Dissecting the Digital World: A Review of the Construction and Constitution of Cyber Conflict Research

Whyte, Christopher

doi:10.1093/isr/viw013

Cited by 17 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 23 publications

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“…more empirical turn. Theoretical predictions are ubiquitous, but testing and adjudicating between those predictions are challenging owing to the unique features of cyberspace (Gorwa and Smeets, 2019;Shore, 2022;Whyte, 2018). As Shandler and Canetti (2024) describe, 'the [cyber] domain is complex, quality data is sparse, [and] affairs are shrouded in secrecy.'…”

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“…Cyber scholarship has, in recent years, embarked on a more empirical turn. Theoretical predictions are ubiquitous, but testing and adjudicating between those predictions are challenging owing to the unique features of cyberspace (Gorwa and Smeets, 2019; Shore, 2022; Whyte, 2018). As Shandler and Canetti (2024) describe, ‘the [cyber] domain is complex, quality data is sparse, [and] affairs are shrouded in secrecy.’ To that end, recent work has attempted to quantify patterns in a number of important issue areas: cyber conflict and escalation (Kostyuk and Zhukov, 2019; Valeriano and Maness, 2015); strategy and capacity (Kostyuk, 2021; Valeriano et al, 2018); proxy warfare (Akoto, 2022; Borghard and Lonergan, 2016; Canfil, 2022; Herzog, 2011; Leal and Musgrave, 2022; Maurer, 2018a); psychology and decisionmaking (Gomez, 2019; Gomez and Whyte, 2022; Gomez and Villar, 2018; Hedgecock and Sukin, 2023; Kostyuk and Wayne, 2021; Shandler et al, 2021, 2022) and more.…”

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Until consensus: Introducing the International Cyber Expression dataset

Canfil

2024

Journal of Peace Research

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Extant scholarship has until now relied on informal-theoretic, case study, and interpretative methods to assess patterns of norm development in cyberspace. Ideally, these accounts would be complemented with more systematic cross-national and longitudinal empirical evidence. To address this gap, this article introduces the International Cyber Expression Dataset. The dataset includes a corpus of more than 34,000 official expressions of view by states and their authorized representatives regarding the international politics of cyberspace. The article describes the sources of these data and demonstrates the dataset’s usefulness, with an Online appendix containing an exploratory analysis of norm convergence. Future research can leverage the dataset to empirically test questions of theory and policy. For example, the dataset can be used to study how foundational theories of norm diffusion apply to cyberspace. It can also be paired with existing cyber conflict datasets to study the conditions under which state practice influences cyber discourse, and vice versa.

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Until consensus: Introducing the International Cyber Expression dataset

Canfil

2024

Journal of Peace Research

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Beyond tit-for-tat in cyberspace: Political warfare and lateral sources of escalation online

Whyte

2020

Eur. j. of int. secur.

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At present, most scholarship on the potential for escalation in cyberspace couches analysis in terms of the technological dynamics of the domain for relative power maneuvering. The result has been a conceptualisation of the logic of operation in cyberspace as one of ‘tit-for-tat’ exchanges motivated by attribution problems and limited opportunity for strategic gain. This article argues that this dominant perspective overlooks alternative notions of how cyber tools are used to influence. This, in turn, has largely led scholars to ignore second-order effects – meaning follow-on effects triggered by a more direct outcome of an initial cyber action – on domestic conditions, institutions, and individual stakeholders. This article uses the case of cyber-enabled political warfare targeting the United States in 2016 to show how escalation can occur as a second-order effect of cyber operations. Specifically, the episode led to a re-evaluation of foreign cyber strategy on the part of American defence thinkers that motivated an offensive shift in doctrine by 2018. The episode also directly affected both the political positions taken by important domestic actors and the attitude of parts of the electorate towards interference, both of which have reinforced the commitment of military planners towards assertive cyber actions.

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Staatliche Cyberkonflikte

Zettl

2023

Politik in Der Digitalen Gesellschaft

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Welche Rolle spielen nichtstaatliche Akteure, sogenannte »Proxys«, in staatlichen Cyberkonflikten? Und wie unterscheidet sich regimetypenspezifisch das (De-)Eskalationsmanagement? Kerstin Zettl-Schabath vergleicht mithilfe eines umfassenden Datensatzes für die Jahre 2000-2019 die staatlichen Cyber-Proxy-Strategien von China, Russland, den USA und Israel. Dabei zeigen sich je nach politischem System deutliche Abweichungen: Autokratien nutzen Proxys als »Puffer« gegenüber Demokratien, um für ihre Taten nicht belangt zu werden. Für Demokratien dagegen können Berichte privater IT-Unternehmen »Täter-Wissen« kommunizieren sowie Handlungsdruck infolge politischer Verantwortungszuweisungen reduzieren.

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Dissecting the Digital World: A Review of the Construction and Constitution of Cyber Conflict Research

Cited by 17 publications

References 23 publications

Until consensus: Introducing the International Cyber Expression dataset

Until consensus: Introducing the International Cyber Expression dataset

Beyond tit-for-tat in cyberspace: Political warfare and lateral sources of escalation online

Staatliche Cyberkonflikte

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