Coercion through Cyberspace: The Stability-Instability Paradox Revisited

Jon Lindsay University of Toronto [email protected] Erik Gartzke University of California San Diego [email protected] 25 August 2016 In Kelly M. Greenhill and Peter J. P. Krause, eds., The Power to Hurt: Coercion in Theory and in Practice (Oxford University Press, Forthcoming) [Final copyedited text may differ] Introduction Protecting and exploiting computing infrastructure has become a policy priority for governments and other actors around the world. Critical infrastructure for banking, energy, transportation, and manufacturing increasingly relies on embedded computers connected to the internet. Firms and citizens entrust their personal, medical, and financial data to distant servers in return for more convenient and efficient services. Military command and control depends on digital networks to connect pervasive surveillance to power projection capabilities. The same interconnectivity that improves efficiency and control, however, also facilitates new modes of crime, protest, espionage, and warfare. The U.S. Defense Department accordingly describes cyberspace as a new “war fighting domain” alongside the physical land, sea, air, and space domains.1 Any military forces that drive, sail, fly, or orbit rely on computers for intelligence, communications,