State-enabled cyber campaigns are achieving cumulative, strategic effects on the United States. A lack of transparency limits offensive cyber capabilities from affecting the cost-benefit decisions of malicious cyber actors. However, recent operations suggest the United States can positively attribute malicious cyber activities, impose significant consequences with offensive cyber force, and translate those actions into deterrence of specific malicious activities using public communication. Persistent, public disclosure is necessary for offensive cyberspace operations to deter malicious cyber activities, nested with US strategic guidance, and achievable based on recent cyberspace operations. Transparent Offensive Cyber Persistence combines persistence with post factum, public disclosure of the justification, targets, and impacts of offensive cyber force, exchanging information for deterrence credibility. This work evaluates its suitability, acceptability, feasibility, and risks. Transparent Offensive Cyber Persistence exploits the relative advantages of offense in cyberspace to impose costs directly on malicious cyber actors, compel targets to defend everywhere, dissuade other actors, set a legitimate narrative of consequences for unacceptable malicious cyber activities, and shape international norms.
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