Russia, cyber, and jihadists are not new threats. Russia has been challenging international norms since their invasion of Georgia in 2008 (hard to believe it has been close to seven years already). The jihadists have been around since Mohammed, but more recently the new wave of attacks started in 1979. The ability to conduct cyber-attacks has been around over two decades now.

Cyber-attacks, like WMD, don't describe an actor (the threat), they describe the means and ways the threat can use to threaten UK's interests. What exactly do any of the above threaten? They all threaten the lives of your citizens, your economic interests, and they undermine the international order that serves your security and economic interests. How do you defend against them and a host of other threats is the operative question for defense planners. I think both of our countries tend to describe threats in ways that make them vulnerable to our traditional military forces, but for the most part they're not.

We all need to move past the point that there is only one threat, only one priority, that we need to defend against. We also need to relearn the merit of defense, even CvC argued defense is superior to offense. Projecting power into an abyss does little to protect national interests. How we wield power is more important than the type amount of military power we decide to fund. We bleed out a fair amount of our national wealth and took our eyes off the rest of the world to focus on COIN in two locations, both under resourced, for multiple years. We accomplished little that was beneficial at the strategic level, and allowed multiple other threats around the world to emerge unchallenged.