http://www.defensenews.com/article/20140730/DEFFEAT05/307300017/Commentary-Cyber-Deterrence-Working
By Jason Healey
Defense News
July 30, 2014
Despite the mainstream view of cyberwar professionals and theorists, cyber
deterrence is not only possible but has been working for decades.
Cyberwar professionals are in the midst of a decades-old debate on how
America could deter adversaries from attacking us in cyberspace. In 2010,
then-Deputy Defense Secretary Bill Lynn summed up the prevailing view that
“Cold War deterrence models do not apply to cyberspace” because of low
barriers to entry and the anonymity of Internet attacks. Cyber attacks,
unlike intercontinental missiles, don’t have a return address.
But this view is too narrow and technical. The history of how nations have
actually fought (or not fought) conflicts in cyberspace makes it clear
deterrence is not only theoretically possible, but is actually keeping an
upper threshold to cyber hostilities.
The hidden hand of deterrence is most obvious in the discussion of “a
digital Pearl Harbor.” In 2012, then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta
described his worries of such a bolt-from-the-blue attack that could
cripple the United States or its military.
Though his phrase raised eyebrows among cyber professionals, there was
broad agreement with the basic implication: The United States is
strategically vulnerable and potential adversaries have both the means for
strategic attack and the will to do it.
But worrying about a digital Pearl Harbor actually dates not to 2012 but
to testimony by Winn Schwartau to Congress in 1991. So cyber experts have
been handwringing about a digital Pearl Harbor for more than 20 of the 70
years since the actual Pearl Harbor.
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