The Battlefield and the Wire: Linking Cyber and Material Conflicts, 2000–2014
Baronchelli Adelaide and
Ricciuti Roberto ()
Additional contact information
Baronchelli Adelaide: University of Turin, Torino, Italy
Ricciuti Roberto: University of Verona, Verona, Italy
Peace Economics, Peace Science, and Public Policy, 2025, vol. 31, issue 3, 365-380
Abstract:
This paper describes how cyber and material conflicts overlaps in the international system. Given countries’ international alliances and conflicts, as well as their technical abilities, we want to uncover whether or not countries engage in cross-domain operations. Combining a dataset collecting information on cyber interactions between rival states and ICEWS data, we analyze cyber conflict among states and contextualize it into the system of international relations using social network analysis and the tool of multiplex networks from 2000 to 2014. We find support for our hypothesis that cross-domain operations are relatively rare. Furthermore, we find that: (a) the use of cyber tools is less frequent than the use of physical force; (b) there are some localized conflictual relations in the physical world, a circumstance that does not occur in the virtual world; (c) Russia seems to balance material aggressions and cyber-attacks, whereas the US prefer material conflict, and China is more active in the cyber realm.
Keywords: cyber conflict; material conflict; cross-domain operations; multiplex networks; social network analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C45 D74 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:
Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1515/peps-2025-0050 (text/html)
For access to full text, subscription to the journal or payment for the individual article is required.
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:bpj:pepspp:v:31:y:2025:i:3:p:365-380:n:1005
Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.degruyte ... ournal/key/peps/html
DOI: 10.1515/peps-2025-0050
Access Statistics for this article
Peace Economics, Peace Science, and Public Policy is currently edited by Raul Caruso
More articles in Peace Economics, Peace Science, and Public Policy from De Gruyter
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Peter Golla ().