Adam P. Liff - Cyberwar

Question 1

Cyberweapons

Question 2

Definition of cyber warfare

Answer 2

This article defines cyberwarfare as a state of conflict between two or more political actors characterized by the deliberate hostile and cost-inducing use of CNA against an adversary’s critical civilian or military infrastructure with coercive intent in order to extract political concessions, as a brute force measure against military or civilian networks in order to reduce the adversary’s ability to defend itself or retaliate in kind or with conventional force, or against civilian and/or military targets in order to frame another actor for strategic purposes.

1. The term ‘cyberwarfare’ applies strictly to computer network operations (CNO) whose means – if not necessarily its indirect effects – are non-kinetic.
2. It does not include operations in cyberspace that constitute psychological warfare.
3. Most importantly, cyberwarfare is conceptualized as including only computer network attacks (CNA) with direct political and/or military objectives – namely, attacks with coercive intent and/or as a means to some strategic and/or brute force end – and computer network defense (CND).

*cyberwarfare does not subsume those acts most frequently reported such: hacking for fun, profit-driven cyber-crime, or cyber espionage and other forms of computer network exploitation (CNE), the objectives of which are neither directly coercive or brute force in nature.
Restricting the definition of cyberwarfare in this manner is necessary for theoretical and analytical clarity.

Question 3

How is cyber warefare used militarily, economically and politically

Question 4

Projection of traditional and “new war” frequency in the future related to cyber warfare capacities

Answer 4

-Fears of CNA as a destabilizing weapon, although warranted, may be exaggerated. CNA’s usefulness to a relatively weak state or terrorist group as an asymmetric weapon is restricted to a small number of situations. In some situations it may actually decrease the frequency of war by offering relatively weak states a useful deterrent against belligerent adversaries.
CNA’s most ‘game-changing’ aspect may be its usefulness as a brute force weapon, which will probably have at most a marginal effect on the frequency of war.