WINTER 2017
Vol 11, No. 4
Strategic Studies Quarterly
WINTER 2017
On US Nuclear Deterrence
Gen Kevin P. Chilton, USAF, Retired
Highlighting Articial Intelligence:
An Interview with Paul Scharre
Director, Technology and National Security Program
Center for a New American Security
Fe atu r e articl e
China’s Institutional Challenges to the
International Order
Huiyun Feng
Kai He
Commanding the Trend: Social Media as
Information Warfare
Lt Col Jarred Prier, USAF
Overcoming the Cyber Weapons Paradox
Maj Timothy M. Goines, USAF
Fighter Jets, Supercars, and Complex Technology
Ian MacMillan
Rethinking the US Nuclear Triad
Darius E. Watson
00a-Outside Cover 2017-04.indd 1 10/27/2017 2:49:40 PM
Chief of Sta, US Air Force
Gen David L. Goldfein, USAF
Commander, Air Education and Training Command
Lt Gen Darryl L. Roberson, USAF
Commander and President, Air University
Lt Gen Steven L. Kwast, USAF
Commander, LeMay Center for Doctrine Development and Education
Maj Gen Michael D. Rothstein, USAF
Director, Air University Press
Dr. Ernest Allan Rockwell
Editorial Sta
Col W. Michael Guillot, USAF, Retired, Editor
Donna Budjenska, Content Editor
Nedra O. Looney, Prepress Production Manager
Daniel M. Armstrong, Illustrator
Kevin V. Frey, Webmaster
Advisors
Gen Michael P. C. Carns, USAF, Retired
James W. Forsyth Jr., PhD
Christina Goulter, PhD
Robert P. Haa, PhD
Jay P. Kesan, PhD
Charlotte Ku, PhD
Benjamin S. Lambeth, PhD
Martin C. Libicki, PhD
Allan R. Millett, PhD
Contributing Editors
Stephen D. Chiabotti, PhD, School of Advanced Air and Space Studies
Mark J. Conversino, PhD, School of Advanced Air and Space Studies
Melvin G. Deaile, PhD, Air Command and Sta College
Kelly A. Grieco, PhD, Air Command and Sta College
Michael R. Kraig, PhD, Air Command and Sta College
Dawn C. Murphy, PhD, Air War College
David D. Palkki, PhD, Air War College
Nicholas M. Sambaluk, PhD, Air Command and Sta College
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Strategic Studies Quarterly
An Air Force–Sponsored Strategic Forum on
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WINTER 2017 VOLUME 11, NO. 4
Policy Forum
On US Nuclear Deterrence ....................................................... 2
Gen Kevin P. Chilton, USAF, Retired
Highlighting Articial Intelligence: An Interview with Paul Scharre
Director, Technology and National Security Program
Center for a New American Security
.............................................. 15
Feature Article
China’s Institutional Challenges to the International Order ........ 23
Huiyun Feng
Kai He
Perspectives
Commanding the Trend: Social Media as Information Warfare ... 50
Lt Col Jarred Prier, USAF
Overcoming the Cyber Weapons Paradox ................................... 86
Maj Timothy M. Goines, USAF
Fighter Jets, Supercars, and Complex Technology ........................ 112
Ian MacMillan
Rethinking the US Nuclear Triad ............................................. 134
Darius E. Watson
Book Review
China’s Military Transformation ............................................... 151
By: You Ji
Reviewed by: William E. Kelly, PhD
2 S S Q ♦ W 2017
On US Nuclear Deterrence
Many Americans and some in the US military will never have the op-
portunity to be educated on the nuclear deterrent—will not ever nd
time to ponder why we have it or to understand what its utility is today
and in the future. However, understanding the essence of nuclear deter-
rence is important regardless of one’s military service, branch, or career
eld because nuclear weapons are the ultimate guarantor of US military
power and security, and understanding how they fulll this role should
be fundamental to any practitioner of the profession of arms.
Unfortunately, since the end of the Cold War, along with the dra-
matic reduction in the US nuclear weapons stockpile, the deterioration
of the infrastructure to support the remaining stockpile, and the aging
of the delivery systems that constitute the triad, there has been a dearth
of attention paid to the rationale for the nuclear deterrent. e underlying
principles and rationale for the deterrent have not gone away, but we
have stopped educating, thinking, and debating, with informed under-
pinnings, the necessity and role of the US nuclear deterrent in today’s
world. Even more concerning has been the lack of informed debate on
the subject. We have raised three generations of Air Force ocers who
may not have been exposed to the most fundamental and yet relevant
arguments surrounding deterrence from the late nuclear theorists Herman
Kahn and omas Schelling.
When you stop thinking about something, typically what follows is
you stop investing in it. When you stop investing in it, the people ex-
pected to perform the mission lose focus, morale declines, and some
bad things can happen, such as the unintentional movement of nuclear
weapons from Minot Air Force Base to Barksdale Air Force Base in 2007.
It is hard to imagine that the series of failures that led up to this event
could ever have happened during the Cold War given the intense focus
the Air Force had on the nuclear mission. But, as a former commander
of Strategic Air Command observed when referring to this incident, the
unintentional movement was probably the best thing that could have
happened to the US nuclear deterrent. Nobody died, nobody got hurt,
and control of the weapons was maintained, but the incident provided
a much-needed wake-up call that we had stopped paying attention to
something still very relevant and still very important to the defense of
the United States and the stability of the world.
On US Nuclear Deterrence
S S Q ♦ W 2017 3
Of course, context matters. e collapse of the Soviet Union and the
condent expectation of a new relationship with Russia dominated in
the 1990s. e context post-9/11 further contributed to the lack of at-
tention. Our focus changed to terrorism, and it remains a concern today.
Seven years later in 2008, a foundational strategy document, the Joint
Operations Environment (JOE), was drafted to assess the environment
in which our military could be expected to operate in the future and to
posit the highest priority threats our military would face. e number
one threat at the top of the draft version of the JOE was the detonation
of a nuclear device by a terrorist organization in one or two cities in the
United States. Certainly, if a 10-kiloton weapon exploded in Central
Park or Times Square it would be a god-awful day for the United States
and certainly a terrible day for the citizens of New York City. But the nation
would survive. But if Russia or China were to unleash its nuclear arsenal on
the United States—something each is certainly capable of doing—it would
be the end of the United States. ese existential threats to our very ex-
istence as a nation should remain and do remain the number one threats
to the United States.
Skeptics may ask, what are the odds of that happening? e point
is no one knows for sure. But thinking about this event and devising
ways to prevent or minimize its likelihood is the job of the US military.
For “red-zone” events on the classic risk matrix, particularly those with
low probability but extremely high consequence, the nation expects the
military to pay attention and not simply assume away the risk. When a
military capability exists that threatens national survival it is not the role
of the military to weigh the odds of its use. History has taught us that
when a military capability exists, the will to use it can change in very
short order—unless the decision maker is eectively deterred.
Recently, we have seen some change in US thinking. e 2016 version
of the JOE strategy document mentions the importance of nuclear
deterrence several times and the possibility that nuclear weapons could
proliferate and maybe even be used in the coming years up to 2035. is
change within the JOE reects progress in our nuclear focus and thinking.
Deterrence Dened
To deter is dened as to turn aside, discourage, or prevent someone
from acting. Key is the notion that someone or some decision body
can be inuenced by the actions of another. In the context of nuclear
Kevin P. Chilton
4 S S Q ♦ W 2017
deterrence the intent is to cause a decision maker (or decision makers)
to refrain from certain acts, under certain circumstances, out of fear that
if they take those actions they will fail to achieve their objectives (deter-
rence by denial) and/or suer unacceptable consequences (deterrence
by threat of punishment). Further, the decision maker must also believe
that refraining from the specic action is the best possible choice of all
of the likely miserable choices. It may not be a good choice, but in light
of the threatened consequences, it must be the least worst option.
Why We Have Nuclear Weapons
Fundamentally, we have nuclear weapons to deter attack on the
United States and our allies. Further, with regard to our allies, the US
nuclear deterrent is meant to assure them that the United States will use
its nuclear arsenal to deter adversary aggression against them as well.
We oer this “nuclear umbrella” so as to strengthen our alliances and
also encourage our allies to not develop their own nuclear deterrent. In
essence, nuclear assurance is a fundamental and demonstrably eective
part of the US nonproliferation policy.
Demonstrating Deterrence
For deterrence to be eective for national defense and assurance, the
United States must possess two things: capability and will. Simply having
capability is not sucient. Both capability and the will to use it must be
made believable in the mind of the adversary. Demonstrations of capa-
bility and will are essential to ensure adversaries receive a clear signal of
what the United States can do and what it is willing to do.
At the end of World War II we demonstrated our capability and will
emphatically over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. During the Cold War, we
showed our capability by building an eective triad of delivery vehicles
and conducting 1,054 nuclear tests. Of those, 219 tests were detonated
above ground or in shallow water so there was a visible eect—like the
sinking of ships or the destruction of military equipment. ese visible
signs certainly painted a clear picture of US capabilities for the Soviet
Union. ere was also a demonstration of US will in some of these tests.
Indeed, some tests and their frequency were as much a part of signaling
our will as they were of testing new weapon designs.
On US Nuclear Deterrence
S S Q ♦ W 2017 5
Today the United States and Russia demonstrate capability with tests
of their delivery systems. US intercontinental ballistic missiles launch
from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, and from submarines im-
pacting in the Kwajalein atoll. e Russians launch both their sea-based
and land-based missiles from west to east across Siberia, impacting in
Kamchatka. e Russians further demonstrate the bomber leg of their
triad by ying nuclear cruise missile–capable bombers near Alaska and
o the east and west coast of the US mainland.
