The Dog That Did Not Bark, the Dog That Did Bark, and the Dog That Should Have Barked: A Methodology for Cyber Deterrence Research

Abstract

The study of deterrence presents a number of challenges, mainly to do with identifying deterrence success and defining how deterrence works. Studying cyber deterrence presents even greater challenges, as traditional deterrence challenges are exacerbated and interactions in the cyber domain create further difficulties. When studying cyber deterrence, scholars face uncertainty not only in identifying situations of deterrence success, but also—due to the secrecy surrounding cyber practices—in identifying situations of deterrence failure. Despite the many studies on cyber deterrence, methodological solutions to address these challenges still need to be developed. To this end, I suggest focusing on the adoption and employment of the strategy rather than on its success. I argue that since communicating threats is a core element of deterrence, it is easier to observe how the strategy is adopted and employed than whether it succeeds or fails. This focus provides a promising direction to study cyber deterrence and address these challenges.

Cyber Security Politics

“…At the current point in time in the history of cyber security politics the empirical picture is characterized by "dogs that did not bark" at the high end of conflict and persistent cyber operations and instability at the low end of conflict (Schulze 2020;Harknett and Smeets 2020;Lupovici 2021). Within this context, the chapters in this volume point to three interconnected aspects of the enduring debate about the strategic utility of cyber operations: A first subsection concentrates on the difficulty of achieving a controlled strategic effect under multidimensional uncertainty.…”

Cyberspace in space

“…These challenges are thus an obvious obstacle to studying specific strategies, such as cyber deterrence. 3 First, studying cyber deterrence is a challenge because scholars have difficulty identifying and tracing situations of deterrence success 4 as well as situations of deterrence failure (Lupovici 2020). Second, many scholars have emphasized the attribution problem as a great challenge for cyber deterrence success, limiting the ability to issue a credible deterrence threat (see in Morgan 2010;Lupovici 2011;Stevens 2012: 149-53).…”

A Social-Driven Intelligent System to Assist the Classification of Pet Emotions using Deep Learning and Big Data Analysis

“…My friend has an app that could tell the bark of a dog [13]. It is similar in some ways to the AI, but in general, it is for a different use than mine.…”