Cybersecurity & Tech

Bytes, Bombs, and Spies: The Strategic Dimensions of Offensive Cyber Operations

Herb Lin, Amy Zegart
Tuesday, January 15, 2019, 9:01 PM

Today the Brookings Institution is publishing our edited volume, "Bytes, Bombs, and Spies: The Strategic Dimensions of Offensive Cyber Operations." And here is the first intro

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Today the Brookings Institution is publishing our edited volume, "Bytes, Bombs, and Spies: The Strategic Dimensions of Offensive Cyber Operations." And here is the first introductory chapter, in which we overview the books and its arguments.

The book, which grew out of a Hoover Institution workshop in partnership with U.S. Cyber Command, gathers in one place the thinking of more than 20 distinguished researchers from academia and think tanks as well as former policymakers in the Department of Defense and U.S. intelligence community.

Contributors address four important and interrelated themes regarding the strategic dimensions of offensive cyber operations: cyber strategy and doctrine for offensive use of cyber weapons; operational considerations in using cyber weapons; escalation dynamics and deterrence; and the role and relationship of the private sector to offensive cyber operations. All these themes are even more important now than when we began this project. We hope the book will help policy makers understand how best to integrate offensive cyber capabilities with other instruments of military and national power.

Readers of these chapters may agree or disagree with them individually, but taken as a whole, they clearly demonstrate that it is possible to make considerable headway in understanding offensive cyber operations without access to classified information and without needing an entirely new array of analytical concepts and tools. Indeed, many of the questions and issues that attend to the strategic dimensions of offensive cyber operations arise in other kinds of military operations, but because the cyber domain is unlike other domains of conflict in important ways, some of the answers and responses to these questions and issues in the cyber domain are different.

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Herb Lin

Herb Lin

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Dr. Herb Lin is senior research scholar for cyber policy and security at the Center for International Security and Cooperation and Hank J. Holland Fellow in Cyber Policy and Security at the Hoover Institution, both at Stanford University. His research interests relate broadly to policy-related dimensions of cybersecurity and cyberspace, and he is particularly interested in and knowledgeable about the use of offensive operations in cyberspace, especially as instruments of national policy. In addition to his positions at Stanford University, he is Chief Scientist, Emeritus for the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board, National Research Council (NRC) of the National Academies, where he served from 1990 through 2014 as study director of major projects on public policy and information technology, and Adjunct Senior Research Scholar and Senior Fellow in Cybersecurity (not in residence) at the Saltzman Institute for War and Peace Studies in the School for International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. Prior to his NRC service, he was a professional staff member and staff scientist for the House Armed Services Committee (1986-1990), where his portfolio included defense policy and arms control issues. He received his doctorate in physics from MIT.
Amy Zegart

Amy Zegart

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Amy Zegart is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. She is also a professor of political science by courtesy, past co-director of Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation, and a contributing writer at The Atlantic. She specializes in U.S. intelligence, emerging technologies, and national security. Her forthcoming book, Spies, Lies, and Algorithms: The History and Future of American Intelligence, will be published by Princeton University Press in October 2021. She received an AB in East Asian studies magna cum laude from Harvard University and a PhD in political science from Stanford University.

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