DARPA director Arati Prabhakar (right) discusses the future of war alongside moderator Barbara Starr (left)
WASHINGTON — The United States will use big data to revolutionize the cyber war against the so-called Islamic State, the director of the federal Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency said on Tuesday.
Speaking at the first “Future of War” conference, Arati Prabhakar, who leads DARPA, highlighted the need to stay ahead of potential threats through cyberwarfare and expansive digital histories.
ISIS has taken advantage of social media, mobilizing people not just in the Middle East, but all around the world to join its cause, Prabhakar said.
The Islamic militant group is engaging in an information war, taking advantage of the most beloved parts of the Internet – social media and instant messaging – but using them for evil, Prabhakar added.
DARPA used big data to combat human trafficking in the Dallas/Fort Worth area as a test run for dealing with other foes.
“We were able to scoop up these high-value phone numbers, and hand them to law enforcement,” she said.
The officers around Dallas were then able to hunt down the criminals, even following the sex trafficking money trail back to North Korea. She said the US is using a similar approach while fighting against ISIS.
Prabhakar said she could not go into specifics about using that approach to combat ISIS because “it’s live in a wartime situation,” but that the technique could be used to effectively fight terrorist threats in the Middle East.
She also emphasized “Plan X,” the Defense Department’s strategy for combatting and preventing cyberattacks.
“‘Plan X’ starts giving anyone involved in [cyberwarfare] a way to grapple with it,” she said
“Plan X” is a five-year research project that began in 2012 with a budget of $110 million. One of the goals of the program is to better equip the military for cyber missions. The program does not create cyber weapons — instead, it creates strategies. She noted that it could help infantry soldiers, giving them an instant cyber-snapshot of the environment.
“It will actually give soldiers on foot patrol going through a community … a way to visualize what’s happening in the local cyber environment,” she said.
From the Sony hack, allegedly by North Korea, in November to the Department of Defense Twitter hack by ISIS in January, the US is dealing with threats from multiple angles. To combat this, Prabhakar added that it was “absolutely necessary” to transition cyber-preparedness to the commercial sector.
“We don’t have the luxury of dealing with just one kind of national security threat,” Prabhakar said.
