On Jan. 18, French Minister for the Armed Forces Florence Parly and Chief of the Joint Staff Gen. François Lecointre unveiled part of France’s new military cyber strategy. Both officials released a defensive policy (Politique ministérielle de lutte informatique défensive) and a partially unclassified offensive doctrine (éléments publics de doctrine militaire de lutte informatique offensive). On Apr. 23, François Delerue, Alix Desforges, and Aude Gery published an essay giving a first and closer look at these announcements. They focused on the strategic significance of both documents in the broader context of France’s posture toward cyberspace. My aim in the following essay is to explore the operational and organizational implications of the military cyber strategy for the French armed forces.
As François, Alix, and Aude show, while some elements are new for the broad domestic and international audiences, both doctrines result from a process which started in 2009 with the creation of ANSSI (Agence Nationale de Sécurité des Systèmes d’Information) as an inter-ministerial body. Additionally, it is credited to the progressive emergence of an organization tasked…
