Zero Days Negative mi 7

oco’s advantage

1nc treaties/norms

Current mechanisms solve—any real treaty would be impossible to enforce

Lindsay 12 [Jon Lindsay, a research fellow at the University of California Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation at UC-San Diego; June 8, 2012; “International Cyberwar Treaty Would Quickly Be Hacked to Bits,” USNews.com; http://www.usnews.com/debate-club/should-there-be-an-international-treaty-on-cyberwarfare/international-cyberwar-treaty-would-quickly-be-hacked-to-bits] //khirn

A cyberweapon (like Stuxnet, which damaged Iranian uranium enrichment) is not like a nuclear bomb or a gun that can be used to damage many different types of targets all around the world. Traditional weapons can be tested on a range, stockpiled in an arsenal, and fired predictably at their targets in wartime. A cyberweapon, by contrast, must be carefully engineered against any particular target, and this requires a lot of intelligence, technical expertise, test infrastructure, and operational management. A cyberattack is less like a strategic bombing attack delivered by a formidable force of airplanes and missiles and more like a special operation staged by a daring band of commandos far behind enemy lines. A cyberweapon for espionage (like the spyware Duqu and Flame) likewise require lots of planning and expertise to control. Covert operations are risky gambles (they might fail or be compromised if mistakes in planning or execution are made), and the damage they cause is far more unpredictable than that of traditional weapons. States resort to covert action options only when they don't have the will or ability (for either material or political reasons) to use overt force. When states act covertly, they break the domestic laws of other states (which is why spies can be caught and tried). Usually states moderate their ambitions for covert action because they don't want to trigger escalatory retaliation in the event the operation is compromised. Cyberoperations, like other types of intelligence and covert operations, take place in the shadows. An international treaty on cyberweapons would be like an international treaty against espionage and covert action. This is totally unenforceable, since such activity is designed to evade detection and attribution. The rhetoric of cyberwar is frightening, but the reality is more complicated. A world without cyberweapons is probably more desirable, but an international treaty is not the way to get there. I am not a lawyer (I write as an international security scholar), but I suspect that existing international law of war and legal mechanisms for managing covert operations in this country are probably sufficient, or at most need just marginal adjustments, in order to deal with the problems posed by cyberweapons. Cyberwar is not a revolutionary development, but a complicating electronic elaboration on clandestine and covert operations, and states have been conducting these for centuries.

Opponents would cheat

Lewis 12 [James, Director of the Technology and Public Policy Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, June 8, 2012, “A Cybersecurity Treaty is a Bad Idea,” USNews.com, http://www.usnews.com/debate-club/should-there-be-an-international-treaty-on-cyberwarfare/a-cybersecurity-treaty-is-a-bad-idea] //khirn

With all the excitement over Flame, Stuxnet, and the rest, a spokesperson for the Russian government has called for a global cybersecurity treaty. It's a bad idea that dates back to the 1990s. Back then, American academics proposed a complex legal instrument for cybersecurity whose distant ancestor appeared to be to the Kellogg-Briand Pact of the 1920s, where nations renounced war as an instrument of policy. A cybertreaty made about as much sense. Russia also proposed a cybertreaty about the same time, and introduced a draft in the United Nations in what was to become a recurring annual exercise that could never quite achieve consensus. A cybertreaty at first attracted support in the General Assembly, but there has been no progress because cybertreaties are unimplementable. How would any country address serious issues in treaty compliance and verification for cyber capabilities? A cybersecurity treaty would be unworkable if it went much beyond the existing constraints on the use of force found in international laws, if only because potential opponents are likely to cheat and it would be hard to detect this. Important definitional issues have never been resolved, probably because they are unresolvable. A commitment to limit "information weapons" is not very useful if you cannot say what they are, and efforts to define these "weapons" quickly run afoul of the overwhelmingly commercial use and availability of information technologies. Is a teenager with a laptop a weapon? How about a newspaper or magazine? A few countries would say yes. The international community has always looked studiously away from any treaty trying to banning espionage—it's a nonstarter, and Russia is the leading opponent of any real agreement to cooperate in fighting cybercrime. The idea of a treaty did not make sense in the 1990s and it does not make sense now. There are serious discussions underway on reducing the risk of cyberconflict, including bilateral talks between the United States and Russia, and the United States and China. The United Nation has a group of experts meeting later this summer. Many regional groups, like the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe or the Asian Regional Forum are talking about norms, confidence building measures and other kinds of agreement to limit cyber attack. Countries recognize that there is increasing risk that cyber incidents like Flame could lead to misperception or miscalculation that could escalate into more damaging conflict. But a treaty? Kellogg Briand is still in force and there has never been a war since, has there?

1nc cyberwar

Deterrence and rapid response check

Fox 11 [Assistant Editor, InnovationNewsDaily, 2 July 2011, “Why Cyberwar Is Unlikely ,” http://www.securitynewsdaily.com/cyberwar-unlikely-deterrence-cyber-war-0931] //khirn

In the two decades since cyberwar first became possible, there hasn't been a single event that politicians, generals and security experts agree on as having passed the threshold for strategic cyberwar. In fact, the attacks that have occurred have fallen so far short of a proper cyberwar that many have begun to doubt that cyberwarfare is even possible. The reluctance to engage in strategic cyberwarfare stems mostly from the uncertain results such a conflict would bring, the lack of motivation on the part of the possible combatants and their shared inability to defend against counterattacks. Many of the systems that an aggressive cyberattack would damage are actually as valuable to any potential attacker as they would be to the victim. The five countries capable of large-scale cyberwar (Israel, the U.S., the U.K., Russia and China) have more to lose if a cyberwar were to escalate into a shooting war than they would gain from a successful cyberattack. "The half-dozen countries that have cyber capability are deterred from cyberwar because of the fear of the American response. Nobody wants this to spiral out of control," said James Lewis, senior fellow and director of technology and public policy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C. "The countries that are capable of doing this don't have a reason to," Lewis added. "Chinese officials have said to me, 'Why would we bring down Wall Street when we own so much of it?' They like money almost as much as we do." Big deterrent: retaliation Deterrence plays a major factor in preventing cyberwar. Attacks across the Internet would favor the aggressor so heavily that no country has developed an effective defense. Should one country initiate a cyberattack, the victim could quickly counter-attack, leaving both countries equally degraded, Lewis told InnovationNewsDaily. Even if an attacker were to overcome his fear of retaliation, the low rate of success would naturally give him pause. Any cyberattack would target the types of complex systems that could collapse on their own, such as electrical systems or banking networks. But experience gained in fixing day-to-day problems on those systems would allow the engineers who maintain them to quickly undo damage caused by even the most complex cyberattack, said George Smith, a senior fellow at Globalsecurity.org in Alexandria, Va. "You mean to tell me that the people who work the electrical system 24 hours a day don't respond to problems? What prevents people from turning the lights right back on?" Smith told SecurityNewsDaily. "And attacks on the financial system have always been a non-starter for me. I mean, [in 2008] the financial system attacked the U.S.!"