Contributing to the earlier discussed reduction in focus, between
1992 and 2008 the United States allowed the bomber leg of the triad
to atrophy. Bombers had been taken o constant alert at the end of
the Cold War, and though the United States claimed to retain the
capability, it rarely demonstrated it and hence put in question this leg
of our triad’s credibility. In fact, by 2008 US Strategic Command de-
volved to conducting only command-post exercises for the nuclear war
plan. While these exercises were useful training for the command-and-
control element of the deterrent, they did not produce the kind of sig-
naling required for deterrence, nor did they ever explicitly demonstrate
capability. Beginning in 2009, eld-training exercises (FTX) were re-
instituted. ese training events visibly exercise the critical elements of
the bomber leg, to include the generation of tankers, bombers, aircrew,
maintenance personnel, security forces, and weapons load crews to alert
status; the uploading of nuclear weapons; and the scramble launching
of the bombers and tankers to conduct simulated nuclear missions and
their recovery to dispersed locations. In addition, the nuclear command-
and-control aircraft also participate and exercise their wartime mission.
An FTX demonstrates capability and will while signaling the credibility
of the nuclear force to those we want to deter. It is intentionally made
visible to China and Russia to create the awareness that is fundamental
to deterrence.
Stanley Kubrick’s satirical Cold War movie, Dr. Strangelove, illustrates
this point. Good satirical comedy is most eective when it contains a
thread of truth, and in this case the truth Kubrick’s screenwriters likely
called upon came from the writings of Schelling and Kahn, the two
great nuclear deterrence theorists of the day. At the end of the movie,
after one nuclear bomb detonates on the Soviet Union, the Rus-
sian ambassador says this is a terrible thing. Of course the US presi-
dent agrees. But the Russian ambassador then reveals the existence of a
Kevin P. Chilton
6 S S Q ♦ W 2017
secret automated doomsday system that will now instantly launch the
entire Soviet arsenal against the United States. Peter Sellers, acting as the
president, replies, “Mr. Ambassador, you know, of course, that the whole
point of a doomsday machine is lost if you keep it a secret!”
One can signal will through tests and exercises—and also through
rhetoric. Nikita Khrushchev used rhetoric when addressing the United
States at the United Nations when he said, “We will bury you.” John
Kennedy made rhetorical statements during the Cuban missile crisis
when he declared a launch of a nuclear missile from Cuba against any
target in the Western Hemisphere would be met with a full retaliatory
response of the United States against the Soviet Union. at is a very
strong redline and a way of signaling will. Consider Kim Jung Un and
his “sea of re” comments. Kim uses rhetoric to signal his willingness to
cross certain thresholds, whether they be chemical, biological, or nuclear.
A few years ago the United States announced a redline in Syria with the
intent of deterring Bashar al-Assad from using chemical weapons in his
civil war. But the declaration of redlines must be carefully considered,
for if one ever backs away from a declared redline the resulting injury
to credibility can lead to future miscalculation on the part of adversaries
and, perhaps just as importantly, can degrade the credibility of our as-
surances to allies.
Could the “Unthinkable” Happen?
Between the United States and Russia the credibility of each respec-
tive deterrent force is well understood. Both face an existential threat to
this day, which is held at bay by similar stakes and risks. e strategic
nuclear relationship is stable because there is no huge imbalance in strategic
forces, nor is there a particular vulnerability either side has that would
invite the other to strike rst. is is the essence of strategic stability.
Consequently, there is not a single day that our adversaries wake up and
calculate that it would be a good day to launch a nuclear attack on the
United States or its allies.
However, a change in Russia’s declaratory nuclear policy in the past
few years may in fact reect a lowered threshold for the rst use of a nuclear
weapon in an otherwise conventional theater conict for the rst time
since the Cold War. Russia’s new declaratory policy is to threaten to
escalate to limited nuclear use to coerce Western capitulation in a con-
ventional conict they see as not going in their favor and to actually
On US Nuclear Deterrence
S S Q ♦ W 2017 7
launch limited nuclear strikes for this reason if necessary. e Russians
may have always thought this way, but now they have declared it. is
expectation of advantage from coercive nuclear threats or use could
potentially lead to future miscalculation on the part of the Russians
about how the United States might respond.
Russian President Putin has boasted that he could have Russian troops
in ve NATO capitals in two days. So, here is a hypothetical miscalcu-
lation: After early success in a conict initiated by invading Russian
forces against NATO forces in the Baltic states, the Russians nd them-
selves on the defensive and in retreat. It would seem reasonable that they
would consider using the low-yield battleeld nuclear weapons that they
are currently elding to stand rm in their declaratory policy of “escalate
to de-escalate,” in the belief that the United States would not respond
with higher collateral-damage nuclear weapons because it no longer has
similar low-yield weapons in its inventory. But this is precisely what the
United States might feel it has to do to preserve the long-term credibility
of the nuclear deterrent and commitment to the alliance. Clearly we
must address the potential for such Russian miscalculation.
Unlike Russia, China has declared a no-rst-use policy. But if read
carefully, the policy is rife with caveats and exceptions that suggest in a
losing position in a conventional ght they too would consider nuclear
rst use. History teaches that various dynasties throughout China’s history
have typically collapsed not from external invasion but from internal
revolt. It would stand to reason given China’s current military power and
its weaker neighbors (arguably with the exception of Russia), the most
likely threat to the sustainment of the current dynasty (the Communist
Party) is from internal revolt. In most of the last century, the unifying
factor in post–World War II China was Communist ideology and the
deied gure of Mao Tse-tung. Today, no one in China wears Mao suits
or carries his little red book. Today, there appears to be a fervent rise in
nationalism encouraged by the Communist Party. e party is not
deied. Instead, pride in the party’s promise (“We are back—150 years
of shame are behind us. We are a great power and a great nation. We not
only deserve but demand and command respect”) may be the underpin-
ning of the Communist Party’s legitimacy. So here is another hypothetical
miscalculation: one could envision that if China were to nd itself in a
conict with the United States in a ght over the South China Sea, it
would consider crossing the nuclear threshold to prevent defeat and the
Kevin P. Chilton
8 S S Q ♦ W 2017
prospect of being “dethroned” by its own populace should the Potemkin
village of its promises be realized. And, further, might they calculate (or
miscalculate) that the United States would not dare cross the threshold
in response out of fear of a Chinese nuclear attack on the US mainland?
To be sure, these are hypotheticals, but as soon as one starts talking
about rst use in localized theater conventional conicts (and both Rus-
sia and China have), it demands that we not only start thinking and
war-gaming these types of scenarios but also that we closely examine
our current nuclear force structure and ask ourselves if we have the right
equipment to rst deter and second to present appropriate response options
to the US president.
North Korea and the Nuclear Imbalance
As discussed, Russia, China, and the United States have similar stakes
in the nuclear game. But with North Korea there is an imbalance. North
Korea has all its chips on the table while we do not, because we hold an
existential threat over it and it does not hold one over us. is imbalance
in the stakes is a new twist to the nuclear deterrence calculus of the past
70 years. It is important to analyze the impact of this imbalance in stakes
because it is possible that the threshold for rst use is dierent when an
imbalance exists.
During the Cold War we targeted a lot of things in the Soviet Union
mostly because we did not know with absolute certainty what they
feared or valued most. As a result, we considered the matter broadly and
held ve dierent target sets at risk and assumed the Soviets had to fear
at least three or four of those sets. While we did not deliberately target
population centers, there were targets close to population centers, the
destruction of which would certainly have caused a lot of civilian casual-
ties. e strategy was not a so-called minimal deterrent—just have the
minimum capability to threaten to destroy all of their cities—because
we were not sure Stalin or Mao even cared about their people. After
all, Stalin killed 25 million of his own people after World War II and is
quoted as saying the death of a human being is a tragedy but the death
of 25 million humans is a statistic. Mao Tse-tung said he did not need a
lot of nuclear weapons to deter the United States: “If I kill 300 million
of them and they kill 300 million of us I still have a billion people and
they have nothing.”
On US Nuclear Deterrence
S S Q ♦ W 2017 9
e imbalance of stakes in North Korea could, ironically, lead Kim
Jong Un (another tyrant who has shown little concern for his own
populace) to nuclear rst use. Recalling the fates of Saddam Hussein
and Mu’ammar Gaddha and the likely endgame for himself in a lost
conventional ght, he might conclude he has nothing more to lose by
crossing the nuclear threshold in a conventional ght on the Korean
peninsula. Presented in nuclear deterrence terms, in spite of the US
existential threat, Kim could decide using a nuclear weapon may not
be his personal least worst option. In that regard, how much have we
thought recently about entering a nuclear battleeld and operating in a
nuclear environment? We did this during the Cold War. In current cir-
cumstances, we need to be thinking again about what the ghts of the
future are going to be like if someone detonates a nuclear weapon on a
future battleeld.
