Understanding Cyber Conflict: Fourteen Analogies, Paperback

Analogies help us think, learn, and communicate. The fourteen case studies in this volume help readers make sense of contemporary cyber conflict through historical analogies to past military-technological problems. The chapters are divided into three groups. The first--What Are Cyber Weapons Like?--examines the characteristics of cyber capabilities and how their use for intelligence gathering, signaling, and precision strike compares with earlier technologies for such missions. The second section--What Might Cyber Wars Be Like?--explores how lessons from several wars since the early 19th century, including the World Wars, could apply or not apply to cyber conflict in the 21st century. The final section--What Is Preventing and/or Managing Cyber Conflict Like?--offers lessons from 19th and 20th century cases of managing threatening actors and technologies.

About the Author:

George Perkovich is Vice President for Studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and author of several books including the award-winning India's Nuclear Bomb.

Ariel E. Levite is a nonresident senior associate in the Nuclear Policy Program and the Cyber Policy Initiative at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.