No real cyber aggression – it’s paranoia

Barnett 13 [Thomas, special assistant for strategic futures in the DOD's Office of Force Transformation from 2001 to 2003, chief analyst for Wikistrat, March/April 2013, “Think Again: The Pentagon,” Foreign Policy, http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/03/04/the_pentagon?page=full] //khirn

As for cyber serving as a stand-alone war-fighting domain, there you'll find the debates no less theological in their intensity. After serving as senior managing director for half a dozen years at a software firm that specializes in securing supply chains, I'm deeply skeptical. Given the uncontrollable nature of cyberweapons (see: Stuxnet's many permutations), I view them as the 21st century's version of chemical weapons -- nice to have, but hard to use. Another way to look at it is to simply call a spade a spade: Cyberwarfare is nothing more than espionage and sabotage updated for the digital era. Whatever cyberwar turns out to be in the national security realm, it will always be dwarfed by the industrial variants -- think cyberthieves, not cyberwarriors. But you wouldn't know it from the panicky warnings from former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and the generals about the imminent threat of a "cyber Pearl Harbor."

Reject their lashout impact – nobody’s that stupid

Lewis 10 [James Andrew, “The Cyber War Has Not Begun,” Center for Strategic and International Studies, March, csis.org/files/publication/100311_TheCyberWarHasNotBegun.pdf] //khirn

Expanded attention to cybersecurity is a good thing, but it seems that it is difficult to discuss this topic without exaggeration. We are not in a „cyber war‟. War is the use of military force to attack another nation and damage or destroy its capability and will to resist. Cyber war would involve an effort by another nation or a politically motivated group to use cyber attacks to attain political ends. No nation has launched a cyber attack or cyber war against the United States. Indeed, it would be a bold nation that would do so. A deliberate attack on the United States could trigger a violent if not devastating response. No nation would be foolish enough to send a missile, aircraft or commando team to attack critical infrastructure in this country. The same logic applies to cyber attack. Foreign leaders will not lightly begin a war with the United States and the risk of cyber war is too high for frivolous or spontaneous engagement.

Zero impact to cyber-attacks --- overwhelming consensus of qualified authors goes neg

Gray 13 [Colin S., Prof. of International Politics and Strategic Studies @ the University of Reading and External Researcher @ the Strategic Studies Institute @ the U.S. Army War College, April, “Making Strategic Sense of Cyber Power: Why the Sky Is Not Falling,” U.S. Army War College Press, http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pdffiles/PUB1147.pdf] //khirn

CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS: THE SKY IS NOT FALLING This analysis has sought to explore, identify, and explain the strategic meaning of cyber power. The organizing and thematic question that has shaped and driven the inquiry has been “So what?” Today we all do cyber, but this behavior usually has not been much informed by an understanding that reaches beyond the tactical and technical. I have endeavored to analyze in strategic terms what is on offer from the largely technical and tactical literature on cyber. What can or might be done and how to go about doing it are vitally important bodies of knowledge. But at least as important is understanding what cyber, as a fifth domain of warfare, brings to national security when it is considered strategically. Military history is stocked abundantly with examples of tactical behavior un - guided by any credible semblance of strategy. This inquiry has not been a campaign to reveal what cy ber can and might do; a large literature already exists that claims fairly convincingly to explain “how to . . .” But what does cyber power mean, and how does it fit strategically, if it does? These Conclusions and Rec ommendations offer some understanding of this fifth geography of war in terms that make sense to this strategist, at least. 1. Cyber can only be an enabler of physical effort. Stand-alone (popularly misnamed as “strategic”) cyber action is inherently grossly limited by its immateriality. The physicality of conflict with cyber’s human participants and mechanical artifacts has not been a passing phase in our species’ strategic history. Cyber action, quite independent of action on land, at sea, in the air, and in orbital space, certainly is possible. But the strategic logic of such behavior, keyed to anticipated success in tactical achievement, is not promising. To date, “What if . . .” speculation about strategic cyber attack usually is either contextually too light, or, more often, contextually unpersuasive. 49 However, this is not a great strategic truth, though it is a judgment advanced with considerable confidence. Although societies could, of course, be hurt by cyber action, it is important not to lose touch with the fact, in Libicki’s apposite words, that “[i]n the absence of physical combat, cyber war cannot lead to the occupation of territory. It is almost inconceivable that a sufficiently vigorous cyber war can overthrow the adversary’s government and replace it with a more pliable one.” 50 In the same way that the concepts of sea war, air war, and space war are fundamentally unsound, so also the idea of cyber war is unpersuasive. It is not impossible, but then, neither is war conducted only at sea, or in the air, or in space. On the one hand, cyber war may seem more probable than like environmentally independent action at sea or in the air. After all, cyber warfare would be very unlikely to harm human beings directly, let alone damage physically the machines on which they depend. These near-facts (cyber attack might cause socially critical machines to behave in a rogue manner with damaging physical consequences) might seem to ren - der cyber a safer zone of belligerent engagement than would physically violent action in other domains. But most likely there would be serious uncertainties pertaining to the consequences of cyber action, which must include the possibility of escalation into other domains of conflict. Despite popular assertions to the contrary, cyber is not likely to prove a precision weapon anytime soon. 51 In addition, assuming that the political and strategic contexts for cyber war were as serious as surely they would need to be to trigger events warranting plausible labeling as cyber war, the distinctly limited harm likely to follow from cyber assault would hardly appeal as prospectively effective coercive moves. On balance, it is most probable that cyber’s strategic future in war will be as a contribut - ing enabler of effectiveness of physical efforts in the other four geographies of conflict. Speculation about cyber war, defined strictly as hostile action by net - worked computers against networked computers, is hugely unconvincing. 2. Cyber defense is difficult, but should be sufficiently effective. The structural advantages of the offense in cyber conflict are as obvious as they are easy to overstate. Penetration and exploitation, or even attack, would need to be by surprise. It can be swift almost beyond the imagination of those encultured by the traditional demands of physical combat. Cyber attack may be so stealthy that it escapes notice for a long while, or it might wreak digital havoc by com - plete surprise. And need one emphasize, that at least for a while, hostile cyber action is likely to be hard (though not quite impossible) to attribute with a cy - berized equivalent to a “smoking gun.” Once one is in the realm of the catastrophic “What if . . . ,” the world is indeed a frightening place. On a personal note, this defense analyst was for some years exposed to highly speculative briefings that hypothesized how unques - tionably cunning plans for nuclear attack could so promptly disable the United States as a functioning state that our nuclear retaliation would likely be still - born. I should hardly need to add that the briefers of these Scary Scenarios were obliged to make a series of Heroic Assumptions. The literature of cyber scare is more than mildly reminiscent of the nuclear attack stories with which I was assailed in the 1970s and 1980s. As one may observe regarding what Winston Churchill wrote of the disaster that was the Gallipoli campaign of 1915, “[t]he terrible ‘Ifs’ accumulate.” 52 Of course, there are dangers in the cyber domain. Not only are there cyber-competent competitors and enemies abroad; there are also Americans who make mistakes in cyber operation. Furthermore, there are the manufacturers and constructors of the physical artifacts behind (or in, depending upon the preferred definition) cyber - space who assuredly err in this and that detail. The more sophisticated—usually meaning complex—the code for cyber, the more certain must it be that mistakes both lurk in the program and will be made in digital communication. What I have just outlined minimally is not a reluc - tant admission of the fallibility of cyber, but rather a statement of what is obvious and should be anticipat - ed about people and material in a domain of war. All human activities are more or less harassed by friction and carry with them some risk of failure, great or small. A strategist who has read Clausewitz, especially Book One of On War , 53 will know this. Alternatively, anyone who skims my summary version of the general theory of strategy will note that Dictum 14 states explicitly that “Strategy is more difficult to devise and execute than are policy, operations, and tactics: friction of all kinds comprise phenomena inseparable from the mak - ing and execution of strategies.” 54 Because of its often widely distributed character, the physical infrastruc - ture of an enemy’s cyber power is typically, though not invariably, an impracticable target set for physical assault. Happily, this probable fact should have only annoying consequences. The discretionary nature and therefore the variable possible characters feasible for friendly cyberspace(s), mean that the more danger - ous potential vulnerabilities that in theory could be the condition of our cyber-dependency ought to be avoidable at best, or bearable and survivable at worst. Libicki offers forthright advice on this aspect of the subject that deserves to be taken at face value: [T]here is no inherent reason that improving informa - tion technologies should lead to a rise in the amount of critical information in existence (for example, the names of every secret agent). Really critical information should never see a computer; if it sees a computer, it should not be one that is networked; and if the computer is networked, it should be air-gapped. Cyber defense admittedly is difficult to do, but so is cyber offense. To quote Libicki yet again, “[i]n this medium [cyberspace] the best defense is not necessarily a good offense; it is usually a good defense.” 56 Unlike the geostrategic context for nuclear-framed competition in U.S.–Soviet/Russian rivalry, the geographical domain of cyberspace definitely is defensible. Even when the enemy is both clever and lucky, it will be our own design and operating fault if he is able to do more than disrupt and irritate us temporarily. When cyber is contextually regarded properly— which means first, in particular, when it is viewed as but the latest military domain for defense planning—it should be plain to see that cyber performance needs to be good enough rather than perfect. 57 Our Landpower, sea power, air power, and prospectively our space systems also will have to be capable of accepting combat damage and loss, then recovering and carrying on. There is no fundamental reason that less should be demanded of our cyber power. Second, given that cyber is not of a nature or potential character at all likely to parallel nuclear dangers in the menace it could con - tain, we should anticipate international cyber rivalry to follow the competitive dynamic path already fol - lowed in the other domains in the past. Because the digital age is so young, the pace of technical change and tactical invention can be startling. However, the mechanization RMA of the 1920s and 1930s recorded reaction to the new science and technology of the time that is reminiscent of the cyber alarmism that has flour - ished of recent years. 