Bulletin From The Borderlands Special Report

OP-ED: Cyberspace and the Great Power Advantage by Shreya Lad

Bulletin From The Borderlands is a joint project between Lethal Minds and some of the most talented OSINT analysts and independent journalists working today. Our goal is to provide you with a clear, accurate, and informative view of the world, free from censorship or bias. The Bulletin will bring you the facts, our analysis, and our evidence. We hope you find our work helps you better understand the complicated and increasingly volatile world in which we live.

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It was like something out of a movie: German security expert Ralph Langner had just wrapped up his TED Talk and was taking questions from an audience that featured Bill Gates, Google founder Sergey Brin, and TED Founder Chris Anderson.

Anderson did follow up with Langner after the presentation, asking something that was on everyone’s minds. The year was 2011, and Langner’s team had broken down the code of the Stuxnet malware, which they would later call the world’s first cyberweapon of mass destruction. 

“Ralph, it has been reported that Mossad is behind this. Would you agree?” 

Langner did not mince his answer: “The leading force behind this is the leading cyber power. There is only one. And that is the United States.”

As the malware that took Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility- and the country’s nuclear program- by storm indicated, the United States had redefined the meaning of cyber operations. Many opined that the rise of cyber power would disrupt the existing geopolitical landscape and favor weaker states. Yet the evidence points in the opposite direction. Cyberspace doctrines and the emergence of ‘cyber-power’ reinforce the role of the great powers. If it intends to retain control over the domain, the United States must orient its cyberspace strategy to focus on great power rivals like China and Russia, over weaker states like Iran or North Korea, or cyber terrorists and lone hackers.

The key attributes of major cyber powers (US, China, Israel, Russia) echo the attributes of the existing great powers, supporting the argument that cyberspace reinforces, rather than transforms, the capabilities and influence of the major players in the system. If we think about power as the ability to influence policy outcomes, characteristics that emulate this power in the cyber domain complement the material capabilities that measure power in the traditional sense: economic strength, liberal institutions, productivity, and military advancement. The core infrastructure that backs the ability to launch sophisticated cyber operations is limited to countries with network capabilities, a corporate backbone, and high situational awareness on the ground and in space. Attacks on critical US infrastructure like power grids, or even nuclear C3I (communications, command, control, and intelligence) are likely to come from our powerful adversaries with the capability to mount such attacks – and not cyber terrorists or weaker states.

Even if we take into account that countries like Estonia that are strong players in cyberspace are not necessarily geopolitically powerful or influential; rising cyber-powers are responding to the threats created by the existing great powers. Iran’s investment in a cyber offense doctrine has been proportionate to the level of threat it sees itself under, given its nuclear ambitions and regional situation vis-à-vis Saudi Arabia and Israel, key US allies, if not the United States itself. Estonia’s growth as a player in this domain accompanies the threats it faces from its proximity to Russia’s sphere of influence, if not from direct and credible cyberattacks by Russian hackers. 

Most active nonstate actors in cyberspace are superpower proxies or major corporations affiliated with the superpowers. The SolarWinds and NotPetya hacks are linked to lone hackers enabled by the Russian government. Some argue that the cyber-associated shift in power is a result of lower barriers to entry into cyberspace. If this were true, so much of the global market share would not be concentrated among a handful of tech firms that are heavily subsidized by their governments. Anonymity and problems of attribution favor nonstate actors, but state power leads to sophisticated cyber tools that these lone actors cannot afford to produce nor defend against. 

Make no mistake – by being more connected, we are more vulnerable. China has promoted the concept of cyber sovereignty to exert more control over the local use of the Internet while allowing its cyber espionage operations to fly under the radar. Yet our sizeable conventional and nuclear strength means that even in the case of potential cyberattacks against our critical assets, conventional and nuclear deterrence will hold. The United States could execute the Stuxnet attacks because our conventional deterrent alleviated the possibility of any military retaliation on Iran’s part.

The fact that the virtual realm requires specific and sophisticated tools for successful operation reaffirms that states- and great powers at that- will emerge dominant in this realm. In the past, the behavior of the great powers has customarily been responsible for setting the rules of the game. Arms control in the nuclear domain was achieved in the Cold War by a mutual US-Soviet desire to avoid nuclear war. In cyberspace, great powers will try to set norms by advancing their own national interests. In the event of a prolonged great power rivalry, cyberspace might be an effective tool for a covert and coercive intelligence contest without ever crossing the threshold of armed conflict. To be successful in this contest, we must be able to set its terms. 

States continue to remain not only the most powerful actors in the international system but also the most powerful and credible players in cyberspace. The United States is uniquely positioned to leverage the advantages afforded to great powers in cyberspace. It can use cyber operations, as opposed to conventional operations, to achieve crisis stability and de-escalate conflicts. To this end, US Cyber Command must focus on great power competition in cyberspace and not allow itself to be distracted by on-off cyberattacks by individual players. This can allow us to set the rules for responsible behavior in this emerging domain, and embody them. 

Shreya Lad is a Master's candidate in International Affairs at George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs, where she focuses on emerging technologies and international security.