Cyber studies is a clash of conceptions. Few thinkers know about this clash because few venture outside their home field of learning. The clash involves not the arcane quarrels of theorists within a specific discipline, which is the ordinary activity of science, but a more elemental divide among entire professions, which occurs only rarely, when a subject arises of such magnitude and complexity that it convulses established jurisdictions of learning. Many scientific disciplines touch on the cyber question. Each imposes upon it its own ideal type, a perception of the essence of the related technology or its effects on the...

Is the cyber threat real or inflated? It is superfluous to explore the virtual weapon’s revolutionary potential without first answering this question. For if the threat is but a mirage – as some skeptics claim¹ – then there is little need to expend energy assessing its problems for theory and statecraft. Alternatively, the need for analysis exists merely to puncture the threat inflation and the associated presumption of a technological revolution that pervade in the highest strata of governments. The gravity of the threat, if real, does not by itself signify a technological revolution, but the virtual weapon cannot be revolutionary unless...

What is a technological revolution? If the answer to this question rested in the technology itself, we would not need political thinkers to remedy the causes of revolution or to grasp its consequences. Its study could recede into esoteric quarters of learning: into the technical minds of inventors unconcerned with the affairs of states and their peoples. Because this concept of revolution begins and ends in the technical realm, laypersons would not have to trouble themselves with its problems. Engineers and natural scientists could define lines of inquiry as if by decree, possibly in consultation with specialists in other scientific...

The virtual weapon is a force of systemic disruption in international affairs. The new capability is disturbing regularized patterns of rivalry among rational, self-interested state contenders. There are the problems of instrumental instability: a disturbance of the conventional states system featuring familiar contests for security by the appearance of a largely untested weapon whose use is difficult to model and regulate. Yet even within the narrow bounds of this type of change, the least transforming of the three orders of technological revolution, these effects are limited. They are not of a magnitude that matches the change implied by the great...

The virtual weapon influences not only the strategic dealings of rational states, which the previous chapter considered, but also the behavior of revolutionary states. Thus we arrive at the problem of how new technology fuels ideological defection, or what the revolutions framework presented in Chapter 3 labeled systemic revision: the presence and activity in the international system of subversive units who, in pursuance of unorthodox ideologies, whether the whims of a single dictator or the extremist ideals of a state or a group of states, behave in a manner that challenges the basic political framework of international society, the fundamental...

Were technological revolution disruptive solely of interstate dealings, its study could stop at the external borders of the international system. Having explored the impact of new inventions upon the competition of ordinary states bound by common basic ends or upon the ideological strivings of revolutionary states bent on subverting them, international relations specialists would not need to consider the influence of players alien to the system. And having reached the system’s frontier posts, the concept of technological revolution would have safely exhausted its relevance.

This viewpoint is mainly accurate. Historically, the basic goal of national security policy is to preserve...

The ordinary goal of deterrence policy is to prevent an attack. Thus it is futile to speak of “degrees” of success in deterrence: it either succeeds or it fails. Failure is absolute. There is no reverting to a situation in which the attack did not happen. Consider the nuclear realm of conflict from which deterrence theory emerged. Initial attempts to enshrine strategies of “limited war” in policy did not go far.¹ Aversion to the loss of a single American or Soviet city and its entire population convinced the superpowers that an exchange of nuclear blows must be avoided at all...

For all their confidence in the universal triumph of liberal ideals, for all their pretensions about the political backwardness of the historic adversary Russia, Western powers have confronted the resurgence of the colossal Russian threat on their Eastern periphery. At a time when the West’s economic and military architectures absorbed formerly captive nations of the Soviet empire, just as the prophecies of the End of History seemed on the verge of realization,¹ a new weapon came into view. The unsophisticated but intense cyberattacks against Estonia’s vital computer infrastructures in the spring of 2007 were a virtual demonstration shot that rang...

The technological forces of systems change and the resulting sovereignty gap in cyberspace have far-reaching implications for the private sector: it can no longer take for granted the ability of the government to protect it against all relevant threats. Thus the challenge of cybersecurity is essentially one ofcivil defense: how to equip the private sector to protect its own computer terrain in the absence of decisive government involvement.

Ordinarily, civil defense in the new domain has involved passive measures, such as resilience and redundancy, which aim to harden defenses and deflect offensive hits. But foiling a sophisticated offensive operation...

A revolution can be mastered only if it is recognized. This task imposes different demands on analysts than it does on practitioners. Analysts must develop conceptual models that make unprecedented chaos seem ordinary. Practitioners must apply these models to craft regulatory devices that render it orderly. The two efforts are closely related, because policy succeeds or fails based on the correctness of the theory that underlies it. It is only when statesmen grasp the relevance or irrelevance of old axioms and adapt their habits to new realities that the revolutionary condition ends.

In our times the challenge of adaptation to...