About this Series
The Digital Dialogues series serves as a platform for knowledge sharing, intellectual engagement and community building among experts, students and enthusiasts in the field. In our interconnected world, cyberspace plays a vital role in various fields, including security, technology, business and communication.
Past Events
Digital Dialogues: Insights from Cyberspace Experts with Dr. Max Smeets,senior researcher at the Center for Security Studies at ETH Zurich and director of the European Cyber Conflict Research Initiative. Smeets is the author of No Shortcuts: Why States Struggle to Develop a Military Cyber-Force.
On Tuesday, March 26, the Daytona Beach College of Arts & Sciences will welcome Dr. Max Smeets to a Digital Dialogues conversation.
In this conversation, we will be speaking with the author of No Shortcuts: Why States Struggle to Develop a Military Cyber-Force. Throughout the last ten years, many countries have recognized cyberspace as the latest arena of warfare, embarked on formulating military cyber strategies and endeavored to set up cyber commands. These developments have led to much policy discussion and concern about the future of warfare and society's digital vulnerability. “No Shortcuts” provides a level-headed view of where we are in the militarization of cyberspace. In his book, Smeets bridges the divide between technology and policy to assess the necessary building blocks for states to develop a military cyber capacity. Smeets argues that for many states, the barriers to entry into cyberspace conflict are currently too high. Accompanied by a wide range of empirical examples, Smeets demonstrates why governments’ abilities to develop military cyber capabilities might change over time and explains the limits of cyber capability transfer by states and private actors.
In this discussion, you’ll hear from the primary author of “Cyber Persistence Theory.” This work is the structural shift cyber strategy has been searching for. No other work has made such a convincing case explaining the gap between cyber theory and observed cyber application. This alternate to the cyber deterrence paradigm provides an in-depth, academic analysis of the modern cyberspace environment. The main takeaway of this thesis is that cyberspace activity, especially exploitation, is the primary form of strategic competition, and that exploitation should be interpreted as an alternative to war wherein states quickly capitalize on other states’ cyberspace vulnerabilities rather than resorting to compellence. Accordingly, in cyberspace, states operate, at a low cost, out of a structural need to persist and a strategic incentive to achieve short-term gains, without necessarily triggering an armed attack.
Fischerkeller’s book also emphasizes that the nature of cyberspace diminishes international cooperation, leading to a state of constant competition between states. This structural feature should encourage us to view cyberspace differently from the nuclear strategic environment, while also emphasizing that strategic gains accumulate over time via successful multiple operations within campaigns. Thus, in the international system, a state employing cyber effects can gain relative power as an alternate to war.
About the Speaker
Michael P. Fischerkeller is a research staff member in the Information, Technology and Systems Division at the Institute for Defense Analyses, where he has spent over 20 years supporting the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Joint Chiefs of Staff and Combatant and Multi-National Force commanders.