing is happening at the edge. Humans will become part of the network connected through their embedded and worn devices. From transhumanism to theorizing about uploading the brain, it will not be the IoT but the internet of everything (including humans).
Smart cities are leaving the edge and early adopters and becoming mainstream. The data collected by billions of sensors will be a treasure trove for the country and Armed forces that learn to exploit. Passive collection of this information might be a significant advantage in winning the hiders v finders competition.
Cognitive enhancement and attacking the brains (neurological system) of humans is not science fiction. The U.S. Army should establish a PEO for Soldier Enhancement to bring unity of purpose to a range of capabilities from physical/mental enhancement with wearables, embeddables, stimulants, brain gyms, and exoskeletons. 
Human enhancement, the unlocking of the genome, and improving artificial intelligence will stress the Army’s policies and ethics. In any case, our 4 + 1 potential adversaries are exploring using all three of these capabilities as a way to gain advantage over U.S. Forces. This is not a 2050 problem but more than likely a 2030 reality.
Virtually every new technology is connected and intersecting to other new technologies and advances. Convergence frequently occurred across numerous technologies. Advances in materials, AI, drones, communications, and human enhancement amplified and drove one another across multiple domains.
A major cultural divide and gulf in understanding still existed between different populations even with developments in technology (including real-time language translators).
The fully enmeshed communications and sensing residing in future systems made the hiders vs. finders competition ever more important in future conflict settings.
Due to the exponential speed of interaction on the battlefield (during and in between high-intensity conflict), a number of the military units required smaller formations, with large effects capabilities and more authority, and operated under flat and dispersed command and control structures.
The constant battle for and over information often meant victory or failure for each side.
2018 is shaping up to be even more enlightening, with Mad Scientist conferences addressing Bio Convergence and Soldier 2050 and Learning in 2050. We will also support a Smart and Resilient Installations franchise event, hosted by the Army Secretariat. Stay tuned to the Mad Scientist Laboratory for more information on the year ahead!