58 We can be confident that cyber defense should be able to function well enough, given the strength of political, military, and commercial motivation for it to do so. The technical context here is a medium that is a constructed one, which provides air-gapping options for choice regarding the extent of networking. Naturally, a price is paid in convenience for some closing off of possible cyberspace(s), but all important defense decisions involve choice, so what is novel about that? There is nothing new about accepting some limitations on utility as a price worth paying for security. 3. Intelligence is critically important, but informa - tion should not be overvalued. The strategic history of cyber over the past decade confirms what we could know already from the science and technology of this new domain for conflict. Specifically, cyber power is not technically forgiving of user error. Cyber warriors seeking criminal or military benefit require precise information if their intended exploits are to succeed. Lucky guesses should not stumble upon passwords, while efforts to disrupt electronic Supervisory Con - trol and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems ought to be unable to achieve widespread harmful effects. But obviously there are practical limits to the air-gap op - tion, given that control (and command) systems need to be networks for communication. However, Internet connection needs to be treated as a potential source of serious danger. It is one thing to be able to be an electronic nuisance, to annoy, disrupt, and perhaps delay. But it is quite another to be capable of inflicting real persisting harm on the fighting power of an enemy. Critically important military computer networks are, of course, accessible neither to the inspired amateur outsider, nor to the malignant political enemy. Easy passing reference to a hypothetical “cyber Pearl Harbor” reflects both poor history and ignorance of contemporary military common sense. Critical potential military (and other) targets for cyber attack are extremely hard to access and influence (I believe and certainly hope), and the technical knowledge, skills, and effort required to do serious harm to national security is forbiddingly high. This is not to claim, foolishly, that cyber means absolutely could not secure near-catastrophic results. However, it is to say that such a scenario is extremely improbable. Cyber defense is advancing all the time, as is cyber offense, of course. But so discretionary in vital detail can one be in the making of cyberspace, that confidence—real confidence—in cyber attack could not plausibly be high. It should be noted that I am confining this particular discussion to what rather idly tends to be called cyber war. In political and strategic practice, it is unlikely that war would or, more importantly, ever could be restricted to the EMS. Somewhat rhetorically, one should pose the question: Is it likely (almost anything, strictly, is possible) that cyber war with the potential to inflict catastrophic damage would be allowed to stand unsupported in and by action in the other four geographical domains of war? I believe not. Because we have told ourselves that ours uniquely is the Information Age, we have become unduly respectful of the potency of this rather slippery catch-all term. As usual, it is helpful to contextualize the al - legedly magical ingredient, information, by locating it properly in strategic history as just one important element contributing to net strategic effectiveness. This mild caveat is supported usefully by recognizing the general contemporary rule that information per se harms nothing and nobody. The electrons in cyber - ized conflict have to be interpreted and acted upon by physical forces (including agency by physical human beings). As one might say, intelligence (alone) sinks no ship; only men and machines can sink ships! That said, there is no doubt that if friendly cyber action can infiltrate and misinform the electronic informa - tion on which advisory weaponry and other machines depend, considerable warfighting advantage could be gained. I do not intend to join Clausewitz in his dis - dain for intelligence, but I will argue that in strategic affairs, intelligence usually is somewhat uncertain. 59 Detailed up-to-date intelligence literally is essential for successful cyber offense, but it can be healthily sobering to appreciate that the strategic rewards of intelligence often are considerably exaggerated. The basic reason is not hard to recognize. Strategic success is a complex endeavor that requires adequate perfor - mances by many necessary contributors at every level of conflict (from the political to the tactical). When thoroughly reliable intelligence on the en - emy is in short supply, which usually is the case, the strategist finds ways to compensate as best he or she can. The IT-led RMA of the past 2 decades was fueled in part by the prospect of a quality of military effec - tiveness that was believed to flow from “dominant battle space knowledge,” to deploy a familiar con - cept. 60 While there is much to be said in praise of this idea, it is not unreasonable to ask why it has been that our ever-improving battle space knowledge has been compatible with so troubled a course of events in the 2000s in Iraq and Afghanistan. What we might have misunderstood is not the value of knowledge, or of the information from which knowledge is quarried, or even the merit in the IT that passed information and knowledge around. Instead, we may well have failed to grasp and grip understanding of the whole context of war and strategy for which battle space knowledge unquestionably is vital. One must say “vital” rather than strictly essential, because relatively ignorant armies can and have fought and won despite their ig - norance. History requires only that one’s net strategic performance is superior to that of the enemy. One is not required to be deeply well informed about the en - emy. It is historically quite commonplace for armies to fight in a condition of more-than-marginal reciprocal and strategic cultural ignorance. Intelligence is king in electronic warfare, but such warfare is unlikely to be solely, or even close to solely, sovereign in war and its warfare, considered overall as they should be. 4. Why the sky will not fall. More accurately, one should say that the sky will not fall because of hostile action against us in cyberspace unless we are improb - ably careless and foolish. David J. Betz and Tim Ste vens strike the right note when they conclude that “[i]f cyberspace is not quite the hoped-for Garden of Eden, it is also not quite the pestilential swamp of the imagination of the cyber-alarmists.” 61 Our understanding of cyber is high at the technical and tactical level, but re - mains distinctly rudimentary as one ascends through operations to the more rarified altitudes of strategy and policy. Nonetheless, our scientific, technological, and tactical knowledge and understanding clearly indicates that the sky is not falling and is unlikely to fall in the future as a result of hostile cyber action. This analysis has weighed the more technical and tactical literature on cyber and concludes, not simply on balance, that cyber alarmism has little basis save in the imagination of the alarmists. There is military and civil peril in the hostile use of cyber, which is why we must take cyber security seriously, even to the point of buying redundant capabilities for a range of command and control systems. 62 So seriously should we regard cyber danger that it is only prudent to as - sume that we will be the target for hostile cyber action in future conflicts, and that some of that action will promote disruption and uncertainty in the damage it will cause. That granted, this analysis recommends strongly that the U.S. Army, and indeed the whole of the U.S. Government, should strive to comprehend cyber in context. Approached in isolation as a new technol - ogy, it is not unduly hard to be over impressed with its potential both for good and harm. But if we see networked computing as just the latest RMA in an episodic succession of revolutionary changes in the way information is packaged and communicated, the computer-led IT revolution is set where it belongs, in historical context. In modern strategic history, there has been only one truly game-changing basket of tech - nologies, those pertaining to the creation and deliv - ery of nuclear weapons. Everything else has altered the tools with which conflict has been supported and waged, but has not changed the game. The nuclear revolution alone raised still-unanswered questions about the viability of interstate armed conflict. How - ever, it would be accurate to claim that since 1945, methods have been found to pursue fairly traditional political ends in ways that accommodate nonuse of nuclear means, notwithstanding the permanent pres - ence of those means. The light cast by general strategic theory reveals what requires revealing strategically about networked computers. Once one sheds some of the sheer wonder at the seeming miracle of cyber’s ubiquity, instanta - neity, and (near) anonymity, one realizes that cyber is just another operational domain, though certainly one very different from the others in its nonphysi - cality in direct agency. Having placed cyber where it belongs, as a domain of war, next it is essential to recognize that its nonphysicality compels that cyber should be treated as an enabler of joint action, rather than as an agent of military action capable of behav - ing independently for useful coercive strategic effect. There are stand-alone possibilities for cyber action, but they are not convincing as attractive options either for or in opposition to a great power, let alone a superpower. No matter how intriguing the scenario design for cyber war strictly or for cyber warfare, the logic of grand and military strategy and a common sense fueled by understanding of the course of strategic history, require one so to contextualize cyber war that its independence is seen as too close to absurd to merit much concern.

