The overarching question imparting urgency to this exploration is: Can U.S.-Russian contention in cyberspace cause the two nuclear superpowers to stumble into war? In considering this question we were constantly reminded of recent comments by a prominent U.S. arms control expert: At least as dangerous as the risk of an actual cyberattack, he observed, is cyber operations’ “blurring of the line between peace and war.” Or, as Nye wrote, “in the cyber realm, the difference between a weapon and a non-weapon may come down to a single line of code, or simply the intent of a computer program’s user.”
The February 2014 capture of Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, head of the Sinaloa organization, appeared to be a victory against the Mexican drug trafficking organizations (DTOs). It was not, in part because of inherent problems with decapitation as a tactic, and in part because of the particular goals and structures of the DTOs. Decapitation remains an attractive approach, however, because of the audiences it reaches and not because it degrades the targeted organizations.
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