CPT Josh Lospinoso wrote a rather great article for your consideration:

Fish Out of Water: How the Military Is an Impossible Place for Hackers, and What to Do About It

As a current Company Commander in a Cyber unit, I agree strongly with most of his points. The implication I’m getting in this article, though, is that we do not need to groom officers with appropriate opportunities to engage both their Soldiers and the institutions that support them. I believe Cyber was built as a branch (CY), not a functional area (17), for the express purpose of gaining and maintaining command competencies across the realm of “Information Dominance” – which is how HRC is viewing those branched CY, FA26, FA29, and FA30. The solutions the author pushes for aren’t far away for our 17D and 26A officers anyway, so I’m left to believe he’s advocating for a massive reshaping of our 17A officers.

One particularly great point from the article was his advocacy of “unity of command”. The whole OPCON/ADCON split seemed like a bad idea going in, but I was excited enough just to command that I didn’t complain much. Now that I’ve lived through it, I strongly recommend for maintaining unity of command.