Cyberwar won’t escalate – low probability, current defense checks, and too difficult to coordinate

Gartzke & Lindsay, PhD, 15 (Erik (Associate professor at UC San Diego) and Jon R (PhD at MIT), June 22,2015, Weaving Tangled Webs: Offense,

Defense, and Deception in Cyberspace, Taylor and Francis Online, http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09636412.2015.1038188#.VYsDgvlVhBc, pg. 325) /AMarb

Indeed, the US Department of Defense gets attacked ten million times a day; a US university receives a hundred thousand Chinese attacks per day; and one firm measures three thousand distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks per day worldwide.23 In reality, however, most of these so-called attacks are just routine probes by automated networks of compromised computers (botnets) run by profit-seeking criminals or spy bureaucracies—a far cry from terrorism or military assault. The most alarming scenarios of a “digital Pearl Harbor” or “cyber 9/11” have yet to materialize despite decades of warning. The Stuxnet worm caused limited and temporary disruption of Iran’s nuclear program in the late 2000s, the only known historical case of infrastructure damage via deliberate cyber attack, but this operation seems to reveal more about the strategic limitations of cyber war than its potency.24 The cyber revolution should presumably provide rivals with potent new tools of influence, yet actual cyber disputes from 2001 to 2011 remain restrained and regionalized, not disruptive and global.25 Computer espionage and nuisance cybercrime thrive, to be sure, but they are neither as prevalent nor as costly as they might be, leading skeptics to describe US losses as “a rounding error” in a fifteen trillion dollar economy.26 It is possible in principle that the same tools used for computer-network exploitation may one day be leveraged for more destructive strikes. Yet even if the nontrivial operational challenges of cyber war can be overcome, proponents of the cyber-revolution thesis have yet to articulate convincing strategic motives for why a state or non-state actor might actually use cyber capabilities effectively.27 A considerable shortage of evidence in the study of cyber conflict is thus a source both of concern and relief. That cyber war remains unusual is puzzling in light of the widely held belief that offense is easier than defense in cyberspace. A straightforward implication of the notable scarcity of cyber war would be that, contrary to conventional wisdom, cyberspace is defense dominant for some reason. More carefully stated, since clearly there is much mischief online, offense dominance may exist only for nuisance attacks that are rarely strategically significant, such as piracy, espionage, and “hacktivist” protest, even as the Internet is defense dominant for more harmful or complicated forms of attack. Serious cyber attacks against complicated infrastructure require considerable intelligence preparation, test and evaluation infrastructure, planning capacity, technical expertise, and complementary military or non-cyber intelligence assets.28 If so, it would be a categorical error to mistake the frequency of irritant activity for a more general tendency toward offense dominance across the entire cyber domain.

Cyber doom is not coming, only gradual and miniscule threats that can’t be eliminated

Lawson, 15

4/05/2015, Sean Lawson is Associate Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Utah. “The Death of Cyber Doom? Not So Fast,” http://www.forbes.com/sites/seanlawson/2015/04/05/the-death-of-cyber-doom-not-so-fast/

For decades, we have heard a lot of talk from American officials, industry experts, and others about the supposed threat of a “cyber 9/11,” “cyber Pearl Harbor,” “cyber Katrina,” or even “cyber Sandy.” In short, we have been warned repeatedly that “cyber doom” is coming. Indeed, as recently as this fall, cyber doom was in the news as a result of the cyber attack on Sony. But the latest World Wide Threat Assessment (WWTA) [PDF] presented to Congress by the Director of National Intelligence, Gen. James Clapper, says that “Cyber Armageddon“ is unlikely. Rather, the assessment “foresee[s] an ongoing series of low-to-moderate level cyber attacks form a variety of sources over time, which will impose costs on US economic competitiveness and national security.” This threat, it says, “cannot be eliminated; rather, cyber risk must be managed.” Some have argued that such scenarios were always about threat inflation and fear mongering and have applauded the admission by intelligence officials who once trafficked in such rhetoric that these scenarios are unlikely after all. Has the era of cyber doom fear mongering come to an end? Not likely. Key intelligence officials, like NSA Director Admiral Michael Rogers are still using this rhetoric. Just three days before the release of WWTA, Rogers defined “cyber Pearl Harbor” and said that one had already occurred. Asked to define a ’cyber Pearl Harbor’, a phrase used in 2012 by then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, Rogers replied: ‘An action directed against infrastructure within the United States that leads to significant impact—whether that’s economic, whether that’s in our ability to execute our day-to-day functions as a society, as a nation.’ He added that the hack of Sony Pictures Entertainment last November met that dire criteria. Movie studios fit into the U.S. government’s broad definition of critical infrastructure. With this comment, Admiral Rogers follows in the footsteps of Amit Yoran, former head of the Department of Homeland Security’s National Cyber Security Division, who claimed in 2009, “Cyber 9–11 has happened over the last 10 years, but it’s happened slowly so we don’t see it.” Of course, there was no evidence then that anything like 9/11 had occurred in or through cyberspace, just as the hack of Sony is nothing like Pearl Harbor now. Why do such outrageous claims persist even in the face of contradictory evidence and assessments? One reason is that, despite claims to the contrary, the use of “cyber doom” is primarily about emotions not facts. Its function is to motivate a response through the use of fear, not to describe accurately the true nature of the threat and its likely impacts. Among those who use cyber doom rhetoric when speaking in public or to the media, there is often a disconnect between the threat as implied in that rhetoric and the diagnosis of threats that these same individuals provide in more formal settings like threat assessments for Congress. For example, though Admiral Rogers warned publicly of “cyber Pearl Harbor” in February 2015, less than a month later, in his testimony to Congress, his description of the cyber threats facing the United States focused primarily on censorship as a threat to “Internet freedom,” theft of intellectual property, and disruption of networks and access to information. Cyber attacks against critical infrastructure were mentioned, but as in the past, were framed as a “potential” future threat that could “perhaps” result in sabotage during a wider conflict (page 10). Diagnosing the cyber threat as primarily about espionage, theft, and disruption while simultaneously relying on doom scenarios out of step with that diagnosis has been a feature of U.S. public policy discourse on this issue since at least 2008. And as long as officials believe there is still a need to motivate a response, cyber doom will continue to be a feature of U.S. public policy discourse on cyber security, even if their own assessments find such scenarios unlikely.

2nc cyberwar

Cyberwar won’t happen – countries will go for low risk rewards and its costly

Gartzke & Lindsay, PhD, 15 (Erik (Associate professor at UC San Diego) and Jon R (PhD at MIT), June 22,2015, Weaving Tangled Webs: Offense,

Defense, and Deception in Cyberspace, Taylor and Francis Online, http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09636412.2015.1038188#.VYsDgvlVhBc, pg. 345) /AMarb

The asymmetric actors featured in cybersecurity discourse—rogue states, lone hackers, criminals, and terrorists—will tend to focus on the low-risk, low-reward bonanza and avoid deception-dominant high-risk, high-reward operations. Advanced industrial states will also partake in low-risk, lowreward espionage and harassment in cyberspace. Capable countries will, however, employ risky computer network attacks against lucrative targets only when they are willing and able to follow them up or backstop them with conventional military power. Because intelligence is costly and its exploitation is complicated, wealthier and larger states tend to have more sophisticated, robust intelligence capacities. Only capable actors, such as major powers, are likely to be able to master the complex tango of deception and counter-deception necessary to execute high-intensity operations. Powerful actors have an operational advantage in cyberspace. Even then, the frequency of complex and risky action should still be relatively low.

