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This article considers the unique threat of information warfare and the challenges posed to defense establishments in democratic states that are typically legally limited in their ability to operate in domestic affairs. This author argues that military strategy on information warfare must be informed by understanding the systems of social and political function being targeted by foreign adversaries. Looking to theories of political communication, the author locates such understanding in describing democracies as information systems whose functionality resides in the countervailing operation of key social forces. Defense establishments would do well to develop greater analytic capacity for prediction of attack based on such societal—rather than strategic—factors and incorporate these predictions into efforts to shape adversary behavior in cyberspace, the primary medium via which information warfare is prosecuted today.

AbstractAt 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.

In studying topics in cyber conflict and cyber-security governance, scholars must ask—arguably more so than has been the case with any other emergent research agenda—where the epistemological and ontological value of different methods lies. This article describes the unique, dual methodological challenges inherent in the multifaceted program on global cyber-security and asks how problematic they are for scholarly efforts to construct knowledge about digital dynamics in world affairs. I argue that any answer to this question will vary depending on how one perceives the social science enterprise. While traditional dualistic perspectives on social science imply unique challenges for researcher, a monistic perspective of Weberian objectivity does not. Regardless of one's perspective, however, the most important steps to be taken at the level of the research program are clearly those focused on constructing the trappings of community. To this end, I outline steps that might be taken to develop a range of community-building and -supporting mechanisms that can simultaneously support a micro-foundational approach to research and expose community elements to one another. Doing this stands to better opportunities for the production of knowledge and direct researchers towards fruitful avenues whilst shortening gaps between the ivory tower and the real world.