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Understanding and
Countering Cyber Coercion
Abstract: The past decade has seen the rise of cyberspace as a topic of popular,
political and scholarly discourse, from the highest reaches of government to the movie
screen. States are grappling with how to address the rising tide of cyber threats to their
economies, to their citizens’ personal information and increasingly to political and
social cohesion. States are using cyber capabilities as a tool of statecraft to achieve
political objectives. This paper seeks to develop an understanding of how states use
cyber capabilities to coerce others for political objectives. Cyber coercion is dened
as the use of cyber capabilities to compel an opponent to undertake an action it would
not normally wish to perform and avoid an undesirable outcome. The paper seeks to
address: how a state can employ cyber capabilities to compel another state (or non-
state actor) to accommodate its ambitions; how cyber coercion might take place; and
ways that the United States and its partners can recognize, respond to and counter
attempts at cyber coercion. The paper examines the use of cyber operations by North
Korea and Russia in recent years as part of their broader strategies to exert inuence
over their neighbours, showing how the context in which such operations occur is
critical.
Keywords: cyber operations, coercion, deterrence
Quentin E. Hodgson
RAND Corporation
Santa Monica, California, United States
qhodgson@rand.org
2018 10th International Conference on Cyber Conict
CyCon X: Maximising Eects
T. Minárik, R. Jakschis, L. Lindström (Eds.)
2018 © NATO CCD COE Publications, Tallinn
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use within NATO and for personal or educational use when for non-prot or
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1. IntroductIon
The past decade has seen the rise of cyberspace as a topic of popular, political and
scholarly discourse, from the highest reaches of government to the movie screen.
Military organizations from the United States to the People’s Republic of China
