Nadiya Kostyuk: Investigating the Use of Cyber Attacks as Force Multipliers

Nadiya Kostyuk, a Research Fellow with the Cyber Security Project, says that understanding the cyber security field requires collaboration between policy and academia in the interconnected world of international politics. 

Kostyuk is a pre-doctoral fellow earning her PhD from the University of Michigan in Political Science and Public Policy. Her dissertation looks at the conditions under which countries decide to speak publicly about their military cyber capabilities.

Her 2017 article, “The Invisible Digital Front,”  investigated how cyber attacks can be used as force multipliers for conventional operations. She and her coauthor Yuri Zhukov explore whether cyber attacks can impact battlefield events. Looking at the conflicts in Ukraine and Syria, they found that cyber attacks are not yet effective tools of coercion in war.

Since cybersecurity is still a developing field, it requires an interdisciplinary approach to understanding, she said. Kostyuk’s Cyber Security Project fellowship is unique because it brings together pre-doctoral and post-doctoral fellows with current government officials. 

“It’s an amazing blend of people from academic and policy backgrounds,” Kostyuk says. “It has provided me with an opportunity to learn from people working with the real-world questions and challenges on a daily basis.”

The collaborative approach to her fellowship and interacting with this network of people in cyber security research aided her in developing the theoretical component for her dissertation, she says.

While working on her dissertation, Kostyuk is also working on other international relations questions including assessment of cyber risks and how they influence the public’s perception of cybersecurity policies.