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22 October 2015

Cyber Is By Definition Inherently Destabilizing

OCT 20, 2015

Military people talk about five domains of warfare. The first domain of warfare is the land, directed by the Army. The second domain of warfare is the sea, directed by the Navy. The third domain of warfare is the air, directed by the Air Force. The fourth domain of warfare is space, directed by the U.S. Space Command. And now, the fifth domain of warfare is the cyber domain, for which the United States has created the U.S. Cyber Command.

Here’s the interesting thing: In each of the first four domains the military advantage has been in deterrence. By demonstrating that you have really powerful tanks, aircraft carriers, or nuclear weapons (which cover all domains, including space), you create deterrence and détente.


That’s the world in which most of us have grown up. When everyone has the same weapons or knows the weapons in the others’ arsenals, stability is fostered. Consider the Chinese military and the staging of its largest-ever parade in Beijing in early September, clearly showing the world their capability to fend off would-be attackers. Uncertainty, on the other hand, creates a destabilizing influence, and we work hard to put controls into place to provide transparency into what capabilities exist in other countries.

I recently attended an event at the Monterey Institute, which puts a lot of energy into using technology to help provide transparency into what military capabilities countries really have as a way to keep nations accountable for their weapons. I learned about a new group called Dark Sky, which is making small satellites that will be able to deliver imagery of our planet with a resolution of less than 1 meter. This vendor is planning to make these images available for $100 so anyone can access them.

The big question is this: Is that a good thing or a bad thing? The U.S. government has always prohibited dissemination of imagery at that level of detail because it will potentially allow other military entities to use this information to their advantage to attack the United States. (After all, information can be used for either good or evil.). But this information also has the wonderfully stabilizing influence of creating much more accurate assessments of each nation’s military capabilities and operations. On balance the group at the Monterey Institute felt the availability of this information was a net positive, with the stabilizing influence of high-resolution satellite imagery far offsetting the destabilizing trends of aiding an enemy’s targeting efforts.
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Cyberspace has a very unique set of dynamics. Winning in the cybersphere is different because countries can’t demonstrate their capabilities. After all, a cyber exploit is built around targeting a particular vulnerability, which you would give up if you revealed it. The cyber domain does not have an equivalent to a large military parade. Unlike the other domains of war, therefore, the cyber domain is inherently a destabilizing force. No one country knows what another country is fully capable of. The whole nature of cyber capabilities is that they produce little deterrence.

We’ve lived for five decades in relative peace on the planet. The pillars of that peace are being shaken as we move toward cyber warfare and as non-nation states gain more access to more sophisticated weapons. As the cyber domain becomes a more and more significant part of the battlefield, we need to be highly cognizant that the capabilities we develop might not actually keep us safer, because they might prompt an enemy to take action. As Newton said long ago: For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. We won’t know what reaction to expect, but we can be sure to expect something.

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