Going nuclear: The development of American strategic conceptions about cyber conflict

Abstract

ABSTRACT Futurist depictions of cyber-attacks in coming wars often portray them as bolts out of the blue that will cause immense damage to a nation’s warfighting capacity and create chaos among its populace by crippling its essential services. However, those depictions are based more on prophecy than they are on historical realities. The historical development of conceptions about cyber operations explains how those themes came to dominate national security discussions about cyber in the United States. Rather than being self-evident, the themes are a result of the application of early cyber efforts to strategic operations, advocacy that focused on doomsday scenarios to draw attention to cybersecurity problems, and the ease with which cyber threats were tied to the primary strategic narratives of American national security during their development.