Allies and diffusion of state military cybercapacity

Nadiya Kostyuk
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Nadiya Kostyuk: Assistant Professor, School of Public Policy and School of Cybersecurity and Privacy, Georgia Institute of Technology

Journal of Peace Research, 2024, vol. 61, issue 1, 44-58

Abstract: Understanding the diffusion of military capabilities is a central issue in international relations. Despite this, only a few works attempt to explain this phenomenon, focusing on threats. This article explains why threats alone cannot account for cybercapacity-development diffusion and introduces a more consistent explanation: the role of alliances. Allies with cybercapacity help partner-countries without cybercapacity start developing their own capacity to increase the alliance’s overall security by reducing mutual vulnerabilities in cyberspace. Partner-countries that lack cybercapacity are eager to accept this option because it is more favorable than developing cybercapacity on their own. Partner-countries may also start investing in cybersecurity to reduce the likelihood of being abandoned in other, conventional, domains. My new cross-sectional time-series dataset on indicators of a state’s cybercapacity-development initiation for 2000–18 provides robust empirical support for this argument and offers important implications for scholarship on arms, allies, and diffusion.

Keywords: diffusion; imitation; learning; military allies; military cybercapacity; survival analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:joupea:v:61:y:2024:i:1:p:44-58

DOI: 10.1177/00223433241226559

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