Opinion | Will deterrence have a role in the cyberspace ‘forever war’?
Beware, reader, in exploring this topic: Deterrence strategy is one of the wooliest and most abstract areas of defense analysis. In the early Cold War decades, it was the province of professors such as Herman Kahn at the Rand Corp., and Thomas Schelling and Henry Kissinger at Harvard — sometimes collectively known as the “wizards of Armageddon.” They “thought about the unthinkable” when it came to nuclear war, partly to dissuade the Soviet Union from ever launching an attack.
Times have changed, argues the new book “Cyber Persistence Theory: Redefining National Security in Cyberspace.” Its three authors have all worked closely on cyber strategy for the Pentagon: Michael P. Fischerkeller as a cyber expert with the Institute for Defense Analyses; Emily O. Goldman as a strategist at U.S. Cyber Command; and Richard J. Harknett as a cyber expert at the University of Cincinnati and the first scholar-in-residence at Cyber Command.
The book isn’t an official policy document. But a foreword from Gen. Paul Nakasone, the head of Cyber Command and the National Security Agency, notes that the three authors have been “laying the foundations for the Command’s approach of Persistent Engagement” and that their book offers a “framework for understanding … operational effectiveness moving forward.”
To sum up the authors’ arguments: Cyberweapons fundamentally change the nature of warfare. Borders don’t matter much to digital code. And cyberwar is a continuum (and always happening at a low level), rather than an on-off switch. It’s a new domain, with new rules.
“Cyberspace must be understood primarily as an environment of exploitation rather than coercion,” the authors…