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Top1. Introduction
Cyberpower is an emerging phenomenon in the Defence realm. It is shaping attitudes, behaviours and decision-making as a result of its ability to: “…create advantages and influence events in all the operational environments…” (Kuehl, 2009, p. 38). Gray (2013) sees cyberpower as “the ability to do something strategically useful in cyberspace” (p. 9). This can be understood as giving agency to any actor, to support or undermine systems of governance, coordination, cooperation and competition (Nye, 2010). As a productive power, cyberpower manifests through relationships and network convergence (Stevens, 2016). One can argue that governing cyberpower is essential to absolutely everything a modern military hopes to accomplish due to its utility to “influence tangible and intangible assets through digital means” (Knox, 2018, p. 11). For this reason, Defence forces need to advance their understanding of the cyberspace military context, in order to mitigate negative consequences when human agency, empowered by cyberpower, is influencing and driving change at rates traditional good governance systems, and codes of practice cannot control (Stevens, 2015).
In the following the changing face of military operations is presented; detailing the effects of cyberpower and the need for adaptations in educational methods to meet the cognitive challenges these effects present. Previous research is introduced to frame the current contribution in the context of operating with cognitive agility in hybrid environments. The concept of Slow Education is then presented, and the importance of metacognition is made clear. The methods section begins with detailing the Slow Education interventions that were applied at the Norwegian Defence Cyber Academy (NDCA) to embed, inform and maintain metacognitive activity. Next, the methods section details how quantitative data was gathered to operationalize and assess cognitive performance in a cyber defence training environment. First, participants completed three trait questionnaires (Response, Self-regulation, Metacognition) before a Cyber Defence Exercise (CDX). Then during the same CDX participants plotted their cognitive focus in the Hybrid Space application (Jøsok et al., 2018) allowing for the researchers to observe for individual use of flexible cognitive processes (Knox et al., 2017). The results section shows the associations between specific cognitive strategies and cognitive agility, represented as cognitive focus movements in the Hybrid Space. Further, we discuss the results in the context of improving performance in military cyberspace operations before the paper concludes and presents future work.