When You Can’t Afford to Miss: Likelihood of Success and Discrimination in Cyberwarfare

Adam Knight

The Review of Faith & International Affairs, 2024, vol. 22, issue 2, 61-72

Abstract: Offense dominance in cyberspace is taken by many as a given. However, this is not a consensus position, with several scholars arguing that cyberattacks that produce meaningful kinetic effects on their prescribed targets are enormously costly and painstakingly slow. This poses an issue at the nexus of Just War Theory’s likelihood of success and discrimination doctrines. Initiating (or escalating) a conflict should only occur if the initiator has a reasonable likelihood of success. That success may be made more likely by overlooking the requirement that weapons be able to discriminate between targets and non-targets, especially under circumstances in which time is of the essence. Furthermore, even if non-target systems are not destroyed, their infection can facilitate the discovery of a cyberweapon, inspiring copycat weapons and attacks.

Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/15570274.2024.2335070 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:rfiaxx:v:22:y:2024:i:2:p:61-72

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/rfia20

DOI: 10.1080/15570274.2024.2335070

Access Statistics for this article

The Review of Faith & International Affairs is currently edited by Dennis R. Hoover

More articles in The Review of Faith & International Affairs from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().