Toward a Cyberconflict Studies Research Agenda

In January 2003, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology hosted a workshop attended by dynamic mix of computer security professionals, political scientists, economists, engineers, policy wonks, and a few notable government officials (including then-"cyber czar" Richard Clarke). The main topic of discussion was the purpose and scope of a new cross-disciplinary community--the Cyber Conflict Studies Association--which its founders hoped would provide the basis for a professional field of inquiry on cyberconflict. Although the participants hotly debated the analogy’s appropriateness, most agreed that they wanted to build something similar to the academic and policy field of nuclear conflict studies that developed during the Cold War. In the two years since the initial meeting, the community has held numerous research symposia on critical cyberconflict topics, but the field still needs to advance focused and policy-relevant research on the strategic and technical aspects of cyberconflict. This article represents a first cut at a cyberconflict research agenda.