Fighting in Cyberspace: Internet Access and the Substitutability of Cyber and Military Operations

• Published date: 01 January 2024
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/00220027231160993
• Author: Nadiya Kostyuk,Erik Gartzke
• Date: 01 January 2024
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Journal of Conf‌lict Resolution

2024, Vol. 68(1) 80–107

© The Author(s) 2023

Article reuse guidelines:

sagepub.com/journals-permissions

DOI: 10.1177/00220027231160993

journals.sagepub.com/home/jcr

Fighting in Cyberspace:

Internet Access and the

Substitutability of Cyber and

Military Operations

Nadiya Kostyuk

1

and Erik Gartzke

2

Abstract

Pundits debate whether conf‌lict in cyberspace is more likely to trigger or preempt

conf‌lict in other domains. We consider a third possibility. Rather than directly

complementing or substituting for traditional forms of conf‌lict, the Internet could

separately affect both virtual and kinetic dispute behavior. Specif‌ically, we argue that a

country’s increasing Internet access causes it to engage in aggressive cyberspace

behavior more often. At the same time, economic and social changes associated with

the information age reduce the utility of pursuing more traditional forms of conf‌lict.

Cyberspace offers an attractive domain in which to shape the balance of power, in-

terests, and information in a technological era, while territorial conquest has become

somewhat anachronistic. We test our theory using an innovative estimation approach,

applied to panel data on cyber versus conventional disputes. Our f‌indings conf‌irm this

indirect substitutability between cyber and conventional conf‌lict.

Keywords

(cyber) conf‌lict, complementarity, substitutability, independence, Internet access

1

School of Public Policy and School of Cybersecurity and Privacy, Georgia Institute of Technology, USA

2

University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA

Corresponding Author:

Nadiya Kostyuk, School of Public Policy and School of Cybersecurity and Privacy, Georgia Institute of

Technology, USA.

Email: nkostyuk3@gatech.edu

In recent decades, governments have begun to consider cyberspace as yet another

domain in which to pursue political competition. Most of the features of this new

domain remain subject to speculation. Nevertheless, it is possible to investigate certain

aspects of cyber conf‌lict systematically. Here, we focus on the relationship between

cyber-operations (COs)

1

and conventional disputes

2

as a tractable, useful, and con-

sequential point of departure for a fuller understanding of this important topic. What

determines when states use COs along side, or alternately instead of, traditional tools

of conf‌lict? Could the relationship between cyber and conventional conf‌lict prove

complex or indirect? Current thinking on the relationship between cyber and con-

ventional conf‌lict is somewhat dialectical. Cyber “revolutionists”characterize COs as

“weapons of tomorrow”that will play a decisive role in future military conf‌licts (Clarke

and Knake 2010;Kello 2013). Since COs can exploit vulnerabilities about which a

target may initially be unaware, they offer the potential to quickly disrupt an opponent’s

command and control, hinder communications, or otherwise obstruct government

activities and military operations. As COs rise in prominence and performance, it is

even possible that warfare in cyberspace will supplant traditional forms of conf‌lict.

3

Yet, there are reasons to question such causal claims, or at least qualify their

empirical scope or signif‌icance. Cyber “evolutionists”argue in contrast that conf‌lict in

cyberspace is not likely to supplant other forms of conf‌lict. Since cyber disruptions tend

to be temporary and limited, they may only prove adequate to coerce targets in rel-

atively minor contests (Gartzke 2013;Rid 2012;Valeriano, Jensen, and Maness 2018).

Because of this, and because conventional capabilities are often required to secure

cyber gains, evolutionists argue that COs are better thought of as compl ements to

traditional modes of combat, rather than as substitutes.

The current debate thus focuses on different interpretations of the direct relationship

between cyber conf‌lict and other domains of disputation. But existing theories fail to

consider the possibility of an indirect relationship between cyber and conventional

conf‌lict. Previous studies also fail to provide systematic evidence to support (or refute)

any claims linking virtual and terrestrial conf‌lict behavior. We introduce a variable—a

country’s Internet access—that indirectly links both forms of conf‌lict. We argue that

with an increase in a country’s Internet access, it is more likely to initiate or become a

target of cyber conf‌lict, but that it is also less likely to initiate or become a target of

conventional conf‌lict. The Internet not only makes virtual warfare possible, but it also

shapes the issues over which states and citizens compete (e.g., rising value of

information).

To test our theory, we introduce a novel estimation approach to evaluate com-

plementarity and substitutability in different forms of conf‌lict behavior. This approach

allows us to differentiate between concurrent and sequential

4

use of cyber and con-

ventional military operations, making it possible to establish whether and how virtual

and conventional conf‌lict each impact the other. We apply our estimation approach to

two datasets: the Dyadic Cyber Incident Dataset (Valeriano, Jensen, and Maness 2018)

and the Militarized Interstate Disputes (MIDs) dataset (Maoz 2005).

Kostyuk and Gartzke 81