5 Items

an alert from the Department of Homeland Security's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency

AP/Jon Elswick

Journal Article - Foreign Affairs

The End of Cyber-Anarchy?

| January/February 2022

Joseph Nye argues that prudence results from the fear of creating unintended consequences in unpredictable systems and can develop into a norm of nonuse or limited use of certain weapons or a norm of limiting targets. Something like this happened with nuclear weapons when the superpowers came close to the brink of nuclear war in 1962, during the Cuban missile crisis. The Limited Test Ban Treaty followed a year later.

Security specialist Erik Dickmeyer works at a computer station with a cyber threat map displayed on a wall in front of him

AP Photo/John Minchillo

Analysis & Opinions - Project Syndicate

Can Cyberwarfare Be Regulated?

| Oct. 02, 2019

Joseph Nye writes that In the cyber realm, the same program can be used for legitimate or malicious purposes, depending on the user’s intent. But if that makes traditional arms-control treaties impossible to verify, it may still be possible to set limits on certain types of civilian targets and negotiate rough rules of the road that limit conflict.

Panorama of Pyongyang, North Korea.

Wikimedia CC/Sven Unbehauen

Analysis & Opinions - Project Syndicate

Deterrence in Cyberspace

| June 03, 2019

Understanding deterrence in cyberspace is often difficult, because  minds remain captured by an image of deterrence shaped by the Cold War: a threat of massive retaliation to a nuclear attack by nuclear means. A better analogy is crime: governments can only imperfectly prevent it.

Can China Be Deterred in Cyber Space?

Analysis & Opinions - The Diplomat

Can China Be Deterred in Cyber Space?

| February 3, 2016

"Along with punishment and denial, entanglement is an important means of making an actor perceive that the costs of an action will exceed the benefits.  Entanglement refers to the existence of  interdependences which makes a successful attack simultaneously impose serious costs on the attacker as well as the victim. This is not unique to cyber. For example, in 2009, when the People's Liberation Army urged the Chinese government to dump some of China's massive holdings of dollar reserves to punish the United States for selling arms to Taiwan, the Central Bank pointed out that this would impose large costs on China as well and the government decided against it."

A Global Cyber-crisis in Waiting

Analysis & Opinions - The Washington Post

A Global Cyber-crisis in Waiting

| February 7, 2013

"Like-minded nations should also agree that governments should not steal data from private corporations and then give that information to competing companies, as the government of China has been doing on a massive scale. The victims of Chinese economic espionage should seek to establish clear guidelines and penalties within the World Trade Organization system or, if China blocks that, victim states should seek to develop countermeasures and sanctions outside of that structure."