Strategic Competition in Cyberspace- Measuring the Effects of Cyber Campaigning through Experimental Methodology
Abstract
We anchor this project under the specific Minerva DECUR Topic 3 and seek to build scientific understanding about how to better study and leverage cyberspace as an ungoverned - semi-governed - differently governed space. The United States and its allies face strategic competitors seeking to alter the international distribution of power. Operations and campaigns in and through cyberspace are increasingly being leveraged to accomplish those aims. It is critical that the emerging sub-field of cyber security studies, which draws on social science-based methods and theories, contribute to our understanding of this new seam of competition and potential conflict. The 2022 National Defense Strategy explicitly identifies campaigning as one of three ways in which the Department of Defense will protect national interests. However, the social science empirical basis for evaluating campaigning in cyberspace through open-source data is limited (and close to non-existent). U.S. Cyber Command s operational approach of persistent engagement, the DoD cyber strategy of Defend Forward, and now the new National Defense Strategy s focus on ways and means contributing to integrated deterrence create intellectual pressure on the academic community to study and understand cyber campaigning. If social science-based security studies academics are going to make key contributions it is going to have to be able to test hypotheses against an empirical base with depth. For national security reasons, most government cyber operations remain classified. Further, operations involving the private sector are rarely discussed in detail due to proprietary commercial concerns. Operations themselves remain opaque and generally unobservable to the academic community in real-time.
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Mar 07, 2024
- Source ID
- FA95502310582
Entities
People
- Richard Harknett
Organizations
- Air Force Office of Scientific Research
- Office of the Secretary of Defense
- University of Cincinnati