@book{660c7781a971441faa421518abb48de7,
title = "Cyber Operations in Conflict: Lessons from Analytic Wargaming",
abstract = "Headlines about cyber warfare often focus on doomsday scenarios, with depictions of nation-states using “cyber bombs” to remotely dismantle electric grids and other critical infrastructure. Yet recent events—including Russia{\textquoteright}s use of cyber operations for information warfare and propaganda—suggest that policymakers and military leaders need to broaden their assumptions about how state and non-state actors are likely to use such operations in future crises and conflicts. To investigate the role of cyber operations in diverse crisis scenarios, we developed two distinct wargames—an innovative methodology for investigating competition among diverse actors—to determine likely strategic preferences. We first ran these games with university students and national security professionals to examine how the participants approached incorporating cyber capabilities with more conventional tools of statecraft. We then constructed a survey experiment involving more than 3,000 internet users to identify which of the strategies identified in the wargame they preferred. The wargames and survey experiments both showed that cyber capabilities instead produce a moderating influence on coercive exchanges and crisis escalation. Our work suggests that leaders should think about cyber exchanges in crisis settings more as political warfare and subterfuge than as traditional warfighting. ",
author = "David Banks and Benjamin Jensen",
year = "2018",
language = "English",
series = "CLTC Occasional White Paper Series",
publisher = "University of California, Berkeley",
address = "United States",
}