Challenges and Opportunities for State Actors in Cyber Conflict

Globally and strategically, countries are developing and implementing cyber strategies designed to impact an adversary’s military command and control structure, national critical infrastructure, early warning systems, and other critical functions.

As we have discovered in recent cyber conflicts involving Estonia, Georgia, North Korea, and South Korea, as well as prior conflicts involving Chinese patriotic hackers, cyber conflict is far- reaching, covert, and complex. It provides an asymmetric stage more complicated than traditional state-to-state attacks.

Nations are increasingly aware that the use of cyber strategies can be a major force multiplier and equalizer. Smaller countries that could never compete in a conventional military sense with their larger neighbours can develop a capability that gives them a strategic advantage.

This study will focus on key questions and issues surrounding but not limited to:

• Which defensive approaches are suited for combating different/emerging threats?
• Exploring the impact of state supported vigilantes, hacktivists, and sympathetic hackers on crisis management and war termination
• Exploring the ability of state and non-state actors to mobilize significant capability to conduct cyber warfare
• How cyber warfare could manipulate approaches to peacekeeping or peacemaking
• Could the prospect for cyber warfare increase the potential for failed states?
• Can cyber war interact with new technologies that will influence conflicts such as biological engineering and nanotechnology?
• What large-scale effects can be achieved through cyber attacks?
• What is the impact of cyber warfare on crisis stability and crisis management considerations?
• Will threats of cyber-decapitation or paralyzing communications substantially change crisis dynamics?
• What challenges face terrorist groups and other transnational actors in establishing offensive and defensive cyber warfare capabilities?
• What relative advantages and disadvantages do non-state actors have in developing capabilities?
• How will the variety of trans-state actors (jihadists, anarchists, political activists, criminal organizations, etc) differ in their approaches to the possibilities for cyber war?

These areas of focus deliver an understanding and context for issues relating to the Challenges and Opportunities for State Actors in Cyber Conflict.