Cyber attacks not a threat for near future

Healey, 13
(March 20, 2013, “No, Cyberwarfare Isn't as Dangerous as Nuclear War,” Jason Healey is the Director of the Cyber Statecraft Initiative of the Atlantic Council. www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/world-report/2013/03/20/cyber-attacks-not-yet-an-existential-threat-to-the-us)

America does not face an existential cyberthreat today, despite recent warnings. Our cybervulnerabilities are undoubtedly grave and the threats we face are severe but far from comparable to nuclear war. The most recent alarms come in a Defense Science Board report on how to make military cybersystems more resilient against advanced threats (in short, Russia or China). It warned that the "cyber threat is serious, with potential consequences similar in some ways to the nuclear threat of the Cold War." Such fears were also expressed by Adm. Mike Mullen, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in 2011. He called cyber "The single biggest existential threat that's out there" because "cyber actually more than theoretically, can attack our infrastructure, our financial systems." While it is true that cyber attacks might do these things, it is also true they have not only never happened but are far more difficult to accomplish than mainstream thinking believes. The consequences from cyber threats may be similar in some ways to nuclear, as the Science Board concluded, but mostly, they are incredibly dissimilar. Eighty years ago, the generals of the U.S. Army Air Corps were sure that their bombers would easily topple other countries and cause their populations to panic, claims which did not stand up to reality. A study of the 25-year history of cyber conflict, by the Atlantic Council and Cyber Conflict Studies Association, has shown a similar dynamic where the impact of disruptive cyberattacks has been consistently overestimated. Rather than theorizing about future cyberwars or extrapolating from today's concerns, the history of cyberconflict that have actually been fought, shows that cyber incidents have so far tended to have effects that are either widespread but fleeting or persistent but narrowly focused. No attacks, so far, have been both widespread and persistent. There have been no authenticated cases of anyone dying from a cyber attack. Any widespread disruptions, even the 2007 disruption against Estonia, have been short-lived causing no significant GDP loss. Moreover, as with conflict in other domains, cyberattacks can take down many targets but keeping them down over time in the face of determined defenses has so far been out of the range of all but the most dangerous adversaries such as Russia and China. Of course, if the United States is in a conflict with those nations, cyber will be the least important of the existential threats policymakers should be worrying about. Plutonium trumps bytes in a shooting war. This is not all good news. Policymakers have recognized the problems since at least 1998 with little significant progress. Worse, the threats and vulnerabilities are getting steadily more worrying. Still, experts have been warning of a cyber Pearl Harbor for 20 of the 70 years since the actual Pearl Harbor. The transfer of U.S. trade secrets through Chinese cyber espionage could someday accumulate into an existential threat. But it doesn't seem so seem just yet, with only handwaving estimates of annual losses of 0.1 to 0.5 percent to the total U.S. GDP of around $15 trillion. That's bad, but it doesn't add up to an existential crisis or "economic cyberwar."

No impact to cyber war

Weimann, 2004

(Gabriel is on the Department of Communication at the University of Haifa, “Cyberterrorism How Real Is the Threat?” http://www.usip.org/ pubs/specialreports/sr119.pdf, December 2004)

It seems fair to say that the current threat posed by cyberterrorism has been exaggerated. No single instance of cyberterrorism has yet been recorded; U.S. defense and intelligence computer systems are air-gapped and thus isolated from the Internet; the systems run by private companies are more vulnerable to attack but also more resilient than is often supposed; the vast majority of cyberattacks are launched by hackers with few, if any, political goals and no desire to cause the mayhem and carnage of which terrorists dream. So, then, why has so much concern been expressed over a relatively minor threat? The reasons are many. First, as Denning has observed, "cyberterrorism and cyberattacks are sexy right now. . . . [Cyberterrorism is] novel, original, it captures people's imagination." Second, the mass media frequently fail to distinguish between hacking and cyberterrorism and exaggerate the threat of the latter by reasoning from false analogies such as the following: "If a sixteen-year-old could do this, then what could a well-funded terrorist group do?" Ignorance is a third factor. Green argues that cyberterrorism merges two spheres—terrorism and technology—that many people, including most lawmakers and senior administration officials, do not fully understand and therefore tend to fear. Moreover, some groups are eager to exploit this ignorance. Numerous technology companies, still reeling from the collapse of the high-tech bubble, have sought to attract federal research grants by recasting themselves as innovators in computer security and thus vital contributors to national security. Law enforcement and security consultants are likewise highly motivated to have us believe that the threat to our nation's security is severe. A fourth reason is that some politicians, whether out of genuine conviction or out of a desire to stoke public anxiety about terrorism in order to advance their own agendas, have played the role of prophets of doom. And a fifth factor is ambiguity about the very meaning of "cyberterrorism," which has confused the public and given rise to countless myths.

2nc fear mongering

The us government uses fear mongering to exaggerate cyberwar greatly

Rid, 13
(March 13, 2013, “The Great Cyberscare,” http://foreignpolicy.com/2013/03/13/the-great-cyberscare/ Thomas Rid is a professor in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London.

