Nothing New Under the Sun - Benefiting from the Great Lessons of History to Develop a Coherent Cyberspace

Thousands of cyberspace attacks occur each day and the likelihood of a significant incident in the near future is high. The development of a coherent cyberstrategy has been slow in coming, however. This delay often emanates from the perception that cyberspace represents such a pervasive revolution in the conduct of warfare that successful deterrence strategies of the past are not applicable. Currently, the benefits for committing malicious actions in cyberspace far outweigh the risk of punishment. The thesis of this paper is that the U.S. government can follow a path to an effective cyberspace deterrence strategy by examining key periods in its past, countering the contemporary hypothesis that the unique nature of cyberspace alters warfare in such a way that historical approaches to deterrence no longer apply. Today, existing threats in cyberspace are the most pressing and compelling test of our thinking and the ten principles of cyberspace deterrence gleaned from the historical analysis of warfighting set the foundation for a solution.