The highest ranking military officer in the nation paid a visit to Syracuse University October 31 where he talked about everything from the military’s role in the Middle East to cyber attacks.
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin Dempsey spoke to a gathering of students and staff about being a public leader at a time of complex global security challenges. He says ongoing unrest in the Middle East can be traced to generations of victors and the vanquished, with no sharing of power or wealth.
“The military should never be the sole instrument of power and should most often be the supporting effort to some larger effort that includes governance, economic development, public diplomacy, counter messaging, counter financing. There’s a lot of tools that we’ve got, and the military should not be the most prominent.”
Dempsey said the cycle of victimization has to be broken, and that’s not the role of the US Military. In fact, he says military and artillery will probably play less of a role in any immediate conflict.
“If we do face a crisis in the immediate future, it’s likely to be in cyber, not ballistic missiles, not nuclear weapons, not terrorists. We know how to deal with those, and we’re dealing with them fairly effectively. We’re not dealing with the cyber threat effectively.”
Dempsey says that the threat is to the military’s network, rather than the .com or .org domains. He says they’re building up a US cyber command to defend the network and are developing offensive tools as well.
Dempsey became the 18th Chair of the Joint Chiefs in August 2011 and serves as the president’s lead military advisor. Dempsey was welcomed to Syracuse University in honor of the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affair’s 90th anniversary. Director for the Institute for National Security andCounterterrorismWilliam Banks, SU Vice Chancellor and Founder and Executive director of the Institute for Veterans and Families J. Michael Haynie, and Maxwell School dean James Steinberg also gave remarks at the event.