Cyber Force: Build Capacity Without Militarizing the Internet

Cyber policy is not cleanly partisan. The Cyberspace Solarium Commission was bipartisan, and many of its recommendations have been implemented or moved toward implementation through both legislation and executive action. The current military Cyber Force debate is also cross-partisan: Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, a Democrat, has pushed a service-branch proposal, while Rep. Pat Fallon, a Republican, has also publicly argued that a Cyber Force is coming. That proposal already reached a vote: Gillibrand's amendment to create a Cyber Force under the Army narrowly failed in the Senate Armed Services Committee in June 2026, 14-13, with four Democrats and ten Republicans against and nine Democrats and four Republicans in favor. The split ran within each party, not between them — the clearest evidence available that this fight doesn't sort by party.

The parties differ more in emphasis than in whether cyber matters. Recent Democratic administration strategy emphasized resilience, critical infrastructure, workforce, and shifting responsibility toward better-resourced actors. Current Republican administration strategy emphasizes proactive disruption, deregulation, offensive capability, and private sector speed. The Innovation Party's position borrows from neither as a package. It accepts the Republican-coded insistence that adversary cyber operations need a capable national response, accepts the Democratic-coded insistence that critical infrastructure and workforce capacity are public resilience problems, and adds the missing divider: domestic cyber defense must remain civilian-led unless Congress is dealing with military operations, and a new military service should follow a readiness test rather than a slogan.