The Cyber-Nuclear Nexus in East Asia: Cyberwarfare's Escalatory Potential in the US-China Relationship

Abstract

The evolution of cyberwarfare will drastically complicate broader militarized conflicts between great powers. Yet, despite both their technical and psychological effects on future theaters of battle, cyber weapons have not merited sufficient attention from scholars of conflict. In particular, a crucial area for consideration in future crisis management studies is the influence of cyberwarfare on nuclear crises, or the so-called cyber-nuclear nexus. While scholars have considered this nexus in the abstract and, in some cases, with regard to future nuclear crises between the United States and Russia, they have thus far devoted insufficient attention to the influence of the cyber-nuclear nexus on potential crises between the United States and People's Republic of China. This paper addresses this gap in the literature by assessing the theoretical literature on the cyber-nuclear nexus, cyberwarfare doctrines in the US and China, and publicly available information. It finds that, though substantial ambiguity remains around cyber warfighting capabilities and doctrines, potential cyber attacks on nuclear command, control, and communications (NC3) could generate both substantial fog of war effects and create secret advantages for the cyber attacker that could embolden dangerous risk taking during a brinksmanship crisis between the US and PRC. These effects support for the perspective of escalation-pessimists (as termed by Caitlin Talmadge) who study the potential for nuclear escalation in a US-China conflict.