The Meaning of the Cyber Revolution

information age faces formidable challenges. Chief among these is to evaluate correctly the impact of cyberweapons on strategy: Does the new technology require a revolution in how scholars and policymakers think about force and conoict?1 Practitioners confront a predicament in addressing this question: the cyber revolution gives rise to novel threats and opportunities requiring immediate policy responses; yet understanding its nature and its consequences for security is a slow learning process. Interpretation of cyber phenomena involves analysis of a new body of experience that existing theories may be unable to clarify. It presupposes, moreover, a technical understanding of a transforming technology, whose implications require time to master because of its scientiac complexity. The inevitable result has been a delay in the strategic adaptation to cyber realities. If decisionmakers are right—and their views are not equivocal—the contemporary world confronts an enormous cyber threat. The U.S. intelligence community rates this threat higher than global terrorism and warns of the potential for a calamitous cyberattack.2 Yet as the chief of U.S. Cyber Command, Gen. Keith Alexander, has observed, there is no consensus “on how to characterize the strategic instability” of cyber interactions “or on what to do about it.”3 The range of conceivable cyber conoict is poorly understood by scholars and decisionmakers,4 and it is unclear how conventional security mechanisms, such as deterrence and collective defense, apply to this phenomenon. In addition, the principles of cyber offense and cyber defense remain rudimentary.