Military Review English Edition May-June 2014 | Page 30

Advantages of Wielding
Cyberpower

With these definitions being sufficient for this
discussion, consider the advantages of operations
through cyberspace.
Cyberspace provides worldwide reach. The
number of people, places, and systems interconnecting through cyberspace is growing rapidly.10
Those connections enhance the military’s ability to
reach people, places, and systems around the world.
Operating in cyberspace provides access to areas
denied in other domains. Early airpower advocates
claimed airplanes offered an alternative to boots
on the ground that could fly past enemy defenses
to attack power centers directly.11 Sophisticated air
defenses developed quickly, increasing the risk to
aerial attacks and decreasing their advantage. Despite
the current cyberdefenses that exist, cyberspace
now offers the advantage of access to contested
areas without putting operators in harm’s way. One
example of directly reaching enemy decision makers
through cyberspace comes from an event in 2003,
before the U.S. invasion of Iraq. U.S. Central Command reportedly emailed Iraqi military officers a
message on their secret network advising them to
abandon their posts.12 No other domain had so much
reach with so little risk.
Cyberspace enables quick action and concentration. Not only does cyberspace allow worldwide
reach, but its speed is unmatched. With aerial refueling, air forces can reach virtually any point on the
earth; however, getting there can take hours. Forward
basing may reduce response times to minutes, but
information through fiber optic cables moves literally
at the speed of light. Initiators of cyberattacks can
achieve concentration by enlisting the help of other
computers. By discretely distributing a virus trained
to respond on command, thousands of co-opted
botnet computers can instantly initiate a distributed
denial-of-service attack. Actors can entice additional
users to join their cause voluntarily, as did Russian
“patriotic hackers” who joined attacks on Estonia in
2007.13 With these techniques, large interconnected
populations could mobilize on an unprecedented scale
in mass, time, and concentration.14
Cyberspace allows anonymity. The Internet’s
designers placed a high priority on decentralization
and built the structure based on the mutual trust of
its few users.15 In the decades since, the number of
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Internet users and uses has grown exponentially
beyond its original conception.16 The resulting
system makes it very difficult to follow an evidentiary trail back to any user.17 Anonymity allows
freedom of action with limited attribution.
Cyberspace favors offense. In Clausewitz’ day,
defense was stronger, but cyberspace, due to the
advantages listed above, currently favors the attack.18
Historically, advantages from technological leaps
erode over time.19 However, the current circumstance
pits defenders against quick, concentrated attacks,
aided by structural security vulnerabilities inherent
in the architecture of cyberspace.
Cyberspace expands the spectrum of nonlethal
weapons. Joseph Nye described a trend, especially
among democracies, of antimilitarism, which makes
using force “a politically risky choice.”20 The desire
to limit collateral damage often has taken center stage
in NATO operations in Afghanistan, but this desire
is not limited to counterinsurgencies.21 Precisionguided munitions and small-diameter bombs are
products of efforts to enhance attack capabilities
with less risk of collateral damage. Cyberattacks
offer nonlethal means of direct action against an
adversary.22 The advantages of cyberpower may be
seductive to policymakers, but understanding its
limitations should temper such enthusiasm. The most
obvious limitation is that your adversary may use all
the same advantages against you. Another obvious
limitation is its minimal influence on nonnetworked
adversaries. Conversely, the more any organization
relies on cyberspace, the more vulnerable it is to
cyberattack. Three additional limitations require
further attention.
Cyberspace attacks rely heavily on second
order effects. In Thomas Schelling’s terms, there
are no brute force options through cyberspace, so
cyberoperations rely on coercion.23 Continental
armies can occupy land and take objectives by brute
force, but success in operations through cyberspace
often hinges on how adversaries react to provided,
altered, or withheld information. Cyberattacks creating kinetic effects, such as destructive commands to
industrial control systems, are possible. However,
the unusual incidents of malicious code causing a
Russian pipeline to explode and the Stuxnet worm
shutting down Iranian nuclear facility processes
were not ends.24 In the latter case, only Iranian
leaders’ decisions could realize abandonment of
May-June 2014

MILITARY REVIEW