Fighting in Cyberspace: Internet Access and the Substitutability of Cyber and Military Operations

Abstract

Pundits debate whether conflict in cyberspace is more likely to trigger or preempt conflict in other domains. We consider a third possibility. Rather than directly complementing or substituting for traditional forms of conflict, the Internet could separately affect both virtual and kinetic dispute behavior. Specifically, we argue that a country’s increasing Internet access causes it to engage in aggressive cyberspace behavior more often. At the same time, economic and social changes associated with the information age reduce the utility of pursuing more traditional forms of conflict. Cyberspace offers an attractive domain in which to shape the balance of power, interests, and information in a technological era, while territorial conquest has become somewhat anachronistic. We test our theory using an innovative estimation approach, applied to panel data on cyber versus conventional disputes. Our findings confirm this indirect substitutability between cyber and conventional conflict.

Introduction: Cyber-conflict – Moving from speculation to investigation

“…Persistent erroneous proclamations of impending cyber doom have led to criticism that cyber research is characterized by speculation and conjecture. Scholars remain conflicted as to whether cyber power is escalatory or de-escalatory (Healey and Jervis, 2020; Libicki and Tkacheva, 2020; Lin-Greenberg, 2023); defensively or offensively advantageous (Slayton, 2016; Valeriano, 2022a); a new strategic domain or a furtherance of age-old intelligence contests (Brantly, 2016; Gartzke and Lindsay, 2015; Maschmeyer, 2021, Rovner, 2019); a complement or a substitute to conventional warfare (Egloff and Shires, 2023; Kostyuk and Gartzke, 2023; Schneider et al, 2022).…”

Until consensus: Introducing the International Cyber Expression dataset

“…Finally, scholars can also use it to empirically test predictions about how norms affect conflict processes, for example by pairing ICE data with existing datasets on cyber operations (e.g. Kostyuk and Gartzke, 2023; Maness and Valeriano, 2016), cyber institutions (e.g. Kostyuk, 2021), or other measures of state practice.…”