Some pundits claim cyber weaponry is the most important military innovation in decades, a transformative new technology that promises a paralyzing first-strike advantage difficult for opponents to deter. Yet, what is cyber strategy? How do actors use cyber capabilities to achieve a position of advantage against rival states? This book examines the emerging art of cyber strategy and its integration as part of a larger approach to coercion by states in the international system between 2000 and 2014. To this end, the book establishes a theoretical framework in the coercion literature for evaluating the efficacy of cyber operations. Cyber coercion represents the use of manipulation, denial, and punishment strategies in the digital frontier to achieve some strategic end. As a contemporary form of covert action and political warfare, cyber operations rarely produce concessions and tend to achieve only limited, signaling objectives. When cyber operations do produce concessions between rival states, they tend to be part of a larger integrated coercive strategy that combines network intrusions with other traditional forms of statecraft such as military threats, economic sanctions, and diplomacy. The books finds that cyber operations rarely produce concessions in isolation. They are additive instruments that complement traditional statecraft and coercive diplomacy. The book combines an analysis of cyber exchanges between rival states and broader event data on political, military, and economic interactions with case studies on the leading cyber powers: Russia, China, and the United States. The authors investigate cyber strategies in their integrated and isolated contexts, demonstrating that they are useful for maximizing informational asymmetries and disruptions, and thus are important, but limited coercive tools. This empirical foundation allows the authors to explore how leading actors employ cyber strategy and the implications for international relations in the 21st century. While most military plans involving cyber attributes remain highly classified, the authors piece together strategies based on observations of attacks over time and through the policy discussion in unclassified space. The result will be the first broad evaluation of the efficacy of various strategic options in a digital world.

The Internet has become central to global economic activity, politics, and security, and the security environment has changed recently, as we face much more aggressive state actors in espionage. Terrorists and criminals find creative ways to leverage the latest technologies to evade security and privacy protections, but there may be technical and policy solutions that can balance national security and public safety with protection of privacy, civil liberties, and a functioning global Internet ecosystem.

SUMMARYIn 2011, the Department of Defense (DoD) released its Strategy for Operating in Cyberspace, which officially recognized cyberspace as an operational domain akin to the traditional military domains of land, sea, air, and space. This monograph examines the 2015 DoD Cyber Strategy to evaluate how well its five strategic goals and associated implementation objectives define an actionable strategy to achieve three primary mis-sions in cyberspace: defend the DoD network, defend the United States and its interests, and develop cyber capabilities to support military operations. The topic of U.S. Federal cyberspace activities is well-documented in many sources, thus this mono-graph serves as a primer to provide senior policy-makers, decision makers, military leaders, and their respective staffs with an overall appreciation for the complexities, challenges, opportunities, and risks asso-ciated with the development of military cyberspace operations. This report is limited to unclassified and open source information; any classified discussion must occur at another venue. This monograph focuses on events and documents from the period of about 1 year before and 1 year after the 2015 strategy was released. This allows sufficient time to examine the key policies and guidance that influenced the development of the strategy, as well as follow-on activities for the impacts from the strategy. This inquiry has five major sections that utilize differ-ent frameworks of analysis to assess the strategy:1. Prima Facie Analysis: This section is by inten-tion only a superficial overview of the strategy. It explores the strategy and its public face as presented by DoD and addresses: What is the stated purpose of the strategy? What are its con-tent and key messages?2. Historical Context Analysis: The official roots of the DoD cyber strategy go back more than a decade, and this section reviews the docu-ment's contents within the context of other key historical national defense guidance. The sec-tion focuses on two questions: Is this strategy consistent with previous strategies and current policies? What unique contributions does it introduce into the evolution of national security cyberspace activities?3. Traditional Strategy Analysis: This section eval-uates eight specific premises for good strategies that include the familiar elements of ends, ways, means, and risk. It also addresses three ques-tions: Does the strategy properly address spe-cific DoD needs as well as broader U.S. ends? Is the strategy appropriate and actionable? How may joint combatant commanders view the strategy?4. Analysis of Subsequent DoD Action: This section explores the DoD cyber strategy's connections and influences to DoD guidance that followed its release. It will focus on two questions: How are major military cyberspace components--joint and Service--planning to implement the goals and objectives of the DoD cyber strategy? What plans has the Army put in place to sup-port the strategy?5. Whole of U.S. Government Analysis: This sec-tion examines DoD cyber activities from the per-spective of a whole-of-government approach to national cybersecurity. This analysis focuses on two questions: Does the strategy support U.S. Executive direction? Does the strategy inte-grate with other the cyberspace-related activi-ties of other U.S. Government departments and agencies?This monograph concludes with a section that inte-grates the individual section findings and offers rec-ommendations to improve future cyberspace strategic planning documents.

The role of intelligence in US government operations has changed dramatically and is now more critical than ever to domestic security and foreign policy. This authoritative and highly researched book written by Jeffrey T. Richelson provides a detailed overview of America's vast intelligence empire, from its organizations and operations to its management structure. Drawing from a multitude of sources, including hundreds of official documents, The US Intelligence Community allows students to understand the full scope of intelligence organizations and activities, and gives valuable support to policymakers and military operations. The seventh edition has been fully revised to include a new chapter on the major issues confronting the intelligence community, including secrecy and leaks, domestic spying, and congressional oversight, as well as revamped chapters on signals intelligence and cyber collection, geospatial intelligence, and open sources. The inclusion of more maps, tables and photos, as well as electronic briefing books on the book's Web site, makes The US Intelligence Community an even more valuable and engaging resource for students.

This book is a multi-disciplinary analysis of cyber warfare, featuring contributions by leading experts from a mixture of academic and professional backgrounds. Cyber warfare, meaning interstate cyber aggression, is an increasingly important emerging phenomenon in international relations, with state-orchestrated (or apparently state-orchestrated) computer network attacks occurring in Estonia (2007), Georgia (2008) and Iran (2010). This method of waging warfare – given its potential to, for example, make planes fall from the sky or cause nuclear power plants to melt down – has the capacity to be as devastating as any conventional means of conducting armed conflict. Every state in the world now has a cyber-defence programme and over 120 states also have a cyber-attack programme. While the amount of literature on cyber warfare is growing within disciplines, our understanding of the subject has been limited by a lack of cross-disciplinary engagement. In response, this book, drawn from the fields of computer science, military strategy, international law, political science and military ethics, provides a critical overview of cyber warfare for those approaching the topic from whatever angle. Chapters consider the emergence of the phenomena of cyber warfare in international affairs; what cyber-attacks are from a technological standpoint; the extent to which cyber-attacks can be attributed to state actors; the strategic value and danger posed by cyber conflict; the legal regulation of cyber-attacks, both as international uses of force and as part of an on-going armed conflict, and the ethical implications of cyber warfare. This book will be of great interest to students of cyber warfare, cyber security, military ethics, international law, security studies and IR in general.

With billions of computers in existence, cyberspace, 'the virtual world created when they are connected,' is said to be the new medium of power. Computer hackers operating from anywhere can enter cyberspace and take control of other people's computers, stealing their information, corrupting their workings, and shutting them down. Modern societies and militaries, both pervaded by computers, are supposedly at risk. As Conquest in Cyberspace explains, however, information systems and information itself are too easily conflated, and persistent mastery over the former is difficult to achieve. The author also investigates how far 'friendly conquest' in cyberspace extends, such as the power to persuade users to adopt new points of view. He discusses the role of public policy in managing cyberspace conquests and shows how the Internet is becoming more ubiquitous and complex, such as in the use of artificial intelligence.