The White House likes a bit of threat. In his State of the Union address, Barack Obama wanted to nudge Congress yet again into passing meaningful legislation. The president emphasized that America's enemies are "seeking the ability to sabotage our power grid, our financial institutions, and our air traffic control systems." After two failed attempts to pass a cybersecurity act in the past two years, he added swiftly: "We cannot look back years from now and wonder why we did nothing in the face of real threats to our security and our economy." Fair enough. A bit of threat to prompt needed action is one thing. Fear-mongering is something else: counterproductive. Yet too many a participant in the cybersecurity debate reckons that puffery pays off. The Pentagon, no doubt, is the master of razzmatazz. Leon Panetta set the tone by warning again and again of an impending "cyber Pearl Harbor." Just before he left the Pentagon, the Defense Science Board delivered a remarkable report, Resilient Military Systems and the Advanced Cyber Threat. The paper seemed obsessed with making yet more drastic historical comparisons: "The cyber threat is serious," the task force wrote, "with potential consequences similar to the nuclear threat of the Cold War." The manifestations of an all-out nuclear war would be different from cyberattack, the Pentagon scientists helpfully acknowledged. But then they added, gravely, that "in the end, the existential impact on the United States is the same." A reminder is in order: The world has yet to witness a single casualty, let alone fatality, as a result of a computer attack. Such statements are a plain insult to survivors of Hiroshima. Some sections of the Pentagon document offer such eye-wateringly shoddy analysis that they would not have passed as an MA dissertation in a self-respecting political science department. But in the current debate it seemed to make sense. After all a bit of fear helps to claim -- or keep -- scarce resources when austerity and cutting seems out-of-control. The report recommended allocating the stout sum of $2.5 billion for its top two priorities alone, protecting nuclear weapons against cyberattacks and determining the mix of weapons necessary to punish all-out cyber-aggressors. Then there are private computer security companies. Such firms, naturally, are keen to pocket some of the government's money earmarked for cybersecurity. And hype is the means to that end. Mandiant's much-noted report linking a coordinated and coherent campaign of espionage attacks dubbed Advanced Persistent Threat 1, or "APT1," to a unit of the Chinese military is a case in point: The firm offered far more details on attributing attacks to the Chinese than the intelligence community has ever done, and the company should be commended for making the report public. But instead of using cocky and over-confident language, Mandiant's analysts should have used Words of Estimative Probability, as professional intelligence analysts would have done. An example is the report's conclusion, which describes APT1's work: "Although they control systems in dozens of countries, their attacks originate from four large networks in Shanghai -- two of which are allocated directly to the Pudong New Area," the report found. Unit 61398 of the People's Liberation Army is also in Pudong. Therefore, Mandiant's computer security specialists concluded, the two were identical: "Given the mission, resourcing, and location of PLA Unit 61398, we conclude that PLA Unit 61398 is APT1." But the report conspicuously does not mention that Pudong is not a small neighborhood ("right outside of Unit 61398's gates") but in fact a vast city landscape twice the size of Chicago. Mandiant's report was useful and many attacks indeed originate in China. But the company should have been more careful in its overall assessment of the available evidence, as the computer security expert Jeffrey Carr and others have pointed out. The firm made it too easy for Beijing to dismiss the report. My class in cybersecurity at King's College London started poking holes into the report after 15 minutes of red-teaming it -- the New York Times didn't. Which leads to the next point: The media want to sell copy through threat inflation. "In Cyberspace, New Cold War," the headline writers at the Times intoned in late February. "The U.S. is not ready for a cyberwar," shrieked the Washington Post earlier this week. Instead of calling out the above-mentioned Pentagon report, the paper actually published two supportive articles on it and pointed out that a major offensive cyber capability now seemed essential "in a world awash in cyber-espionage, theft and disruption." The Post should have reminded its readers that the only military-style cyberattack that has actually created physical damage -- Stuxnet -- was actually executed by the United States government. The Times, likewise, should have asked tough questions and pointed to some of the evidential problems in the Mandiant report; instead, it published what appeared like an elegant press release for the firm. On issues of cybersecurity, the nation's fiercest watchdogs too often look like hand-tame puppies eager to lap up stories from private firms as well as anonymous sources in the security establishment.

2nc retaliation

Attribution difficulty makes retaliation highly improbable

Krepinivich 12 [Andrew, President of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, “CYBER WARFARE A “NUCLEAR OPTION”?, Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments] //khirn

As the discussion of attack attribution earlier in this report suggests, for at least the near term the source of a nuclear attack is far more likely to be identified than the source of a cyber attack. The difficulty in determining attribution of a cyber attack is a significant and perhaps enduring character of cyber warfare. This is due in part to the potential large number of actors that can execute cyber attacks, and to the relative ease by which cyber attackers can mask the origins of an at- tack. To date even substantial efforts to determine attribution of a sophisticated attack have not produced a “smoking gun” level of evidence, and have taken con- siderable time and resources to pursue. 237 This suggests that in the case of a cyber attack whose purpose is to inflict catastrophic destruction, the victim may have difficulty determining its source. To the extent this is the case, the victim will also want to avoid being deceived into engaging in a catalytic war by retaliating against the apparent source of an attack that was actually conducted by a third party. Moreover, cyber weapons could also be employed to trigger a catalytic nu- clear war in other ways; for example, by feeding false information into a state’s early warning system to spoof operators into believing their country is under attack when in fact it is not. 238 It seems unlikely that nuclear weapons could be employed to trigger a catalytic cyber war, at least given the current state of nuclear proliferation. This may change as more states or even groups acquire nuclear weapons. 23

2nc status quo solves

IDSs Solve for monitoring

Balon-Perin & Gamback 13 – Software Engineer and Professor in Language Technology at Norwegian University of Science and Technology (Alexandre, Bjorn, 2013, Ensembles of Decision Trees for Network Intrusion Detection System, International Journal on Advances in Security, vol 6 no 1 & 2,http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.362.1200&rep=rep1&type=pdf#page=69, pg. 62) /AMarb

Intrusion detection systems (IDSs) are monitoring devices that have been added to the wall of security in order to prevent malicious activity on a system. Here we will focus on network intrusion detection systems mainly because they can detect the widest range of attacks compared to other types of IDSs. In particular the paper discusses machine learning based mechanisms that can enable the network IDS to detect modified versions of previously seen attacks and completely new types of attacks [1].

Algorithms help detect zero-day vulnerabilities

Balon-Perin & Gamback 13 – Software Engineer and Professor in Language Technology at Norwegian University of Science and Technology (Alexandre, Bjorn, 2013, Ensembles of Decision Trees for Network Intrusion Detection System, International Journal on Advances in Security, vol 6 no 1 & 2,http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.362.1200&rep=rep1&type=pdf#page=69, pg. 63) /AMarb

The most popular technique of unsupervised learning is clustering, where the algorithm exploits the similarity of the examples in order to form clusters or groups of instances. Examples belonging to the same cluster are assumed to have similar properties and belong to the same class. In contrast to supervised learning, disadvantages of unsupervised learning include manual choice of the number of cluster that the algorithm must form, lower accuracy of the prediction, and that the meaning of each cluster must be interpreted to understand the output. However, unsupervised learning is more robust to large variations. This is a very important advantage when applied to the problem of intrusion detection, since it means that unsupervised learning is able to generalize to new types of attacks much better than supervised learning. In particular, this property could be quite beneficial when trying to detect zero-day vulnerabilities.

