Still The International Cyber Super Power

Uploaded on 2025-01-14 in GOVERNMENT-National, GOVERNMENT-Defence, FREE TO VIEW

As the world becomes increasingly interconnected, the strength of a nation's cyber power, the ability to influence and operate within the cyber domain, becomes a defining factor in its global standing. And over the last 30 years cyber capabilities have become a formidable new instrument of national power.

As well as using such capabilities to obtain state secrets from each other, as in traditional espionage, states have also used them for a range of other, more threatening purposes.

These include bolstering their own economic development by stealing intellectual property; threatening to disrupt the financial institutions, oil industries, nuclear plants, power grids and communications infrastructure of states they regard as adversaries. They have also attempted to interfere in democratic processes; degrading and disrupting military capabilities in wartime; and, in one case, constraining the ability of another state to develop nuclear weapons.

So far, the US remains the most cyber capable state and it ranks number one as a world “cyber power” leader, according to a Report from Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.

Since the mid-1990s its leaders have provided clear political direction for the pursuit of national cyber power: in that time it has invested heavily in developing relevant civilian and military capabilities, gained extensive opera- tional experience and developed the world’s strongest digital-industrial base. This is highlighted by the range of US companies capable of detecting and attributing state cyber attacks and the proven sophistication of the US offensive cyber capability, military or otherwise.

US cyber strength is also founded on a world-class cyber intelligence capability with global reach and state-of-the-art cryptographic techniques, and is amplified by highly integrated partnerships with other states that are also amongst the most cyber-capable in the world.

Nevertheless, the ways in which the US wields its cyber power appear politically and legally constrained when compared with its main cyber adversaries, Russia, China, Iran and North Korea. The US has sought to be a responsible offensive cyber actor, governed by international law and at pains to limit potential collateral damage.

The US has also sought to manage its degree of dependence on cyberspace, not only for the purpose of national security, but also for economic and political reasons. This challenge is exacerbated by the complexity of its cyber governance and command-and-control structures, where the large number of agencies involved is a potential impediment to the agility of operational decision-making.

These factors have combined to give the adversaries of the US an edge in the use of unsophisticated cyber techniques that are aimed at subversion but pitched below the legal threshold for an act of aggression that might justify an armed response.

Doctrinal shifts such as persistent engagement and defend forward are designed to redress this imbalance.
Nevertheless, the US performs strongly across all categories of the methodology and is alone in Tier One.
Below the US there is a second tier of seven countries: in alphabetical order they are Australia, Canada, China, France, Israel, Russia and the UK. Each has world-leading strengths in some of the categories in the methodology.

Compared with the other countries in the second tier, the UK and Israel are particularly strong on cyber security, core cyber intelligence, including crypto-graphic capability, and the development and use of sophisticated offensive cyber capability.

With clear political direction, both benefit from a whole-of-society approach to cyber security with a strong and growing cyber security industrial base and innovative approaches to increasing their skilled capacity.
They also possess a vibrant technical-innovation and start-up ecosystem. Israel’s cyber-intelligence strength appears to be heavily focused on its region, where it has no equal.

The evidence indicates that the UK, on the other hand, has a cyber- intelligence capability with a broader, worldwide reach. The UK also has two of the 51 tech or telecoms companies that appear in the 2020 Fortune Global 500, while Israel has none.

Both countries lag behind the US, Japan, China and others in their capacity to build future Internet infrastructure; both compensate for a comparative lack of cyber mass through close partnerships with the US, with each other and with other cyber capable nations; and both have conducted offensive cyber operations jointly with the US.

Today, the US remains the most capable cyber state largely due to significant investments and clear political direction for the pursuit of national cyber power since the mid-1990s. Moreover, the US possesses a world class cyber intelligence capability with global reach and is amplified by integrated partnerships with other highly cyber capable states.

Lonergan & Schneider / OUP | C4ISRNET | US Defence Dept

Image: Ideogram

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