Cyber Operations in Conflict: Lessons from Analytic Wargames

This article reports key findings generated by the use of wargames – “an innovative methodology for investigating competition among diverse actors” – to determine the role of cyber operations and “likely strategic preferences” in a variety of crisis scenarios. The authors developed two games, Island Impact and Netwar, and ran them first with university students and security professionals before turning to a survey experiment with 3,000 Internet users. The results of the experiment indicated the use of cyber capabilities produced a moderating influence on conflict escalation “in the shadows,” meaning cyber operations tended to resemble covert acts rather than bombastic, traditional warfighting campaigns. The article also lists other key findings, including: (a) Cyber exchanges may not be escalatory, (b) Cyber deterrence was not the primary focus of cyber behavior, (c) Power differentials have little influence over decision-making, and (d) Regime type often informed strategy choices of players while the nature of the conflict had limited impact on their use of cyber capabilities.