2nc us strikes first

Cyber war is inevitable—US will strike first

Clarke 12 former National Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection, and Counter-terrorism for the United States (Richard A., Cyber War: The Next Threat to National Security and What to Do About It, p.26 4/20/10) | js

The perception that cyberspace is a “domain” where fighting takes place, a domain that the U.S. must “dominate,” pervades American military thinking on the subject of cyber war. The secret-level National Military Strategy for Cyber Operations (partially declassified as a result of a Freedom of Information Act request) reveals the military’s attitude toward cyber war, in part because it was written as a document that we, the citizens, were never supposed to see. It is how they talk about it behind the closed doors of the Pentagon. What is striking in the document is not only the acknowledgment that cyber war is real, but the almost reverential way in which it is discussed as the keystone holding up the edifice of modern war-fighting capability. Because there are so few opportunities to hear from the U.S. military on cyber war strategy, it is worth reading closely the secret-level attempt at a cyber war strategy. The document, signed out under a cover letter from the Secretary of Defense, declares that the goal is “to ensure the US military [has] strategic superiority in cyberspace.” Such superiority is needed to guarantee “freedom of action” for the American military and to “deny the same to our adversaries.” To obtain superiority, the U.S. must attack, the strategy declares. “Offensive capabilities in cyberspace [are needed] to gain and maintain the initiative.” At first read, the strategy sounds like a mission statement with a bit of zealotry thrown in. On closer examination, however, the strategy reflects an understanding of some of the key problems created by cyber war. Speaking to the geography of cyberspace, the strategy implicitly acknowledges the sovereignty issue (“the lack of geopolitical boundaries…allows cyberspace operations to occur nearly anywhere”) as well as the presence of civilian targets (“cyberspace reaches across geopolitical boundaries…and is tightly integrated into the operations of critical infrastructure and the conduct of commerce”). It does not, however, suggest that such civilian targets should be off-limits from U.S. attacks. When it comes to defending U.S. civilian targets, the strategy passes the buck to the Department of Homeland Security. The need to take the initiative, to go first, is dictated in part by the fact that actions taken in cyberspace move at a pace never before experienced in war (“cyberspace allows high rates of operational maneuver…at speeds that approach the speed of light…. [It] affords commanders opportunities to deliver effects at speeds that were previously incomprehensible”). Moreover, the strategy notes that if you do not act quickly, you may not be able to do so because “a previously vulnerable target may be replaced or provided with new defenses with no warning, rendering cyberspace operations less effective.” In short, if you wait for the other side to attack you in cyberspace, you may find that the opponent has, simultaneously with their attack, removed your logic bombs or disconnected the targets from the network paths you expected to use to access them. The strategy does not discuss the problems associated with going first or the pressure to do so.

at: china impact

No China cyber war

Goldsmith 10 [Jack, teaches at Harvard Law School and is a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, “The New Vulnerability,” New Republic, June 7, 2010, http://www.newrepublic.com/article/books-and-arts/75262/the-new-vulnerability] //khirn

There is much to agree with in Clarke’s analysis, including his description of the absorption of cyber weapons into all aspects of military planning, his account of the secret cyber-arms race among nations, and his assessment of America’s cyber-security weaknesses, especially in its privately owned critical infrastructure sectors. But there are problems as well. The first is with his obsessive focus on cyber war. There is little doubt that several nations have significant offensive cyber capacities that could in theory cause enormous destruction. What Clarke never adequately explains is why nations would use these weapons in this way. Yes, China is stockpiling cyber weapons and planning for cyber war. But so, too, is the United States. Capacities and contingency plans, taken alone, do not add up to a serious threat. There must also be a plausible scenario in which a nation has the motivation to use these weapons. Clarke addresses this issue briefly, in trying to explain why China might destroy American infrastructure by means of a cyber attack even though “China’s dependence on U.S. markets for its manufactured goods and the trillions the country has invested in U.S. treasury bills mean that China would have a lot to lose.” His explanation is weak. He says that the United States and China might be drawn into a war over Taiwan or the oil-rich islands in the South China Sea. Perhaps. But it is hard to imagine that China would wipe out the New York Stock Exchange or the electrical grid of the East Coast unless it were in a total war over those islands--the sort of war that would also involve enormously destructive non-cyber weapons, including even nuclear weapons. This does not mean we should stop worrying about China’s offensive cyber weapons. Clarke is right that these weapons might (like China’s conventional forces) deter the United States from intervening against China in a Pacific Rim contest. But he should also acknowledge that this deterrent is weakened by China’s dependency on a functioning American economy, which significantly reduces the credibility of its cyber threat. It is also true, as Clarke argues, that the stealth cyber-arms race, the difficulty of knowing for sure which nation is behind a cyber attack, and the absence of norms to govern such attacks combine to create an unstable situation in which destructive cyber activities might escalate by accident. We should indeed worry about cyber war. But Clarke does not justify his central claim that cyber war is in fact the most serious cyber threat, the one we should worry most about and take the most aggressive steps to meet. His error is to focus on the worst-case cyber-war scenario without a hard-nosed assessment of its likelihood, and without comparing its expected harms, given its small likelihood, with the expected total harms from other smaller but more likely cyber threats. A cyber-attack threat that Clarke appears to understate comes from terrorists, some of whom have powerful motives to destroy our domestic infrastructure and nothing to lose from doing so. For years the government insisted that Al Qaeda and its friends lacked the technological capacity to inflict cyber attacks and had shown no interest in doing so. “Cyber terrorism is largely a red herring,” says Clarke, repeating the old government line. But some have worried that Al Qaeda might purchase cyber capabilities on the black market. And while Clarke’s book was in production, the government changed its tune. In November, the FBI announced that it was investigating individuals affiliated with Al Qaeda “who have recognized and discussed the vulnerabilities of U.S. infrastructure to cyber attack, who have demonstrated an interest in elevating their computer hacking skills, and who are seeking more sophisticated capabilities from outside of their close-knit circles.” There is a good case to be made that the greatest cyber threats are not cyber-attacks by states or terrorists, but rather cyber espionage and cyber theft. Private cyber criminals are growing in numbers and sophistication, and they are causing enormous economic damage. Presumably the efficiencies of online banking and stock trading (to take two out of thousands of examples) still outweigh the costs of these criminal activities, but the balance of benefits to costs is probably shrinking. Consumer trust in online activities--an essential ingredient for successful e-commerce and more generally for the continued flourishing of the Internet--is certainly shrinking. In contrast to the very uncertain motives that states have to engage in cyber war, untold and growing thousands of cyber criminal miscreants have powerful incentives to steal from American firms, and are doing so daily. And so, too, are states. “The extent of Chinese government hacking against U.S., European, and Japanese industries and research facilities is without precedent in the history of espionage,” Clarke notes. “The secrets behind everything from pharmaceutical formulae, to bioengineering designs, to nanotechnology, to weapons systems, to everyday industrial products have been taken by the People’s Liberation Army and been given to China, Inc.” Clarke provides no convincing explanation why China would jeopardize this economic bonanza and its economic prosperity more generally by destroying the networks that make this massive wealth transfer possible. Nor does he explain why he thinks the serious damage caused by ongoing public and private cyber espionage and cyber theft should be less feared than the possible evils of a cyber war.