Breaking Defense quotes Cyber Statecraft Director Jason Healey and cites an Atlantic Council event on cyber deterrence:
“Cyber seems so weird and different [that] it’s really inhibited seeing which of the old laws and ways of thinking about it might apply,” said Jason Healey, the Atlantic Council’s in-house cyber strategist. In fact, he argued, “the more strategically significant the conflict, the more similar it is to conflict in the air, land, and sea.”
Notably, the Russians — widely considered capable of out-hacking even the Chinese — have not launched a purely online offensive since Estonia in 2007, when technical success in shutting down websites not only failed to intimidate Tallinn but outright backfired on a strategic level, scaring NATO into taking cyber seriously. Ever since, in Georgia, Crimea, and now eastern Ukraine, the Kremlin has subordinated cyber to propaganda and good old-fashioned men with guns.
“I’m actually quite hopeful,” Healey said. NATO has been willing to brush aside Russia’s flimsy denials and hold the Kremlin accountable for both the actions of its insignia-less “little green men” in Crimea and its “patriotic hackers” in Estonia. “We will not be tricked,” he said.