Cyber Brinksmanship: Iran And The U.S. Posture On The Cyber Front

The Cyber Game of Nations continues this week with Iran and the U.S. rattling cyber sabers at one another over the Strait of Hormuz. It all started with a downed U.S. drone, that may or may not have been in Iranian airspace; and the wreckage of that drone on display in Tehran. Next, press releases and spokesperson claims of cyber attacks and defenses. Pretty much the only thing visible is the claims that are being fired back and forth reminiscent of the hyperbole and propaganda battles of the Cold War.

Historically, nations would threaten and claim petty victories in skirmishes in the kinetic world, not the cyber. It’s simple to point to a dead archduke or a blown up building and say “I did that” because the results are hard to deny: corpses and craters. The news cycles and posturing take on a life of their own as nations gear up the will and fuel either the righteous indignation for more conflict escalation or giving negotiation power to diplomats. While it was never easy to confirm attribution in the physical world, it’s even harder in the cyber world. And going forward, cyber will be the domain of choice to make dramatic claims to show strength or demonstrate outrage.

The reason is simple: nothing can be definitively proven in cyber. This is true even if cyber activities produce kinetic effects, like disrupted pipelines, sabotaged uranium enrichment plants or interrupted communications. Both sides can claim victory regardless of outcomes and appear strong. This is perfect fodder for propaganda machines and for leverage as nations can build their narratives without worry of fact-checking or verification. There is also a bright side of this sort of so-called “Cyber Pearl Harbor” and “Cyber 911” hypotheses, which is mostly fear mongering. For the most part, less lives are actually lost in cyber conflict than in physical world.

Most recently, Iran has claimed a firewall stopped 33 million attacks, which is a useless claim because real attacks aren’t stopped by firewalls. It sounds like something a short-lived, immature CISO would tell the board of a medium-sized company.

The U.S. also claimed that President Donald Trump stopped a kinetic retaliation because “150 lives would be at stake.” This translates to either a “look at the big gun that I didn’t use” style of threat or realization that shooting down a drone regardless of air space isn’t really an act of war. It would currently be defined in international norms and sets up a potentially dangerous precedent. Are we really ready for the downing of a drone causing a casus belli?

Regardless of the rhetoric the U.S. and Iran are actually top-notch cyber powers. The posturing over who did what in the Strait of Hormuz and cyber retaliation is really a reflection of failures on other fronts and high tension internationally. The cyber claims flashing out on the newswires are completely unprovable and, like a child’s crocodile tears, are more a sign of distress than actual conflict. Rest assured cyber conflict is happening as it has for years between these players. Nothing either nation has said at this point is pointing to anything new or significant happening in the cyber domain.

Now we are collectively learning how cyber will get used in move and countermove between press offices in new and more varied conflict types. Cyber is proving to be a much more versatile tool than traditional physical world options for the extension of politics by other means, to paraphrase von Clausewitz.