The Politics of Cyber Threat

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

This panel brings together papers with a central purpose – to understand how cyberconflict affects organizations and how groups respond threats in the digital domain. The existing theoretical literature often considers cyberspace through a realist lens, examining its effect on the offense-defense balance, deterrence, and traditional conflict. Instead, this panel advances the empirical study of cyberconflict by placing it within a domestic and organizational context. Demarest and Schub leverage a survey experiment with U.S. elites to understand whether and how military advantages in the cyber, nuclear, and conventional domains affect decision-making during interstate bargaining. Oppenheimer identifies sources of bias within cyberattack data to understand how the political process of disclosure shapes the study of cyber conflict. He develops a new dataset detailing the process cyberattacks from attack to discovery to disclosure. Schneider examines the concept of thresholds, their history within U.S. strategy, and why they are central to current DoD cyber and nuclear strategy. Researchers know very little about when and why thresholds occur or persevere, and even less about how they may apply in the cyber domain despite their central role to strategy. Finally, White details how organizational subcultures within the U.S. military influences how cyberspace operations are organized and integrated into military campaigns. Each paper focuses on how people and organizations respond to cyber threats. How U.S. elites perceive cyberattacks within bargaining, how disclosure shapes our understanding of cyberconflict, how and why thresholds play a central role in U.S. strategy, and how organizational culture impacts the integration of cyberspace operations into the American military bureaucracy. Each makes a significant contribution to our understanding of international conflict in emerging security domains.

Sub Unit

• Division 19: International Security

Individual Presentations

• The Dynamics of Disclosure: Bias in the Bytes - Harry Oppenheimer, Harvard University

• Thresholds in Cyberspace and Beyond - Jacquelyn Schneider, Stanford University

• How Militarized Cyber Technology Affects Interstate Bargaining - Robert Schub, University of Nebraska, Lincoln; Heidi Demarest, US Military Academy

• Organizational Subcultures: Creating Cybersecurity in the U.S. Military - Sarah B White, United States Naval Academy

Chair

• Joshua Rovner American University

Discussants

• Michael P. Colaresi University of Pittsburgh

• Austin Carson University of Chicago