Is cyber conflict more like war, intelligence, or something else? The stakes of this debate are not simply conceptual but institutional. United States Cyber Command emerged from the American intelligence community, but it has strong legal and organizational imperatives to explain its operations in military terms. Even though cyber operations are essentially a digital manifestation of classic intelligence practice, or secret statecraft, CYBERCOM is emphatically not an intelligence organization. This contradiction between the nature of the problem and the bureaucratic solution has the potential to complicate both intelligence and cybersecurity.
No takes yet. Share an insight, caveat, or question.
Jon R. Lindsay (2020) studied this question.
Synapse has enriched 3 closely related papers on similar clinical questions. Consider them for comparative context: