Strategic Cyber: Responding to Russian Online Information Warfare
By Matthew J. Flynn, Ph.D.
| December 09, 2019
The success of the democratic world and its citizens depends to a great extent on recognizing one’s strategic advantages. Secure on this high ground, a nation can dictate interstate strategic competition in favor of U.S. national security. In cyberspace, that advantage rests on defending and advancing a U.S. ideological advantage inherent in that platform. The quality of openness ensures the unfolding of confrontation well short of armed conflict and winning this war matters most to those seeking to erode U.S. strategic ascendancy. This paper follows Russia’s progression in its effort to reverse its unfavorable situation in cyberspace, largely by hoping to panic the United States into a series of poor policy decisions. A failure to see openness as the means to thwart this cognitive offensive all but hands Russia a victory. Reversing this outcome stands to blunt cyber tensions from giving rise to a means of setting conditions for a fait accompli and a military clash of arms. With this end in mind, there is much reason for optimism at the strategic level of such a war in cyberspace.
Strategic Cyber: Responding to Russian Online Information Warfare