Cyber Auxiliary for Tactical SOF Operations

The proliferation and advancement of digitally based technologies has created shortfalls within DOD and Special Operations Forces (SOF) for filling key skilled cyber talent workforce positions. SOF and the Intelligence Community (IC) would benefit from having access to dedicated cyber specialists embedded within deployed SOF teams to handle extracting, organizing, sorting, and sending relevant data for timely analysis back to the United States. SOF needs the ability to positively identify and attribute an individuals identity to gain knowledge into threat actor planning through collected data at rest. The US Government and DOD must adapt to new ways of evaluating talent and reinvent both military and civilian positions to take advantage of the intelligence opportunities that SOF's collected data provides. Furthermore, the incorporation of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies for triaging and organizing the vast amounts of data collected from the battlefield by SOF would lessen the workloads for the Intelligence community to produce timely intelligence products. This thesis highlights talent shortfalls within SOF and provides suggestions for finding and retaining the scarce cyber talent as well as speed up the production of intelligence products.