Subversion, cyber operations, and reverse structural power in world politics

Abstract

The Russian-sponsored influence campaign targeting the 2016 US Presidential Elections surprised policy-makers and scholars, highlighting a gap in theories of (cyber) power. Russia had used information technologies to project power, yet more subtly than prevailing militarized conceptions of cyber power predicted. Rather than causing damage and disruption, it turned sources of American power into vulnerabilities. Recent scholarship emphasizes this mechanism’s technological novelty. Instead, I argue this campaign demonstrated the importance of an undertheorized instrument of power: subversion. Integrating Intelligence scholarship and International Relations theory, this article develops an innovative theory of subversion as reverse structural power. Structural power shapes structures of interaction and the capacities of structural positions to the benefit of the holder of such power. Subversion reverses these benefits into harms. It exploits vulnerabilities in structures to secretly manipulate them, leveraging the capacities of structural positions to produce outcomes neither expected nor intended by the holders of structural power. Traditional subversion targets social structures, while cyber operations target sociotechnical structures: namely, Information Communications Technologies (ICTs) embedded in modern societies. The targeted structures differ, yet both rely on subversive techniques of exploitation that reverse structural power. Cyber operations are means of subversion. This theory helps explain two unresolved issues in cybersecurity: the capability–vulnerability paradox and the outsize role of non-state actors. Finally, I demonstrate the theory’s utility in a plausibility probe, examining the 2016 Election Interference Campaign. It shows this campaign did not use new “weapons,” but rather integrated traditional and sociotechnical means of subversion.

Cyberattacks and public opinion – The effect of uncertainty in guiding preferences

“…As a concluding note, the conspicuous absence of destructive cyberattacks has reinforced the idea that cyberattacks are used predominantly as a tool of sub-crisis maneuvering allowing states to operate below the threshold of armed conflict (Harknett and Smeets, 2022; Kostyuk and Gartzke, 2022; Maschmeyer, 2023a). This may be the case, yet what is more important from the public’s vantage point is not the objective reality of cyberattacks, but how the attacks are construed in the media.…”

Abducted by hackers: Using the case of Bletchley Park to construct a theory of intelligence performance that generalizes to cybersecurity

“…I come to this case with many pre-existing ideas about the political nature of intelligence, and of cybersecurity as a lesser included case of it. The common theme is the use of deception to subvert cooperative institutions for competitive advantage (Gartzke and Lindsay, 2015;Lindsay, 2017Lindsay, , 2021Maschmeyer, 2022). Deception depends on the willing but unwitting cooperation of the adversary.…”

“…Collective institutions enable intelligence, while intelligence enables security competition. Intelligence is subversive because, so to speak, liberal means enable realist ends (Farrell and Newman, 2019; Lindsay, 2017; Maschmeyer, 2022).…”

“…But intelligence effectiveness depends further on institutional resources shared across intelligence adversaries, not just on the organizational institutions of combatants. Deception, importantly, has a different strategic logic than war or coercion (Gartzke and Lindsay, 2015; Lindsay, 2017; Maschmeyer, 2022). While warriors fight their enemies, and diplomats make open threats, spies subvert trusting cultures, and spyware subverts trusted systems.…”