Assuring Allies
When considering the assurance element of our nuclear deterrent policy
it is important to remember that the United States does not get to decide
if our allies are assured—they do. We cannot make them assured; they
decide if our assurance is credible. e United States learned this lesson in
2010. For budgetary reasons the US Navy wanted to retire the nuclear-
tipped Tomahawk land attack cruise missile (TLAM/N) carried on
attack submarines in the Western Pacic. Apparently unbeknownst to
our allies, this weapon had been taken o the subs and stored ashore for
quite a while, and it was going to cost the US Navy a lot of money to
get them refurbished and recertied for use. From the Navy perspective
the missile was not being used and was expensive to redeploy. From the
policy perspective the Obama administration wanted to de-emphasize
our reliance on nuclear weapons, and eliminating this class of weapons
seemed like a great way to show the world we were serious about decreas-
ing our arsenal. We announced the decision to eliminate the TLAM/N
in the 2010 Nuclear Posture Review without consulting the Japanese or
the South Koreans. e Japanese objected strenuously, and the United
States was puzzled by the reaction to what seemed to be a logical decision.
e Japanese objected because they believed the TLAM/N, with its for-
ward presence in the Western Pacic, was the only credible deterrent to
the Chinese and the Russians. ey questioned the credibility of a US
deterrent based only on the US threat of launching an intercontinental
Kevin P. Chilton
10 S S Q ♦ W 2017
ballistic missile from either our ICBM elds or Ohio-class submarines
to come to their defense. ey did not think the Chinese or the Rus-
sians would adequately believe such threats. Instead, they feared such a
method of attack could invite a retaliatory attack on the US mainland
and they did not believe the United States would be willing to “trade
Seattle for Tokyo.” In sum, the elimination of TLAM/N undermined
our assurance of Japan. What had assured them was a nuclear capability
that had a smaller yield than an ICBM, which could be deployed from
in theater, for an in-theater scenario, and that would have the possibility
of not presenting a threat to major cities of the combatants involved
but instead could be used in a tactically credible manner. e Japanese
believed the threat of the United States using TLAM/Ns provided a
credible deterrent of an attack on them. Furthermore, they believed the
Chinese and Russians felt the same way.
To rebuild assurance the United States successfully persuaded Japan
that the bomber leg of the triad could be deployed in theater and was
exible enough to deliver capabilities similar to the TLAM/N, for example,
air-launched cruise missiles (ALCM) and/or gravity bombs. Subsequent
deployments of elements of the bomber leg to Guam have served to reas-
sure the Japanese and the South Koreans. Indeed, when bomber training
missions are own over the Korean peninsula or in the Western Pacic
they serve two purposes: to deter North Korean aggression and, just as
importantly, to assure the South Koreans and the Japanese that the US
nuclear umbrella is very real and credible. Again, assurance is critical to
support US alliances and US nonproliferation policy. Japan and South
Korea certainly have the knowhow, tools, and materials available to eld
a nuclear arsenal, but the United States does not currently believe that
their doing so would be in either their interests or ours.
During the 2016 presidential campaign, a candidate suggested it
might be cheaper if Japan and South Korea developed their own nuclear
weapons. But we must ask ourselves, would that result in a safer world?
Today, several countries hang in the balance between assurance and pos-
sible proliferation. Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan are capable. ey
could join the nuclear club quickly if no longer assured. If Shiite Iran
were to build a nuclear weapon, it is likely Sunni-dominated Saudi Arabia
would respond in kind. And if Saudi Arabia went nuclear, would Turkey
be interested in doing the same? Egypt? While none of these proliferation
On US Nuclear Deterrence
S S Q ♦ W 2017 11
scenarios are certain, they are possible, and it is not likely that a world
with this level of proliferation would be a safer place.
In the case of assurance, we can decide that assurance is an important
goal, but we cannot decide who is assured—and in some cases our as-
surance eorts have failed, even with friends and allies. France was not
assured the United States would trade New York City for Paris and built
its own nuclear deterrent. Israel could not be assured by anyone in the
West and reportedly has its own unacknowledged nuclear deterrent.
Our Nuclear Deterrent Future
Unlike Russia, China, Pakistan, India, and now North Korea, the
United States has uniquely and unilaterally decided not to build new
nuclear weapons. We are maintaining our current stockpile, which con-
sists of the B61 gravity bomb for the B-2 bomber and the NATO deter-
rent force, the W76 and W88 warheads for our submarine-launched
ballistic missiles (SLBM), the W78 and W87 warheads for our ICBMs,
and the W80 warhead for our cruise missiles. (Incidentally, the number
represents the year they were designed. So our newest nuclear weapon
is a 1988 design. e oldest is the B61 gravity bomb, a 1961 design that
is now being refurbished.) is life extension is the only allowed eort to
sustain our deterrent, while most every other nuclear-armed country is
building new nuclear weapons and adding to inventory. Russia, for ex-
ample, is not only building new strategic nuclear weapons, but it also is
building and elding new tactical/theater nuclear weapons. It is mounting
and deploying nuclear warheads on surface-to-air missiles and surface-
to-surface missiles such as the Iskandar, which is deployed in Eastern
Europe. Moscow is adding nuclear capability atop antiballistic missiles
and in torpedoes, depth charges, and cruise missiles that can be launched
from airplanes and from surface ships. e Russians have also discussed
the possibility of placing nuclear-armed cruise missiles on icebreakers
in the Arctic with the ability to range the continental United States. In
sharp contrast, with the exception of a variant of the B61, which can be
delivered by only a small percentage of the Air Force ghter eet of air-
craft, the United States has eliminated all of the tactical nuclear weapon
capability it elded in the Cold War. e bottom line is, despite the
Russian political pledge to do the same, we eliminated and the Russians
are building up.
Kevin P. Chilton
12 S S Q ♦ W 2017
China, which once felt it could adequately deter the United States
with 20 multi-megaton armed, silo-based ICBMs, is in the process of
deploying land-mobile, nuclear-tipped ICBMs as well as multiple short-
and intermediate-range missiles that are nuclear capable. In addition,
the Chinese have begun deployment of a eet of nuclear missile–armed
submarines.
e development of new weapon systems and new warheads that put
at risk US forces and our allies in Asia and Europe as well as the US
homeland is the path China and Russia are on. Meanwhile, current US
policy continues to prohibit the design and building of any new nuclear
weapons.
Even if given the green light to design and build a single new type
of nuclear weapon, our ability to do so is at best problematic. e in-
frastructure that once existed in the Cold War to design, engineer, and
manufacture nuclear warheads en masse is, in the words of the bipartisan
2009 Perry-Schlesinger report on America’s strategic posture, “decrepit.”
Even more concerning is the aging out of the human capital knowhow
to design, engineer, and manufacture a new weapon. Recall our newest
weapon was designed in 1988. Not many people left in the enterprise
have ever built or tested a new weapon. In 10 years, they will all be
gone. And in 10 years, what if the geopolitical situation in the world
(think mass proliferation) should worsen? Will the United States be in
a position to build new or additional weapons should a future president
decide that is what is required for credible deterrence and national
security? Russia will be, China will be, and even Pakistan will be, each
of which today can and is building more new nuclear weapons than the
United States is able to.
So, failing an investment in the reconstitution of a nuclear weapon–
production enterprise as a hedge against future geopolitical uncertainty,
what options does the United States have in the near term to hedge
against this scenario? Or worse yet, should some technical problem render
either a single class of SLBM or ICBM warhead or a missile system
or submarine unusable for an extended period of time (think years),
what options does the United States have to maintain eective deter-
rence vis-à-vis the Russians? e only answer to both scenarios is the
ALCM. Because of the “bomber counting rule” in the New Start Treaty,
a nuclear bomber only counts as one of the 1,550 weapons either side is
allowed to eld on their strategic deterrent platforms regardless of how
On US Nuclear Deterrence
S S Q ♦ W 2017 13
many bombs can be loaded on a single bomber. So a B-52 counts as one
weapon even though it can carry up to 20 nuclear-armed cruise missiles.
Consequently, in either of the above scenarios, the president could direct
the B-52 force to return to alert status with some 400 nuclear-armed cruise
missiles postured in a survivable mode, similar to a submarine at sea, within
a matter of days. In fact, besides being the most cost-imposing weapon
system in the triad, the ALCM is the only hedge the United States has
against either a dangerous change in the geopolitical environment or a
technical failure in either of the other two legs of the triad. is is the
imperative for elding the so-called long-range stando cruise missile
replacement of the aging ALCM.
Nuclear Perspective
Some planners may think the buildup of Russian tactical nuclear
weapons is not particularly threatening to our conventional forces.
Compared to the Hiroshima bomb at 10 kilotons and the Nagasaki
weapon at approximately 16 kilotons, a nuclear artillery shell with only
a one-half kiloton yield might seem inconsequential. is is where the
numbers become enlightening when put into perspective. A one-half
kiloton nuclear artillery shell is equivalent to 500 Mark 84, 2,000-pound
bombs detonating simultaneously right next to your unit. A more recent
comparison is the massive ordnance air burst (MOAB) bomb. One-
half kiloton equates to 30 MOABs detonating simultaneously adjacent
to your command post or your deployed force. And that half-kiloton
round can be red from 20 miles away through a 155mm equivalent
artillery piece, with more likely to follow.
If deterrence were ever to fail and the nuclear threshold crossed, be
it next month, next year, or in 50 years, will the United States have the
right tools to oer the president to de-escalate the situation on accept-
able conditions? One thing is certain: if China, Russia, or North Korea
cross the threshold of rst use against one of our allies, deployed US
forces, or the homeland, I expect one of the rst things the president
would do is turn to the secretary of defense and say, “Make them stop,
now!” Our response must be more exible than to assert we can put a
multi-hundred-kiloton weapon on their nation’s capital in 30 minutes.
e president and the nation deserve more options than that.
Kevin P. Chilton
14 S S Q ♦ W 2017
Conclusion
Historical evidence and reason lead me to believe that the US nuclear
deterrent has successfully accomplished its purpose since 1945. In fact,
nuclear weapons are the one set of military systems that have been 100
percent successful in their assigned mission. ey have deterred attack
on the United States and its allies, assured our allies, and, though not
specically called out in US policy, deterred major nuclear powers from
engaging in global conventional warfare on the scale we witnessed in the
rst half of the last century. However, there is no evidence that our self-
imposed policies and constraints have constrained any other nuclear-
armed or nuclear-aspiring power. Simple prudence now demands that
we take steps necessary to ensure the continued health of our current
nuclear deterrent. We must recapitalize all elements of the triad and
make the appropriate investments in the Department of Energy infra-
structure and human capital to ensure that presidents in 10, 20, 30, 40
years and beyond have the necessary tools at hand to eectively deter
against all existential threats.
Gen Kevin P. Chilton, USAF, Retired
Former commander, US Strategic Command
S S Q ♦ W 2017 15
Highlighting Articial Intelligence:
An Interview with Paul Scharre
Director, Technology and National
Security Program
Center for a New American Security
Conducted 26 September 2017
SSQ: What is the best way to prepare for an articial intelligence
future?
Mr. Scharre: People have been talking about AI for decades and there
have been cycles of excitement, hype, and disappointment. We are in
a period right now of intense excitement and progress. In just the last
ve years we’ve seen several things emerge. e rst is big data that can
be used to train learning machines. at combines with more powerful
computer processing capabilities that can be used for parallel computa-
tions for deep neural networks. And nally there have been advances in
the algorithms. All of this has come together to enable machine learn-
ing, often using deep neural networks, that can make machines very
eective at solving a variety of problems. We are seeing this technology
being applied to a whole range of industries including nance and trans-
portation, and there are many national security applications as well. e
best way to think about AI is not as a discrete kind of technology, like
you might think of hypersonics, but something that is more like a basic
enabling technology like electricity. Kevin Kelly, editor of Wired maga-
zine, has suggested that just as electricity empowered and enlivened all
sorts of objects, AI will similarly cognitize objects making them more
intelligent and useful. Now, there are limitations to AI today. It is very
narrow—domain specic—and does not have the kind of general-purpose
reasoning capability that humans do or the kinds of scary AI one sees
in science ction. But even still, AI today is a very powerful technology.
Many people compare it to a new industrial revolution in its capacity to
change things. It is poised to change not only the way we think about
productivity but also elements of national power. Just as past indus-
trial revolutions transferred power to the more industrialized nations,
Paul Scharre
16 S S Q ♦ W 2017
AI will do something similar. But those elements of national power and
advantage may look dierent. What is it that gives an actor a competitive
advantage, whether a corporation or government? Is it better data, better
algorithms, human capital, technology, or the right ideas for implement-
ing them? e rst-order questions we should be thinking about are: what
is this technology, what is the essence of what is occurring, and how do we
think about strategic advantage? What will position the United States for
strategic advantage, and how do we maintain it? With all the disruption
AI brings there is great opportunity and also a lot of risk, particularly for
a nation like the United States that is heavily invested in the current way
of doing things. We spend quite a bit of money each year on defense
and national security programs and so far we don’t rely on AI to any great
extent. So how do we need to shift what we are doing as a result of AI?
SSQ: A recent study predicted that by 2025 over 70 billion objects
would be network enabled. Should we be rethinking the internet of things?
Mr. Scharre: e trends in the internet of things are new and are
happening out of anyone’s control. e proliferation of the internet of
things is going to force us to rethink elements of the internet and con-
nectivity from a standpoint of cybersecurity and personal security. We
need to better prepare for the world that is coming. William Gibson, the
science ction writer who coined the term cyberspace, has said: “Cyber-
space, not so long ago, was a specic elsewhere, one we visited periodi-
cally, peering into it from the familiar physical world. Now cyberspace
has everted. Turned itself inside out. Colonized the physical.”In many
ways, cyberspace is not a place but rather a layer on top of our exist-
ing reality. So through our various connected devices, whether in our
pockets or our cars, we are now able to connect with others around the
world. e trend is toward more internet connections and more devices
whether in our homes or as wearable devices. ere are a number of
challenges that come with this trend. e baseline challenge for these
devices is that the cybersecurity for these devices is incredibly poor. We
tend to rush these devices to market even if they contain many vulner-
abilities. en we try to close the vulnerabilities later after deploying
them and think about security as the last step. Many of these devices are
very insecure, and the eect is not only that people can hack the devices
in your home to spy on you but also that these devices can be lever-
aged as part of bot nets for things such as DDOS [distributed denial of
Highlighting Articial Intelligence: An Interview with Paul Scharre
S S Q ♦ W 2017 17
service] attacks. e Mirai bot net in 2016 is one example. So this is a
major problem. Societies need to reevaluate their views on cybersecurity
as a whole and in particular the risks to their personal security that come
with these devices. One of my favorite hacks came from an episode of
the TV show “South Park.” e scenario used a character talking to
“Alexa” [the virtual assistant AI from Amazon] during the show com-
manding Alexa to do things. Now if you had one of these devices in
your home, it would respond to the television program rather than you.
Again, the risk comes from someone being able to reach into your home
via the network or some other method. So the internet of things is an
interesting challenge. But most people who are buying these devices do
not know how secure or insecure these objects are since there is no way
for a consumer to know this. So these limitations create a big challenge.
SSQ: Are the risks of AI overblown, or do we have reason to be concerned?
Mr. Scharre: It depends on the kind of risks we are talking about.
With any type of new technology there is going to be risk associated
with implementation. Because we don’t always understand the capabili-
ties of the technology, we miss some of the risks involved and many of
the unresolved safety concerns. For instance, consider electricity. It’s not
going to rise up and kill us all, but if one is careless, it can be dangerous
and life threatening. We have learned the safety protocols of electricity,
such as grounding and other precautions. Now we need to do the same
with AI. We also need to think about people intentionally using AI for
malicious purposes—something that is inevitable. State and non-state
actors are going to use AI for nefarious ends and we must be prepared
for this. Given the safety risks and vulnerabilities, we also need to be
worried about AI systems that might be exploited or manipulated in
some way. Current generation AI systems have safety problems that are
not yet solved. ese are also very serious concerns some experts have
raised not about today’s systems but more about the long-term implica-
tions. If AI systems become more intelligent, particularly if they develop
in the direction of a general-purpose learning ability—which doesn’t exist
today—then this would raise signicant long-term safety questions.
SSQ: As articial intelligence becomes more ubiquitous and more
powerful, should the United States attempt to control AI by enhancing
human intellect through gene manipulation?
Paul Scharre
18 S S Q ♦ W 2017
Mr. Scharre: is is a great question. Let me reframe the issue just
a bit. During the rst industrial revolution, we were able to create
machines that were much stronger than human beings to perform various
kinds of tasks. We are now creating machines that are smarter than
humans—if the task is narrow enough and we have enough data to sup-
port it. So it seems as if for many applications we will be able to leverage
machines in very specic ways. In many cases, even if machines are not
qualitatively as smart as humans in making the best quality decisions,
machines are faster than humans and can be employed cheaply and at
scale, which is a great advantage. We have seen this kind of application
in stock trading where the speed advantage emerges. We have seen this
in Twitter bots where the advantage of scale would not be possible if
you were trying to use a million people to replicate content. At the same
time, the best general-purpose learning system on the planet is the
human brain in terms of quality, robustness, perception, exibility, and
responding to novelty. is is unlikely to change any time soon. While
it’s possible there may be something in AI that changes this, it does not
appear likely in the near future. Given these limitations, we should be
thinking about the best way to blend intelligence—human cognition
and machine learning working together. One challenge is going to be
how we avoid making it more dicult for humans to stay engaged as
the speed of action increases due to automation. It doesn’t matter that
humans make better qualitative decisions for stock trading and are more
cognizant of manipulation; you simply cannot compete at the speed of
automated stock-trading algorithms. ere is potential for using AI and
automation in warfare or national security applications, particularly in
domains that are native to machines, such as the electromagnetic spec-
trum or cyberspace. In this type of world, how do humans cope with
an environment where we may be approaching a battle for singularity,
where the pace of battle becomes so fast that humans are not able to
comprehend what is happening and react to events fast enough? We have
some narrow settings in the military today where this already is the case,
for instance with missile defense systems operating in automatic mode.
e domain in which humans can no longer react fast enough is ex-
panding over time. ere are certainly risks when automating. Machines
today are very brittle and do not have the common sense we expect from
humans or the ability to understand context. is limits the machine’s
ability to recognize errors and stop if it malfunctions. So we might want
Highlighting Articial Intelligence: An Interview with Paul Scharre
S S Q ♦ W 2017 19
to also think about how to increase human performance directly. Today
there are many ways to enhance human performance through medicine—
for instance, drugs such as Modanil and Adderall to increase stamina,
alertness, or concentration. e military is conducting some interesting
studies in this area by using some of these drugs—mostly in aviation—but
adoption is extremely slow in the military overall. is is the case even
though the new drugs are better than the ones the military is currently
using. For example, we give dextroamphetamine to pilots and caeine of
course to all sorts of troops in an unregulated fashion. But studies have
shown that Modanil is more eective at enhancing cognitive perfor-
mance with fewer side eects than dextroamphetamine or caeine. We
should be looking at ways to enhance human performance, including
genetics that we may see happening in the coming decades. Now any-
thing that alters humans directly raises a host of serious legal, ethical,
and social issues, and I don’t want to dismiss them. We need to be care-
ful to ensure that we’re not exposing our troops to potentially harmful
treatments. But we also don’t want to miss out on an opportunity to
enhance their performance and potentially save lives. e way to deal
with this challenge is to confront these issues directly and work through
them. ere are things we could be doing with technologies that are well
understood, eective, and reasonably safe that we are not doing because
so far we have not been willing to grapple with these question in the
military.
SSQ: Some people claim the US will “never” use autonomous lethal
military systems. Is this realistic?
Mr. Scharre: e Pentagon is taking a cautious, hedging approach
to autonomous weapons. e ocial policy, which I was involved in
while working for DOD, approves certain things that we are already do-
ing, such as autonomous missile defense systems. e policy then also
creates a new process for approving new technology if people want to
use autonomy in a novel way that’s never been done before in weapon
systems. So now there is a process for stakeholders to come together and
evaluate ideas before adopting new uses of autonomy in weapons. When
former Deputy Secretary of Defense Bob Work was at the Pentagon, he
spoke about this and in essence stated we are not planning to use lethal
autonomous weapons but if others do, we might have to. Air Force Gen
Paul Selva has spoken on this a number of times and has said he feels it
Paul Scharre
20 S S Q ♦ W 2017
is essential to keep humans responsible for using lethal force. is raises
a slightly dierent question: how do we think about accountability and
responsibility? One of the challenges here is making a clear, bright line.
Look at the example of self-driving cars. In theory, there is a clear dif-
ference between a car driven by a human and a car driven by a machine
autonomously. But what we see in practice is creeping autonomy in a
wide range of functions, such as intelligent cruise control, automatic
collision avoidance, automatic lane keeping, and automatic parking. We
are seeing a slow shift in various functions to the machine. e human
is still sort of responsible for driving, but what we mean by “driving”
begins to change over time and it starts to look a lot more like what we
see in commercial airlines. e plane can basically y itself and the pilot
is there in case of an emergency and in some cases to be a scapegoat if
something goes wrong. As automation continues to creep forward, how
does this change the role of the human, and how do we ensure the
human is ultimately responsible for what happens on the battleeld?
SSQ: What is the most futuristic AI technology we will see in the next
20 years? And the next 100 years?
Mr. Scharre: What we are likely to see in the next 20 years, given
current advances in AI, is implementation of various narrow AI capabil-
ities. I suspect we are likely to be surprised by how capable some of these
applications might be but also how brittle they are. Consider Deep-
Mind’s program AlphaGo that learned to play the game of Go. Many
people thought this application would take much longer to perfect than
it actually did. Additionally, the system defeated its human Go adversary
quite handily. So one of the eects we see is, often AI capabilities seem very
distant but then, seemingly overnight, AI moves from not very good to
much better than the best human player. Another aspect I think we are
likely to see in the next two decades is the surprise factor—how machines
can learn in novel ways. Sometimes these surprises are good, sometimes
not so good. My favorite example is a bot that was learning to play the
game of Tetris learned to pause the game right before the last brick fell so
it would never lose. at was allowed according to its programming, but
probably not what the designers meant it to do. Brittleness is another
important attribute of AI and something we will have to grapple with
as these technologies are implemented in various applications. AlphaGo
learned to play on a standard 19-by-19-inch Go board and is better
Highlighting Articial Intelligence: An Interview with Paul Scharre
S S Q ♦ W 2017 21
than any human at playing that game, but its intelligence is very narrow.
AlphaGo cannot transfer its experience in playing to give it a leg up on
learning how to play chess or checkers. It can’t even play Go very well
on a dierently sized board. is is very dierent from a human player
who can take concepts from one game and apply them somewhere else.
So the systems will remain very brittle—being very powerful, but in an
instant becoming very dumb.
In the longer term over the next century, I think it is very likely we
will have systems that can overcome some of the weaknesses of AI systems
today. One of these areas is the ability to transfer learning from one task
to another. AI will be able to learn over multiple domains. e future
will move from today’s narrow learning systems to wider, general-purpose
learning systems. Many will ask the question: when will AI reach
human-level intelligence? But this is the wrong question. Why would
we assume humans are the benchmark for intelligence? Why would we
assume machines will evolve intelligence in the same way as humans?
Humans today can still do things machines cannot do. But in the
future we are more likely to see machines that have general-purpose
abilities and manifest them in ways very dierent from today. One hun-
dred years from now, I suspect people will continue to say, machines are
very smart but they are not smart like people. is is only because we
increasingly narrow down the things that make us uniquely human. We
are likely to see very powerful general-purpose systems and that will create
a range of tricky problems as we develop AI.
SSQ: Mr. Scharre, on behalf of Team SSQ, thank you for sharing your
views on articial intelligence with the SSQ audience and for peering
into a future we hope will produce great promise for mankind.
For More Information
Scharre recommends the following links for those interested in learning
more about articial intelligence:
• https://www.wired.com/2014/10/future-of-articial-intelligence/
• https://www.cnas.org/publications/reports/patriot-wars
• https://www.wired.com/2016/03/two-moves-alphago-lee-sedol
-redened-future/
Paul Scharre
22 S S Q ♦ W 2017
• https://arxiv.org/pdf/1606.06565.pdf
• http://nautil.us/issue/40/learning/is-articial-intelligence-permanently
-inscrutable
• http://nautil.us/issue/27/dark-matter/articial-intelligence-is-already
-weirdly-inhuman
• http://www.evolvingai.org/fooling
S S Q ♦ W 2017 23
China’s Institutional Challenges to the
International Order
Huiyun Feng
Kai He
Abstract
is article examines one critical but understudied question: how
does China challenge the international order through multilateral in-
stitutions? By integrating institutional balancing theory in international
relations (IR) and prospect theory in behavioral psychology, this article
introduces a “prospect-institutional balancing” model to explain how
China has utilized two types of institutional balancing strategies to
challenge the US-led international order. We argue that China is more
likely to use inclusive institutional balancing to challenge the United
States in an area where it has a relatively advantageous status, such as the
economic and trade arena. When China faces a security challenge with
disadvantageous prospects, it is more likely to take risks to conduct ex-
clusive institutional balancing against the United States. Using China’s
policy choices in the Asian-Pacic Economic Cooperation (APEC) and
the Conference on Interaction and Condence-Building Measures in
Asia (CICA) as two case studies, the project tests the validity of the
“prospect-institutional balancing” model.
1
It concludes that China’s in-
stitutional challenge to the international order will be more peaceful
than widely predicted.
✵ ✵ ✵ ✵ ✵
Huiyun Feng is a senior lecturer in the School of Government and International Relations at Grith
University in Brisbane, Australia.
Kai He is a professor of international relations in the Grith Asia Institute and Centre for Governance
and Public Policy at Grith University in Brisbane, Australia.
is project is supported by the Korea Foundation, the Australian Research Council (project no.
FT160100355), and the MacArthur Foundation (grant no. 16-1512-150509-IPS).
Huiyun Feng and Kai He
24 S S Q ♦ W 2017
e rise of China is one of the most dynamic political events in world
politics in the twenty-rst century. Scholars and policy analysts have
debated China’s challenges to the international order as well as the
implications for world politics. One critical but understudied question
is how China challenges the international order. If China uses mili-
tary means to overthrow the system (as power transition theory might
expect) as Germany and Japan did in WWII, then military conicts
between China and the United States will be unavoidable. However,
if China relies on multilateral institutions and institutional balancing
strategies to challenge the international order, a peaceful power transi-
tion in the international system will become probable.
Borrowing insights from institutional balancing theory and prospect
theory helps examine China’s two institutional balancing approaches
in challenging the US-led international order. is suggests that China
is more likely to use inclusive institutional balancing—that is, to join
and reform the rules and norms of existing institutions to maximize
its economic gains in the liberal economic order. When facing security
pressures and threats from US alliance-based bilateralism—the major
feature of the security order—China is more likely to adopt exclusive
institutional balancing, for example establishing and strengthening
non–US-involved multilateralism, to minimize its potential losses in
the security arena.
is article proceeds in four parts. First, by critically examining the
“China debate” it argues that the current debate oversimplies the
dynamics of the international order and overemphasizes China’s threats.
How China challenges the international order is the key to examining the
consequences of the rise of China. Second, integrating prospect theory
with institutional balancing theory creates a “prospect-institutional bal-
ancing” model to explain how China copes with challenges and threats
in the two components of the international order: the economic sub-
order and the security sub-order. ird, the article provides case studies
to examine China’s inclusive institutional balancing through advocating
the Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacic (FTAAP) at the APEC as well as
its exclusive institutional balancing through promoting the “New Asian
Security” concept at the CICA. e conclusion suggests that although
China’s challenges to the international order will be inevitable, the
outcome of the institutional balancing may be more peaceful than
widely predicted.
China’s Institutional Challenges to the International Order
S S Q ♦ W 2017 25
China’s Rise and the Dynamics of the International Order
Scholars have debated China’s rise and its implications for the inter-
national order since the 1990s. Most realists, especially oensive realists
and power transition theorists, are pessimistic about China’s rise in the
international order because a rising power, by denition, is revisionist
in nature, which aims to overthrow the existing international order. On
the contrary, liberals optimistically argue that China will be a status
quo power because China has beneted signicantly from the current
international order, which it should sustain rather than overturn. e
uncertain constructivist school focuses on the role of ideas and norms
of the existing international order in shaping China’s foreign policy. It
suggests that China’s future is still unwritten, because ideas and norms
in the international order are easy to interpret but hard to predict. While
all three schools of thought have valid arguments in certain aspects, they
suer two analytical weaknesses: a static and holistic view of the inter-
national order and insucient attention to China’s dierent strategies in
challenging the international order.
2
Realism: China Is a Revisionist Power
To a certain extent, dierent stripes of realism share a common
argument about threats or potential threats of a rising China to the
existing international order, although they disagree on the level of
China’s challenges as well as how to deal with China. For example, John
Mearsheimer’s oensive realism suggests that as a rising power, China
will do what the United States did in the nineteenth century: pursue
regional hegemony in its own hemisphere.
