Correlations Between Cyberspace Attacks and Kinetic Attacks

Although confrontations in cyberspace can conceivably stay in cyberspace (or at least not involve violent conflict), they can also become entangled with confrontations in the physical world. This paper explores how, by raising the following questions: (1) Do countries retaliate in the real world for operations in cyberspaceƒ (2) Would countries make an equivalence between the damage from cyberattacks and from physical attacks (in ways that could spill over from the one to the other)ƒ (3) Does cyberspace escalation lead to kinetic escalation and is the reverse also trueƒ (4) Can cyberspace operations against sensitive targets put them in play for kinetic operationsƒ (5) Would the failure to react to cyberattacks embolden attackers to carry out kinetic attacksƒ This paper leverages what is known and what can be logically assumed about cyber operations, notably by drawing lessons from Russia’s use of cyberspace operations in Georgia and Ukraine, Iran’s cyber and physical attacks against Saudi Aramco, and China’s military doctrine vis-à-vis U.S. space assets. The broad conclusion is that, so far, conflict in cyberspace rarely echoes into the world of kinetic conflict (although kinetic conflict increasingly has cyberspace dimensions). This raises the question of whether and why a threshold is emerging between non-lethal and lethal attacks.