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theses

In 2010, the Pentagon defined cyberspace as an area of warfare joining land, sea, air, and space as fair game for military action. At the time, the U.S. was focused on defending itself against cyberattacks from China and Russia; the countries they deem to be the biggest cyber threats. But, it was later revealed that China and Russia were also involved in offensive cyberwarfare, or the use of cyberweapons, to attack other countries. While cyberwarfare is not a new concern, the offensive strategy of cyberwarfare, specifically the deployment of cyberweapons, is a relatively new and important phenomenon. In this dissertation, I have used a three-prong approach to address the central question: under which conditions is the United States likely to deploy a cyberweapon in a first strike? My hypotheses are that in order for the U.S. to deploy a cyberweapon in a first strike: the target country has to be a perceived adversary that poses a threat; the target has to be in an area that is hard to access by other methods; the cyberweapon may be deployed in order to minimize collateral damage; the cyberweapon may be deployed to prevent or end a war. First, I empirically tested what I classified as 13 cases where the U.S. used or debated about using an offensive cyberweapon from 2001 – 2016. The cases were Stuxnet, Iraq (2007), Shotgiant (2007), Quantum (2008), Turbine (2010), Nitro Zeus, Libya (2011), Pakistan (2011), Syria, North Korea (2014), ISIS (2016), Russia (2016), and Iraq (2003). Next, I employed the poliheuristic theory of foreign policy-decision making to reconstruct the decision-making process for each case study. Then, I conducted 22 confidential, semi-structured interviews to gather information about these case studies as well as further insights about the decision-making process behind deploying a cyberweapon. My findings are that some key conditions affecting deployment were indeed threat, access and collateral damage. My research also appeared to reveal that the authorization process for deployment is similar to that for a nuclear strike process, although the decision-making process cannot be generalized.

ETD_8624

Ph.D.

Includes bibliographical references

by Vijai T. Singh

doi:10.7282/T3988B6H

ETD doctoral

The author owns the copyright to this work.