3
is revisionist behavior will
be inevitably at odds with US hegemony—the essence of the existing
international order. erefore, Mearsheimer concludes that the rise of
China will be “unpeaceful” and the United States will do anything to
constrain, contain, and slow down China’s rise.
4
Mearsheimer’s argu-
ment is shared by power-transition theorists who suggest that the power
transition in the international system is likely to end up with military
conicts and war between a rising power and the hegemon.
5
Although defensive realists believe states are pursuing security instead
of power in the international system, they are also pessimistic about the
consequence of China’s rise, US decline, and the transformation of the
international system.
6
For example, as Christopher Layne points out,
the emerging multipolarity caused by China’s rise will be a nightmare for
Huiyun Feng and Kai He
26 S S Q ♦ W 2017
US policymakers who still live in the unipolar illusion.
7
However, some
defensive realists believe China will rise eventually, but its challenges
and threats to the United States will still be limited over a relatively long
time, especially in the military domain.
8
e policy recommendation
of defensive realists is an oshore balancing strategy.
9
It means that the
United States should gradually withdraw its security commitments and
avoid a direct power competition with China in the Asia Pacic. More-
over, the United States should encourage other Asian countries, such as
Japan, South Korea, and India, to balance rising threats from China.
Most realists label China as a revisionist state regarding the existing
international order. China’s “assertive diplomacy” since 2009 and the
US “pivot toward Asia” during Obama’s second term can be seen as an
inevitable power struggle and competition between a revisionist power
and the status-quo hegemon, as many realists have predicted.
10
Liberalism: China Is a Beneciary of the Existing Order
Most liberals have an optimistic view of China’s rise for two reasons.
First, economic liberalism suggests that economic interdependence can
make war costly for all countries and therefore will alleviate the intensity
of strategic competition between the United States and China.
11
Next,
institutional liberalism argues that China has beneted tremendously
from the current international order after the Cold War, and therefore
the stakes are too high for China to overthrow the system. In IR theorist
G. John Ikenberry’s words, the Western liberal order is easy to join but
hard to overturn.
12
Although the United States might lose its hegemon
status in the future multipolar world, it can still play a leadership role
in the Western order.
13
In other words, the Western order built by the
United States after World War II may not be able to stop China’s rise, but
it will shape and constrain its behavior. erefore, most liberals advocate
an engagement policy toward China so that China will be further inte-
grated, enmeshed, and entangled by international rules and institutions.
14
China’s “charm oensive” in the 1990s and “peaceful rise” pledge in the
early 2000s seem to support the “status quo” foreign policy suggested by
liberals.
15
China strengthened its economic ties with the United States
and joined the World Trade Organization in 2001.
16
China also alle-
viated regional suspicions toward its economic and military ascent by
actively participating in regional multilateral institutions and strength-
ening condence-building measures.
17
However, as mentioned above,
China’s Institutional Challenges to the International Order
S S Q ♦ W 2017 27
China’s assertive turn in diplomacy after 2009 has cast a deep-seated
doubt about the liberal optimism regarding China’s rise. One remaining
question is whether liberals are totally wrong. In other words, has China
really decided to give up all the benets from economic interdependence
and the existing international order?
Constructivism: Socialize China into the Existing Order
Constructivists highlight the role of norms, culture, and ideas in
constituting state behavior.
18
Although they agree that China’s rise is
a challenge to the international order, they suggest that the prevailing
norms, culture, and ideas can socialize China’s behavior to make it t
with the existing international order. For example, East Asia interna-
tional relations expert Alastair Iain Johnston suggests that Chinese foreign
policy elites have been socialized by cooperative security norms and rules
through participating in multilateral institutions since the Cold War.
19
is socialization eect in turn allowed Chinese foreign policy elites to
educate their leaders about what China should do in the international
system and directly contributed to the cooperative direction of China’s
foreign policy in the post–Cold War era.
Like Johnston, political scientist Jerey Legro suggests that Chinese
political leaders are experiencing a clash of ideas and intentions regarding
China’s future role in the international system.
20
Other powers, espe-
cially the United States, should keep their ideational engagement with
China so Chinese political elites can be further socialized by Western
ideas, especially democracy and liberalism. e rise of the Soviet-like
“new thinking” in China will eventually lead China to embrace democ-
racy and the existing international order. In a similar vein, Like Legro,
Johnston’s policy suggestion is to further engage China through multi-
lateral institutions so that Chinese leaders and policy elites can be con-
tinuously socialized by cooperative norms in security and foreign policy
decision making. e US call for China to become a “responsible stake-
holder” in the early 2000s can be seen as an engagement eort to socialize
China into the existing international order.
21
Like liberals, constructivists also face diculties in explaining China’s
“assertiveness turn” in foreign policy after 2009. One possible explana-
tion may lie in the contingent nature of ideas and intentions as well
as the nonlinear socialization process. For example, Johnston might
Huiyun Feng and Kai He
28 S S Q ♦ W 2017
argue that the socialization process of cooperative security norms is
interrupted by other norms, such as nationalism or realpolitik.
While all three schools of thought contain some elements of truth,
they suer two analytical weaknesses: a static and holistic view of the
international order and insucient attention given to China’s dierent
strategies in challenging the international order. First, they hold a static
and holistic view of the international order. In a realist world, the inter-
national order equals the international system, in which a rising power
like China will inevitably challenge the status quo. When liberals argue
that China is a beneciary of the existing order, they also assume that
there is only one Western order or liberal order in the world. Construc-
tivists assume that some universal norms in one ideational system, such
as cooperative security or democracy, may constitute and socialize Chinese
elites’ ideas in making policies.
Yet, “order” is a contested concept in international relations. Order
can be just descriptive in nature in that scholars treat order as a synonym
of system. International aairs scholar James Rosenau suggested that an
analytic concept of order, or an empirical order, can “be located on a
continuum which dierentiates between those founded on cooperation
and cohesion at one extreme and those sustained by conict and disarray—
i.e., disorder—at the other.”
22
On the other hand, scholars can claim
normative meanings to order, that is, a desirable outcome of states’ inter-
actions. Hedley Bull dened order as “a pattern that leads to a particular
result, an arrangement of social life such that it promotes certain goals or
values.”
23
Similarly, Muthiah Alagappa conceptualizes order as “a formal
or informal arrangement that sustains rule-governed interaction among
sovereign states in their pursuit of individual and collection goals.”
24
Generally, realists treat order more as a fact, while liberals and construc-
tivists view order more as a rule or a value. However, as mentioned be-
fore, all of these three schools of thought to a certain extent hold a static
and holistic conceptualization of order.
25
In fact, the so-called international order has many components or
sub-orders, which makes the transformation of the international order
more dynamic than widely believed. According to Alagappa, order is
built on the interaction among states. Dierent types of state inter-
actions, therefore, can create dierent sub-international-orders, such as
an economic order, a political order, and a security order in the world.
Moreover, the change of the international order will not happen at one
China’s Institutional Challenges to the International Order
S S Q ♦ W 2017 29
time or overnight. Instead, one component of the international order,
such as the economic order, may transform rst while others may stay
the same. In other words, the transformation of the whole international
order will take time and happen gradually.
China might challenge the security order as realists predict, but it is
not rational to overthrow the economic order, because, as liberals argue,
China has been a “winner” by joining the liberal economic order after the
Cold War. In addition, China’s communist ideology might be at odds
with the democracy-based political order, but it will not lead to war as
long as China does not export communism or revolution to the outside
world. erefore, the holistic and static view of the “international order”
oversimplies the complex nature of the international order and thereby
overemphasizes the potential dangers or threats from the rise of China.
Second, there is no doubt that China will challenge some compo-
nents of the international order. However, how China will challenge the
international order is still an unanswered question and deserves serious
scholarly inquiry and scrutiny. On the one hand, if China uses military
means to overthrow the existing order just like Japan and Germany did
in World War II, then a hegemonic war or a power-transition conict
between a rising China and the existing hegemon as well as other re-
gional powers, such as Japan, seems unavoidable. On the other hand,
if China uses other means, such as institutions, to challenge some parts
of the existing international order, then the outcome of China’s chal-
lenges might not be conictual. China can become a rule-maker or rule-
reformer to transform the international order from within. As political
scientists Randall Schweller and Xiaoyu Pu point out, China’s “rightful
resistance” toward US-led international order might not lead to war or
conict in the post–US-hegemony era.
26
Prospect-Institutional Balancing Model:
How Will China Challenge?
Built on prospect theory from behavioral economics and institutional
balancing theory from IR, a “prospect-institutional balancing” model
emerges to explain how China will challenge the dierent components
of the international order or the sub-international orders. To simplify
the model’s application, we only focus on two parts of the international
order in world politics: the liberal economic order and the US bilateralism-
based security order in the Asia Pacic.
Huiyun Feng and Kai He
30 S S Q ♦ W 2017
Institutional balancing theory is realism-based, which suggests that
the high level of economic interdependence among states in the con-
text of deepening globalization encourages states to choose multilateral
institutions instead of traditional military means to pursue security and
interests under the anarchic international system. It is applied to explain
the proliferation of multilateral institutions in the Asia Pacic, such as
the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), the ASEAN Plus ree (APT), and
the East Asia Summit (EAS), after the Cold War.
27
According to institutional balancing theory, there are two types of in-
stitutional balancing: inclusive and exclusive. Inclusive institutional bal-
ancing means to invite a target state into an institution and use the rules
and norms of the institution to constrain the behavior of the target state.
e establishment of the ARF is seen as an inclusive institutional bal-
ancing of ASEAN states in constraining China’s behavior in the 1990s.
