The United States (US) has a long history of proportional and in-kind response to adversary aggressions. If a US aircraft is shot down, the US will bomb anti-aircraft emplacements and runways or attain air superiority by clearing the skies of other fighter aircraft. If hostile actions are committed in cyberspace, the US will respond with limited cyberspace actions in an attempt to restrain escalation to a kinetic conflict. The US has failed to learn the lesson that conflict in the cyber age is inherently asymmetric and that cyber attack responses need not be quid-pro-quo. There is a range of diplomatic, economic, and information options for effective responses that follows the international legal principle of proportionality and do not necessarily result in escalation to the kinetic actions of warfare. The US should use, and be willing to target in others, all the DIME instruments of national power – i.e., diplomacy, information, military, and economic - to respond to and prevent future aggressions in cyberspace.
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