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ABSTRACT
Is cyber conflict more like war, intelligence, or something else? The stakes of this debate are not simply conceptual but institutional. United States Cyber Command emerged from the American intelligence community, but it has strong legal and organizational imperatives to explain its operations in military terms. Even though cyber operations are essentially a digital manifestation of classic intelligence practice, or secret statecraft, CYBERCOM is emphatically not an intelligence organization. This contradiction between the nature of the problem and the bureaucratic solution has the potential to complicate both intelligence and cybersecurity.
Acknowledgements
The author is grateful for conversations about this paper with Joshua Rovner, Max Smeets, Michael Warner, the members of a roundtable workshop on “Cyber Conflict as an Intelligence Contest” organized by the Strauss Center at the University of Texas, and constructive feedback from anonymous reviewers.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. E.g., Rattray, Strategic Warfare in Cyberspace; Borg, “Economically Complex Cyberattacks”; McConnell, “Cyberwar Is the New Atomic Age”; and Clarke and Knake, Cyber War.
2. E.g., Valeriano and Maness, Cyber War versus Cyber Realities; Asal et al., “Repression, Education, and Politically Motivated Cyberattacks”; Kostyuk and Zhukov, “Invisible Digital Front”; and Maschmeyer, Deibert, and Lindsay, “A Tale of Two Cybers.”
3. On cyber conflict as “unpeace,” Kello, The Virtual Weapon and International Order, 17. On the moral ambiguity of cybersecurity discourse see Shires, “Cyber-Noir”; and Tanczer, “50 Shades of Hacking.”
4. Inter alia, Libicki, Conquest in Cyberspace; Gartzke, “The Myth of Cyberwar”; Borghard and Lonergan, “The Logic of Coercion in Cyberspace”; Slayton, “What Is the Cyber Offense-Defense Balance?”; and Smeets, “The Strategic Promise of Offensive Cyber Operations.”
5. Branch, “What’s in a Name?” See also Libicki, “Cyberspace Is Not a Warfighting Domain”; and Dunn Cavelty, “From Cyber-Bombs to Political Fallout.”
6. Karas, Moore, and Parrott, “Metaphors for Cyber Security”; Betz and Stevens, “Analogical Reasoning and Cyber Security”; Perkovich and Levite, Understanding Cyber Conflict; and Weber, “Coercion in Cybersecurity.”
7. E.g., McCroskey and Mock, “Operational Graphics for Cyberspace”; and Conti and Raymond, On Cyber.
8. Glenny, DarkMarket.
9. Egloff, “Cybersecurity and Non-State Actors.”
10. Buchanan, The Cybersecurity Dilemma: Hacking, Trust and Fear Between Nations.
11. Deibert, Black Code.
12. Rid, Active Measures.
13. Rid, “Cyber War Will Not Take Place.”
14. Brantly, The Decision to Attack.
15. Maurer, Cyber Mercenaries.
16. Maschmeyer, “Slow Burn.”
17. Gartzke and Lindsay, “Weaving Tangled Webs.”
18. Rovner, “The Intelligence Contest in Cyberspace.”
19. Monte, Network Attacks and Exploitation, 15.
20. Andrew, The Secret World.
21. Gioe, Goodman, and Stevens, “Intelligence in the Cyber Era.”
22. Chesney et al., “Policy Roundtable.” I use the term “cybersecurity” broadly here to describe the strategic problems of offensive and defensive interaction via computational networks, to include discourse about it.
23. Harknett and Smeets, “Cyber Campaigns and Strategic Outcomes,” 24; and Warner, “A Matter of Trust.”
24. As described by CYBERCOM’s commander, General Nakasone, “A Cyber Force for Persistent Operations.” See also U.S. Cyber Command, “Command Vision for US Cyber Command.”
25. Sartori, “Concept Misformation in Comparative Politics,” 1040.
26. Scott and Jackson, “The Study of Intelligence in Theory and Practice”; Gill and Phythian, “Developing Intelligence Theory”; Treverton, “Theory and Practice”; and Bean, “Intelligence Theory from the Margins.”
27. Stout and Warner, “Intelligence Is as Intelligence Does.”
28. Warner, “A Matter of Trust.”
29. Warner, “Wanted”; and Warner, “Fragile and Provocative.”
30. Johnson, “Bricks and Mortar for a Theory of Intelligence”; and Hulnick, “What’s Wrong with the Intelligence Cycle.”
31. Kahn, “An Historical Theory of Intelligence”; and Lindsay and Gartzke, “Politics by Many Other Means.”
32. See note 27 above.
33. Libicki, Conquest in Cyberspace; and Rid and McBurney, “Cyber-Weapons.”
34. Whaley, “Toward a General Theory of Deception”; and Gartzke and Lindsay, “Weaving Tangled Webs.”
35. Libicki, “Cyberwar as a Confidence Game.”
36. Slayton, “What Is the Cyber Offense-Defense Balance?”
37. See note 21 above.
38. Brantly, “Cyber Actions by State Actors.”
39. E.g., Stoll, The Cuckoo’s Egg; Bodmer et al., Reverse Deception; and Bejtlich, The Practice of Network Security Monitoring.
40. See note 11 above.
41. Kanich et al., “No Plan Survives Contact.”
42. Warner, “A Matter of Trust: Covert Action Reconsidered,” 39–40.
43. Warner, 38.
44. Harknett and Smeets, “Cyber Campaigns and Strategic Outcomes,” 8.
45. Harknett and Smeets, 12.
46. Harknett and Smeets, 24. See also Harknett’s contribution with Michael Fischerkeller in Chesney et al., “Policy Roundtable.”
47. Headrick, The Invisible Weapon; and Nickles, Under the Wire.
48. Warner, The Rise and Fall of Intelligence.
49. Harknett and Smeets, “Cyber Campaigns and Strategic Outcomes,” 1–2.
50. O’Rourke, Covert Regime Change; and Poznansky, In the Shadow of International Law.
51. Lindsay, “The Impact of China on Cybersecurity”; Gilli and Gilli, “Why China Hasn’t Caught Up Yet”; and Valeriano, Jensen, and Maness, Cyber Strategy.
52. See note 17 above.
53. Lindsay, “Tipping the Scales”; and Rid and Buchanan, “Attributing Cyber Attacks.”
54. Lindsay, “Stuxnet and the Limits of Cyber Warfare”; and Slayton, “What Is the Cyber Offense-Defense Balance?”
55. Lindsay, “Restrained by Design”; and Lindsay and Gartzke, “Coercion through Cyberspace.”
56. Andrew, “Intelligence, International Relations and ‘Under-Theorisation.’”
57. Lynn III, “Defending a New Domain.”
58. U.S. Cyber Command, “Command Vision for US Cyber Command,” 4. CYBERCOM’s perspective is reinforced by the work of sympathetic academics, e.g., Harknett and Fischerkeller, “Deterrence Is Not a Credible Strategy for Cyberspace,” and the “United States Cyberspace Solarium Commission Official Report.”
59. U.S. Cyber Command, “Command Vision for US Cyber Command.”
60. Healey, “The Implications of Persistent (and Permanent) Engagement in Cyberspace”; Schneider, “A Strategic Cyber No-First-Use Policy?”
61. Branch, “What’s in a Name?”; and Libicki, “Cyberspace Is Not a Warfighting Domain.”
62. Ferris and Handel, “Clausewitz, Intelligence, Uncertainty and the Art of Command in Military Operations”; Ferris, “Netcentric Warfare, C4ISR and Information Operations”; and Lindsay, Information Technology and Military Power, 28–31.
63. Dunn Cavelty, “From Cyber-Bombs to Political Fallout.”
64. Inter alia, March and Simon, Organizations; Steinbruner, The Cybernetic Theory of Decision; and Builder, The Masks of War.
65. Snyder, The Ideology of the Offensive; and Posen, The Sources of Military Doctrine.
66. Haun, Lectures of the Air Corps Tactical School and American Strategic Bombing in World War II.
67. Pape, Bombing to Win.
68. E.g., Everett C. Dolman, “Victory through Space Power.”
69. White, “Subcultural Influence on Military Innovation,” 223.
70. White, 236. See also Healey, “Claiming the Lost Cyber Heritage.”
71. “U.S. Cyber Command History,” accessed 30 June 2020, https://www.CYBERCOM.mil/About/History
72. Nakasone, “Statement,” 1.
73. White, “Subcultural Influence on Military Innovation.”
74. Gartzke, “The Myth of Cyberwar”; and Borghard and Lonergan, “Cyber Operations as Imperfect Tools of Escalation.”
75. Gartzke and Lindsay, “Thermonuclear Cyberwar”; and Futter, Hacking the Bomb.
76. Loleski, “From Cold to Cyber Warriors.”
77. Nakasone, “Statement,” 9–10.
78. Kaplan, Dark Territory.
79. Zetter, Countdown to Zero Day, 308–35.
80. Wiener, “Penetrate, Exploit, Disrupt, Destroy.”
81. Michael Hayden, “Cutting Cyber Command’s Umbilical Cord to the NSA.”
82. Nakasone, “Statement,” 8–9.
83. Nakasone, 8.
84. Tucker and Lamb, United States Special Operations Forces.
85. Tucker and Lamb, 179–204.
86. Rothstein, Afghanistan and the Troubled Future of Unconventional Warfare.
87. Biddle, Military Power, 190–207.
88. Lindsay and Gartzke, “Politics by Many Other Means.”
89. Healey, “The Implications of Persistent (and Permanent) Engagement in Cyberspace”; Schneider, “A Strategic Cyber No-First-Use Policy?”; and Healey and Jervis, “The Escalation Inversion and Other Oddities.”
90. Brooks, “Paradoxes of Professionalism.”
91. Rovner, Fixing the Facts.
92. Maschmeyer, Deibert, and Lindsay, “A Tale of Two Cybers.”
93. Jackson, “Defeat in Victory”; and Long, The Soul of Armies.
94. Joint Chiefs of Staff, JP 3-12, ix.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Jon R. Lindsay
Jon R. Lindsay is an assistant professor at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy and the Department of Political Science at the University of Toronto. He is the author of Information Technology and Military Power (Cornell, 2020).