Exclusive institutional balancing intends to exclude a target state from
an institution and utilize the unity and cohesion of the institution to
exert pressures toward or countervail threats from the target state. e
APT is an example of exclusive institutional balancing conducted by
ASEAN states and three major powers in East Asia to enhance coopera-
tion among them as well as deal with pressures from the United States
after the 1997 Asian economic crisis.
28
China’s institutional challenges to the international order are remark-
able after the 2000s. On the one hand, China has adopted inclusive
institutional balancing against the United States through actively engag-
ing existing institutions, such as the APT, the EAS, and APEC. On the
other hand, it has also chosen exclusive institutional balancing targeting
the United States through non-US institutions, such as the Shanghai
Cooperation Organization (SCO) and the CICA. After the 2008 nancial
crisis, China became even more proactive in proposing new multi-
lateral institutions, such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank,
the Community of Common Destiny, as well as the “One Belt, One
Road” (OBOR)—an ambitious investment initiative across Europe and
Southeast Asia. It might still be debatable whether the OBOR is a multi-
lateral institution or not. However, to streamline the implementation of
the OBOR, some types of multilateral institutions around the OBOR
might be inevitable in the future.
One puzzle about China’s institutional behavior is its dierent strategies
toward dierent institutions.
29
As mentioned before, China has used
China’s Institutional Challenges to the International Order
S S Q ♦ W 2017 31
both inclusive and exclusive balancing in dierent institutions. To better
understand the consequences of China’s institutional challenges to the
international order, it is imperative to know under what conditions or
when China will adopt inclusive institutional balancing and under what
conditions and when exclusive institutional balancing. e existing in-
stitutional balancing theory is inadequate to answer this question.
is article borrows insights from prospect theory, a behavioral
economics/psychology theory, to address this when question. From
laboratory experiments, Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, the orig-
inators of prospect theory, found that the way people interpret their
situation for making choices—as a domain of either gains or losses—
inuences how they behave in terms of their risk orientation.
30
People
tend to evaluate choices with respect to a reference point; they choose
risk-averse behavior in a domain of gains but risk-acceptant behavior in
a domain of losses. In other words, if people are in an advantageous situa-
tion (a domain of gains), they are more likely to behave cautiously (be
risk averse) to protect their gains. However, when people are in a dis-
advantageous situation (a domain of losses), they are more likely to
choose risky behavior (be risk acceptant) that may either reverse or
worsen their losses.
31
In other words, they choose irrationally by going
“against the odds” of expected utility calculations, as in the case of the
debt-ridden lottery player in the domain of losses whose odds (probability)
of winning the lottery (achieving gains) are much worse than losing the
purchase price (incurring losses) of the lottery ticket.
32
Integrating prospect theory and institutional balancing suggests three
outcomes: (1) inclusive institutional balancing is less risky than exclusive
institutional balancing, because the latter is more oriented toward alien-
ation, antagonism, and rivalry than the former; (2) a state is more likely
to choose inclusive institutional balancing in an arena where it has clear
advantages (i.e., when its decisions are framed in a domain of gains);
and (3) a state is more likely to adopt exclusive institutional balancing
in an arena where it has clear disadvantages (i.e., when its decisions are
framed in a domain of losses). Applying this “prospect-institutional
balancing” model to China’s dierent institutional strategies suggests
two hypotheses:
1. When facing pressures in a sub-international order where China
has a comparative advantage, Chinese leaders are more likely to
Huiyun Feng and Kai He
32 S S Q ♦ W 2017
be framed in a domain of gains and thereby to adopt a risk-averse
policy of inclusive institutional balancing.
2. When facing pressures in a sub-international order where China
does not enjoy a comparative advantage, Chinese leaders are more
likely to be framed in a domain of losses and thereby to adopt a
risk-acceptant policy of exclusive institutional balancing.
To test this prospect-institutional balancing model, two brief case
studies will be used to examine China’s institutional strategies in APEC
and CICA.
33
Each case examines Chinese leaders’ domain of actions
when facing challenges to see whether Chinese leaders behave in a
domain of gains or a domain of losses. e prospect-institutional bal-
ancing model is used to predict what Chinese leaders will do. e results
are compared to China’s actual policy choices.
China’s Institutional Strategies in APEC and CICA
China has adopted inclusive institutional balancing and exclusive in-
stitutional balancing strategies through the APEC and CICA respectively
to deal with economic and security pressures from the United States. At
the 2014 APEC meeting in Beijing, China actively promoted the Free
Trade Area of the Asia-Pacic (FTAAP) for osetting negative inuences
and the impact of the US-led Trans-Pacic Partnership (TPP). In 2014,
China reinvigorated the CICA, a less-known security institution across
Asia, to countervail security pressures from the “US pivot” policy by the
Obama administration.
e TPP and China’s Inclusive Institutional Balancing
through the FTAAP
e APEC is an important multilateral institution aiming to promote
free trade and economic liberalization in the Asia Pacic. It was estab-
lished in 1989 and has 21 members from the Asia Pacic now, including
the United States and China. However, due to the stalled Doha Round
of trade negotiations in the World Trade Organization (WTO), states
have started some bilateral and minilateral free trade negotiations at the
beginning of the 2000s. Although the 21 APEC leaders still gather an-
nually, the APEC’s role in promoting free trade at the regional level has
gradually marginalized and diminished.
China’s Institutional Challenges to the International Order
S S Q ♦ W 2017 33
e TPP, a smaller free trade pact than the APEC, is a product of
widespread dissatisfaction over the stalled Doha Round in the WTO as
well as the slow development of APEC. It originated from the Trans-Pacic
Strategic Economic Partnership (TPSEP) agreement, a four-country
trade agreement among Brunei, Chile, Singapore, and New Zealand in
2005. Starting in early 2008, the United States joined negotiations to
establish a broad and high standard trading bloc—the TPP—on the basis
of TPSEP with support from other US allies in the Asia Pacic, such as
Australia, Canada, and Japan. In February 2016, 12 countries signed
the TPP agreement.
34
Because of its relatively high admission standards,
especially on protection for intellectual property, high labor and envi-
ronmental codes, and restriction on state-owned enterprises, China is
intentionally excluded from the TPP. e Obama administration was
clear that the purpose of the TPP is to prevent China from writing the
trading rules in the Asia Pacic.
35
In the eyes of Chinese elites, the TPP
is nothing but a balancing strategy of the United States aiming to under-
mine China’s economic power and inuence in the Asia Pacic region.
36
Facing US challenges through the TPP, China can adopt either
exclusive or inclusive institutional balancing. For exclusive institutional
balancing, China will need to form a new trading bloc to purposefully
exclude the United States so the China-led new trading bloc can counter-
vail pressures from the TPP. For inclusive institutional balancing, China
will need to create and dominate a larger trading bloc including the
United States so China can use this bigger trading bloc to dilute the
negative inuence of the TPP. It is worth noting that the Chinese gov-
ernment publicly stated that it would examine the possibility to join the
TPP after the 12 countries signed the TPP agreement in February 2016.
However, it is still not clear whether the statement is genuine or rhetorical
in nature due to the mounting diculties for the Chinese economy to
meet the TPP standards in a short period.
According to the “prospect-institutional balancing” model, China’s
policy choices are shaped by the nature of the challenge. In the eco-
nomics and trading arena, China has enjoyed a relatively advantageous
position since the 2008 global nancial crisis. at crisis started in the
United States and spread to the whole world quickly. Although China’s
economic growth was also dragged down to 9 percent in 2008, it was
still the most dynamic economy in the world. In addition, the Chinese
government announced a two-year, four-trillion Chinese Yuan ($586
Huiyun Feng and Kai He
34 S S Q ♦ W 2017
billion) stimulus plan to beef up its economy. It was the largest eco-
nomic stimulus plan ever undertaken by the central government. As
Dominique Strauss-Kahn, then the managing director of the International
Monetary Fund, pointed out, “It’s a huge package. . . . It will have an
inuence not only on the world economy in supporting demand but
also a lot of inuence on the Chinese economy itself, and I think it is
good news for correcting imbalances.”
37
To a certain extent, China was
regarded as the hope of economic recovery in the world after the 2008
global nancial crisis.
38
In 2010, China passed Japan to become the second-largest economy
in the world after the United States.
39
In 2013, China overtook the
United States as the largest trading nation in the world.
40
In 2014, the
IMF announced that according to purchasing power parity, China’s
economy has passed the United States as the largest economy in the
world. Although the Chinese government seems reluctant to celebrate
its economic success publicly, it is dicult to deny that its economic
performance is relatively better than that of the rest of the world, es-
pecially compared to the West, when measured in terms of economic
growth. It is also an underlying reason why the United States became so
active in forming the TPP after 2008 to countervail China’s economic
inuence in the Asia Pacic.
is relative economic advantage has placed Chinese leaders in a do-
main of gains when facing the TPP pressures from the United States.
erefore, according to the prospect-institutional balancing model,
China is more likely to adopt an inclusive institutional balancing
strategy. In fact, China has chosen inclusive institutional balancing to
promote the FTAAP through the APEC. e strategic purpose of the
FTAAP is to dilute the potential negative impacts from the TPP.
Establishing a regional free-trade agreement was not a new idea in
the Asia Pacic. Japanese economist Kiyoshi Kojima is usually credited
for rst advancing such a Pacic free trade agreement concept in 1966.
