Cyber Statecraft Initiative Director Jason Healey writes for Defense News on how cyber deterrence has been working for decades:

Despite the mainstream view of cyberwar professionals and theorists, cyber deterrence is not only possible but has been working for decades.

Cyberwar professionals are in the midst of a decades-old debate on how America could deter adversaries from attacking us in cyberspace. In 2010, then-Deputy Defense Secretary Bill Lynn summed up the prevailing view that “Cold War deterrence models do not apply to cyberspace” because of low barriers to entry and the anonymity of Internet attacks. Cyber attacks, unlike intercontinental missiles, don’t have a return address.

But this view is too narrow and technical. The history of how nations have actually fought (or not fought) conflicts in cyberspace makes it clear deterrence is not only theoretically possible, but is actually keeping an upper threshold to cyber hostilities.

Read the full article here.

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