The Impact Of Cyber Warfare

Cyber war is a subject that is highly contested among strategists and experts. This brief assesses the impact of cyber operations against strategic targets and demonstrates that while cyber war is a real phenomenon, it is far from producing decisive outcomes. The cyberspace is a medium to conduct military operations and several countries have made investments in capabilities to both attack and defend against cyber-attacks. The brief evaluates the relative strengths of offence and defence and the extent to which it favours the strong against the weak. It considers whether cyber capabilities create asymmetric advantages, thereby undermining nuclear deterrence and strategic stability. The extensive use of cyberspace creates opportunities as well as challenges and vulnerabilities for countries that possess cyber capabilities. 
 
 THE IMPACT OF CYBER WARFARE ON NUCLEAR DETERRENCE: A CONCEPTUAL AND EMPIRICAL OVERVIEW

The Impact of cyber warfare on nuclear deterrence: A conceptual and empirical overview

Cyber war is a subject that is highly contested among strategists and experts. This brief assesses the impact of cyber operations against strategic targets and demonstrates that while cyber war is a real phenomenon, it is far from producing decisive outcomes. The cyberspace is a medium to conduct military operations and several countries have made investments in capabilities to both attack and defend against cyber-attacks. The brief evaluates the relative strengths of offence and defence and the extent to which it favours the strong against the weak. It considers whether cyber capabilities create asymmetric advantages, thereby undermining nuclear deterrence and strategic stability. The extensive use of cyberspace creates opportunities as well as challenges and vulnerabilities for countries that possess cyber capabilities.  

This brief is part of ORF's series, 'National Security'.

Introduction

How do cyber operations affect nuclear deterrence and stability? While a fully satisfactory answer to this question might not be forthcoming, the subject does merit serious engagement. After all, the emergence of the cyber medium for warfare introduces a peculiar challenge for strategists. This brief unpacks the impact of cyber war on nuclear Command, Control and Communications (C3). How vulnerable would it render C3 systems and nuclear infrastructure and their delivery capabilities generally, thereby adversely affecting nuclear stability? The succeeding analysis maps out the key issues surrounding the cyber instrument in warfare. It also seeks to demonstrate the extent to which cyber warfare could affect nuclear deterrence and strategic stability, if a state’s Nuclear Command, Control and Communications (NC3) could be threatened or undermined. The management and safety of nuclear weapons is becoming increasingly dependent on computer systems, creating its own set of challenges. This brief argues that cyber weapons can threaten the stability of nuclear deterrence, but the outcome from cyber engagement might not be crippling to a country’s nuclear capabilities.

Therefore, cyber operations are unlikely to be decisive on their own, but certainly damaging as cyber warfare tends to favour the strong over the weak.

There is another view, though, which holds that cyber warfare favours the weak over the strong. The reason for this alluring claim is that cyber operations are viewed as offense dominant bequeathing an asymmetric advantage to the weak making cyber defences more vulnerable. This is not entirely true, because strategic targets, integral to the focus of this brief are much harder to attack through the cyber medium than are more soft targets such as banking systems. Cyber defence by the strong can prevent attacks against critical infrastructure including power stations and military targets such as ballistic missiles, delivery platforms such as nuclear submarines and NC3 systems. Yet vulnerabilities of strategic capabilities have to be identified to be effectively exploited such as their complexity and configuration and a cyber-weapon has to be specifically created for each strategic target.

There is no single or generic cyber-weapon, which can be used against all critical infrastructure and strategic targets.

They could render a victim if not outrightly defenceless, at least more vulnerable to pressures such as nuclear blackmail; they render inoperative NC3 and create conditions for an opponent to gain advantages elsewhere. Cyber operations can generate costs for nuclear command and control systems for a state against another. This brief is structured as follows: it first defines cyber weapons and clarifies the debates dividing the international strategic community over the occurrence and non-occurrence of cyber war. The second section then evaluates the impact of cyber warfare on nuclear deterrence and stability, and examines how cyber warfare can have a destabilising effect on nuclear deterrence. The brief closes by drawing attention to the implications of cyber warfare for India, and describing the consequences for stability in the South Asian region.