He shrugs again.
After he retires from the military, Edwards says, he’ll probably work for the government as a civilian or go into the private sector. The thrills and daily purpose of digital combat will be tough to replicate in the civilian world. Something like the NSA might offer slivers of that. Silicon Valley will not.
I ask Edwards what he’d tell someone interested in joining the cyber ranks. That strange look sweeps over his face again. I still don’t know exactly what he does on ops, let alone how, but it’s clear he lives for it.
“You can tear down someone else’s work here.” He smiles to himself, perhaps recalling a successful hacking op. Then he remembers he’s talking to a journalist. “Or build on someone else’s, too. Want to be the best in that? You need to work for us.”
Todd Boudreau—the deputy commandant of the cyber school and a retired chief warrant officer—is one of a few different people I interview who compares what’s happening in cyber to the early Special Forces. The analogy isn’t meant to compare the mission types but rather the sense of independence from Big Army, and the esprit de corps therein. I’m not quite sure about it, and the Green Berets I know would object, but what we think doesn’t matter. There’s Good News to preach, and hard work to be done. That’s admirable, at least when it’s coming from people wearing the flag of your country on their shoulder.
“This is not going to get easier,” Boudreau says. He means that cyberwarfare isn’t going anywhere soon. “It’s only going to get harder.” Boudreau’s words remind me of a passage from How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything, a 2016 book by former Pentagon official Rosa Brooks: “Cyber battles will most likely be about information and control: Who will have access to sensitive health, personal and financial information … who will be able to control the machinery of daily life: the servers relied upon by the Pentagon and the New York Stock Exchange, the computers that keep our cars’ brakes from activating at the wrong time, the software that runs our household computers?”
Who will be able to control the machinery of daily life: a terrifying idea. If there’s ever a cyber version of the Special Forces Creed—or even a recruitment poster or a retention program—that line needs to be in it. No one at the cyber school acknowledges the possibility of a brain drain to Silicon Valley or government agencies, but it has been raised elsewhere: A 2017 Rand study titled “Retaining the Army’s Cyber Expertise” found that soldiers who qualify to be cyber operators “are more likely than others to remain in the Army for at least 72 months; however, they also appear to be somewhat less likely to re-enlist.”
The NSA’s reported retention issues, coupled with broader government cybersecurity recruitment shortcomings, make it seem like keeping qualified men and women in uniform would be difficult. Bonuses can only do so much, and not everyone will share Edwards’ commitment to the missions. That seems just fine to Boudreau: “Our goal is to figure out how to incentivize for those we want to keep. Truth is, we don’t want to keep everybody.”That briefs well. Regardless, no one is more aware than Boudreau that Army cyber will keep growing, and needs fresh and able minds as it does. Fort Gordon is actively expanding. If current plans hold, by 2028 a new cyber campus will sprawl across the post, all for $907-ish million.
As I leave Fort Gordon for the last time, I again take in the bleak, isolated Signal Towers. It’s really one tower and a nub of a building next to it, the urban legend being that the Army ran out of money before finishing the second vertical structure. Built during the 1960s, Signal Towers is a relic of another military, another country. When wars were finite. When the layers between soldier and citizen weren’t so manifold. When soldiers saw the enemy and the enemy saw back.
Longing for the moral clarity of the Vietnam War feels foolish, so I stop.
Still, I wonder: Is something lost by removing soldiers from witnessing the consequences of their actions? How could there not be? War is not glory. Even when just, no matter how just, war is state-sanctioned violence.
Is something gained, though? That’s a much more difficult question. A darker one too.
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Matt Gallagher (@mattgallagher0) is a former Army captain and author of the novel Youngblood.
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