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AbstractHow do emerging technologies affect nuclear stability? In this paper, we use a quasi-experimental cyber-nuclear wargame with 580 players to explore three hypotheses about emerging technologies and nuclear stability: (1) technological uncertainty leads to preemption and escalation; (2) technological uncertainty leads to restraint; and (3) technological certainty leads to escalation through aggressive counterforce campaigns. The wargames suggest that uncertainty and fear about cyber vulnerabilities create no immediate incentives for preemptive nuclear use. The greater danger to strategic stability lies in how overconfidence in cyber exploits incentivizes more aggressive counterforce campaigns and, secondarily, how vulnerabilities encourage predelegation or automation. Both of these effects suggest worrisome relationships between cyber exploits and inadvertent nuclear use on one hand and cyber vulnerabilities and accidental nuclear use on the other hand. Together, these findings reveal the complicated relationship between pathways to escalation and strategic stability, highlighting the role that confidence and perhaps-misplaced certainty—versus uncertainty and fear—play in strategic stability.

Despite a burgeoning focus on cyber and international security, there is still great debate about how cyber operations fit among other military and foreign policy means. Are they a substitution option—a way to create similar effects with different, potentially less risky, means? Or are they a support to other means, meant to enable and increase the efficacy of military operations and foreign policy options? Finally, are they a new complement to existing means—a unique way to influence, coerce, and derive military outcomes? The answer to these questions is significant because how cyber operations are used has implications for crisis stability as well as the ways wars are fought. In order to test these theories of cyber and state power, we use a crisis wargame that examines the use of cyberspace operations across a game series played over two years with 500+ players. We find that, despite a general increase in focus within the game on cyber operations, these operations still have little influence on the overall violence of the crises. Instead, cyber operations are primarily used to shape narratives as a complement to diplomacy prior to war and then as a support to military operations after war has escalated. Cyber operations, therefore, show an increasing and important amount of fizzle but not a lot of bang.

Government, industry, and academia need better tools to explore threats, opportunities, and human interactions in cyberspace. The interactive exercises called cyber wargames are a powerful way to solve complex problems in a digital environment that involves both cooperation and conflict. Cyber Wargaming is the first book to provide both the theories and practical examples needed to successfully build, play, and learn from these interactive exercises. The contributors to this book explain what cyber wargames are, how they work, and why they offer insights that other methods cannot match. The lessons learned are not merely artifacts of these games - they also shed light on how people interpret and interact with cyberspace in real life. This book covers topics such as cyber action during conventional war, information effects in conflict scenarios, individual versus group decision-making, the intersection of cyber conflicts and nuclear crises, business resilience, emerging technologies, and more.