Seminar with Michael Fischerkeller

On Thursday 7 November 2024 (5pm, UK time), Michael Fischerkeller will join a Chatham House seminar to discuss “Maximizing the Strategic Potential of Cyber Capabilities Across the Full Spectrum of Strategic Competition”

You can register for the event here.

Abstract

Cyber persistence theory argues that core structural features of the cyber strategic environment generate a structural imperative for states to proactively and continuously campaign in and through cyberspace to secure from cyber exploitation their sources of national power and national instruments of power. Campaigning, defined as an on-going series of related operations and activities, maximizes the strategic potential of cyber capabilities in a geopolitical condition of competition through targeting one’s own networks, systems, and devices as well as those of adversaries. States, however, face strategic challenges across the full spectrum of strategic competition—in geopolitical conditions of competition, militarized crisis, and armed conflict. This presentation describes how cyber persistence theory provides insights into how states can maximize the strategic potential of cyber capabilities for and in militarized crises and armed conflicts. In the course of doing so, it addresses claims regarding the potential strategic value of employing cyber capabilities to manage escalation in a crisis and to achieve victory in armed conflict.