Middle East & North Africa

As President Trump increasingly boxes in Tehran, U.S. allies should be worried about the potential for a devastating cyberattack from the Islamic Republic.

While decisionmakers warn about the cyber threat constantly, there is little systematic analysis of the issue from an international security studies perspective. Cyberweapons are expanding the range of possible harm between the concepts of war and peace, and give rise to enormous defense complications and dangers to strategic stability. It is detrimental to the intellectual progress and policy relevance of the security studies field to continue to avoid the cyber revolution's central questions.

The recent publications on WikiLeaks reveal a story about money, fame, sex, underground hackers, and betrayal. But it also involves fundamental questions regarding cyber-security and foreign policy. This paper argues WikiLeaks is only the symptom of a new, larger problem which is the result of technological advances that allow a large quantity of data to be 'stolen' at low or no cost by one or more individuals and to be potentially made public and to go 'viral', spreading exponentially online.