The signifi cance of attribution to cyberspace coercion: A political perspective

The question of cyber deterrence, or “What and how do you deter malicious actions in cyberspace?” has been hotly debated over the last few years. Stories of massive intellectual property theft and identity theft cases have surfaced in the Western news spurring several seminars and writings on the subject. Unfortunately, the discussion to date has not moved us effectively toward a comprehensive framework for building a coercion strategy. Most importantly, the debate has failed to accurately characterize the coercion challenge. In most cases confronting developed nations, the more pressing issue is not deterring an actor from choosing to conduct hostile intrusions in cyberspace but compelling the actor to stop conducting intrusions that already have been highly successful. Accurately recognizing the existing dynamic changes coercion calculations in several ways, such as the significance of positive attribution - an important component of coercion theory. Although the proposed coercion strategy framework in this paper will necessarily be less than comprehensive, one important outcome will be that the issue of unequivocal attribution may not be as critical as previously suggested.