In the late 1980s, the Pacic Economic Cooperation Council and the
later APEC were formed to encourage economic cooperation and trade
liberalization in the region. In more recent times, US economist C. Fred
Bergsten has been at the forefront as an advocate of an FTAAP. In 2006,
Bergsten published an article in Financial Times suggesting that a re-
gional trading bloc in the Asia Pacic can be a “plan B” to respond to
the stalled trade negotiation in the Doha Round in the WTO.
41
e
China’s Institutional Challenges to the International Order
S S Q ♦ W 2017 35
APEC, therefore, has become a logical platform to promote the FTAAP.
For example, the APEC ocially announced that it would examine the
long-term prospect of an FTAAP in 2006.
China has been an active member of APEC since it joined. Chinese
leaders took the APEC summit meeting seriously because it is an im-
portant diplomatic platform to engage other countries, especially the
United States. For example, it is reported that China and the United
States utilized the APEC meeting to restore bilateral relations after the
1995–1996 Taiwan crisis.
42
However, China normally played a partici-
pant or a follower role in the APEC. ere are two reasons for this. First,
China is a latecomer to the liberal trade regime because it ocially joined
the WTO in December 2001. Although it has become the largest trading
nation, until now China has not been granted a “market economy” status
in the WTO. erefore, as a beneciary of the world trade regime, its
contribution to the APEC is limited.
Second and more important, APEC is a loosely organized forum
without enforcement mechanisms. e decision making of APEC is
based on consensus and voluntarism. In other words, despite the fact
that APEC leaders like to gather annually, APEC itself is just a place to
propose ideas—not to implement them. erefore, some critics suggest
that APEC, like other multilateral institutions in Asia, is just a “talk
shop” without teeth. For China, it can actively participate in the APEC,
but there is no tangible benet for it to lead the APEC. As for the pro-
posal of establishing the FTAAP, China’s original attitude was lukewarm
at best just because of the “talk shop” nature of the APEC.
However, China’s policy toward the APEC and the FTAAP changed
dramatically in 2014 when the TPP challenges from the United States
were approaching China’s economy. In 2014, China was the host nation
of the APEC summit in Beijing. Using its hosting role, China proac-
tively advocated the establishment of the FTAAP. More importantly,
China encouraged other APEC members to endorse a roadmap to form
the FTAAP. If the FTAAP was just an idea or a proposal without any im-
plementation plan before, it had a clear blueprint after the 2014 APEC
meeting. President Xi hailed this new development as “a historic step we
took in the direction toward realizing the FTAAP, marking the ocial
launch of the FTAAP process and demonstrating the condence and de-
termination of the APEC in advancing regional economic integration.”
43
Huiyun Feng and Kai He
36 S S Q ♦ W 2017
Although the nal establishment of the FTAAP is still uncertain, China’s
changing policy toward the FTAAP serves two strategic purposes for
China. First, since Xi Jinping came to power in 2013, China has gradually
abandoned the traditional “keeping-a-low-prole” principle and started
a foreign policy of striving for achievement. Hosting APEC in Beijing
provided an opportunity for Xi to implement his new principle of striving
for achievement.
44
erefore, the FTAAP can be seen as a product of
China’s new proactive foreign policy under Xi. Additionally, the FTAAP
can serve as an inclusive institutional balancing against the United States
and its TPP. Diering from the TPP with only 12 members, the FTAAP
includes all APEC nations.
While the United States stated that it would write the trading rules
in the TPP, the FTAAP, if established under Chinese leadership, will
become a rule-making arena for China. Moreover, it is clear that China
intends to use the FTAAP to subsume the TPP in the future. For example,
Xi clearly stated at the 2014 APEC meeting that the FTAAP can be
the “aggregation” of existing free-trade arrangements, including the TPP
and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP). In
other words, the FTAAP will eventually take over both TPP and RCEP
in leading regional trade and cooperation.
It is worth noting that China also actively engages in the negotia-
tions of the RCEP, which is widely seen as a counterinstitution of the
TPP. However, there are two reasons why the RCEP is not an exclu-
sive institutional balancing of China against the United States. First, the
RCEP is not led by China but by ASEAN. Actually, China has dierent
views than ASEAN on the framework of the RCEP. While China pre-
ferred to develop the RCEP on the basis of ASEAN Plus ree, some
ASEAN countries and Japan supported a broader structure of the RCEP
(i.e., ASEAN Plus Six). Eventually, ASEAN and Japan won the “battle”
and the current RCEP is based on the ASEAN Plus Six. erefore, it is
hard to argue that the RCEP is China’s exclusive institutional balancing
strategy against the United States or the TPP—although it might help
China countervail pressures from the TPP to a certain extent.
Second, the principle of the RCEP is an open or inclusive free-trade
agreement. It means that the United States can join the RCEP anytime
it wants. e problem is not that ASEAN or China wanted to exclude
the United States from the RCEP but that the United States did not
want to join in the rst place, because the free-trade and investment
China’s Institutional Challenges to the International Order
S S Q ♦ W 2017 37
standards of the RCEP are too low compared to the TPP. erefore, it
is the United States that excluded itself from the RCEP, not China or
ASEAN per se. is is why China has to choose APEC/FTAAP as a new
inclusive institutional balancing strategy to further balance or dilute the
potential negative impacts of TPP.
Still, China’s high-prole eort in advocating the FTAAP does not
mean that the FTAAP will be a success in promoting regional economic
cooperation or trade liberalization. However, it serves China’s institu-
tional balancing purpose. On the one hand, the FTAAP oers a rule-
making opportunity for China to compete with the United States in
constructing the future trading regime in the Asia Pacic. On the other
hand, it will reduce the negative economic impacts of the TPP on China’s
economy because all TPP members are included in the FTAAP. If both
TPP and FTAAP are established, China will enjoy the same trading
privileges with the TPP nations even though it is excluded from the TPP.
President Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the TPP in early 2017
has brought uncertainties for the regional free-trade regime and China’s
foreign policy. It is hard to foresee what China will do without the TPP,
because many domestic and international factors might inuence its
foreign and economic policies. However, institutional balancing theory
suggests two preliminary predictions. First, without the TPP pressure,
China’s incentive to push the FTAAP will be reduced. Although it might
still publicly support a region-wide free-trade agreement or the FTAAP,
the lack of balancing pressure from the TPP will limit its substantial ef-
forts in the FTAAP. Second, China might focus on the development of
the RCEP since it has the potential to replace ASEAN’s leadership in the
RCEP. However, it will not be easy, because ASEAN and Japan will con-
duct inclusive institutional balancing against China inside the RCEP.
us, in facing US challenges in the economic arena, especially
through the TPP, China has adopted an inclusive institutional balanc-
ing strategy through promoting FTAAP in APEC. Because of China’s
relatively strong economic performance after the 2008 nancial crisis,
Chinese leaders acted against the TPP challenge in a domain of gains.
e inclusive institutional balancing is a risk-averse behavior because
the FTAAP does not directly antagonize either the United States or the
TPP. It is still a balancing strategy because the FTAAP has the potential
to dilute the inuence and impact of the TPP and the United States in
the region. erefore, China’s FTAAP policy basically supports the rst
Huiyun Feng and Kai He
38 S S Q ♦ W 2017
hypothesis of the prospect-institutional balancing model, which suggests
that China is more likely to adopt an inclusive institutional balancing
strategy in an issue area where it has relative advantages compared to others.
US Pivot and China’s Exclusive Institutional Balancing in CICA
e Obama administration adopted the “pivot toward Asia” after
the 2008 nancial crisis.
45
In 2011, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
published an article in Foreign Policy titled “America’s Pacic Century,”
which emphasized US renewed interests in the Asia Pacic.
46
In late
2011, Obama paid a 10-day visit to the Asia Pacic to attend the East
Asia Summit (EAS) in Bali, Indonesia. It was the rst time the United
States participated in the summit as a full member. Obama raised the
South China Sea issue with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao at the meeting.
Moreover, in his speech in Australia, Obama reconrmed the US pivot
or rebalancing strategy in the Asia Pacic, because “the United States will
play a larger and long-term role in shaping this region and its future.”
47
In June 2012, US defense secretary Leon Panetta announced the
United States would recongure US forces to deploy 60 percent of its
naval power to the Asia Pacic. e adjustments included “six aircraft
carriers, and a majority of the Navy’s cruisers, destroyers, littoral combat
ships and submarines.”
48
Moreover, Secretary Panetta ensured the coming
budget cut would not aect US security commitments to the region.
Given the fact that the United States already had 50 percent of its war-
ships in the Pacic, the 10 percent increase of naval power seemed not
very signicant from a pure military perspective. However, considering
US budget constraints at home as well as the unstable situation in the
Middle East, it may have stretched thin what the United States could
possibly do in the Pacic.
More importantly, the US pivot strategy aims at increasing the ex-
ibility of US military deployments in the region. Instead of maintain-
ing expensive permanent bases in Asia, the United States promoted a
more exible deployment approach in which its troop presence “will be
smaller, more agile, expeditionary, self-sustaining, and self-contained.”
49
More specically, the United States will move or rotate its troops through
dierent ports in the region. Although it is a less expensive deployment
option, it will require greater cooperation from its Asian allies who will
host US troops on their soil. In addition, it will also require upgrading
China’s Institutional Challenges to the International Order
S S Q ♦ W 2017 39
the military capabilities of its Asian allies or partners to facilitate military
coordination with US troops.
50
Multilaterally, the United States actively participated in regional institu-
tions, such as the ARF and EAS. It is a sea change in US foreign policy
compared with the George W. Bush administration, when Secretary of
State Condoleezza Rice would consistently skip ARF meetings. Strategi-
cally, the United States started to strengthen traditional ties with allies,
such as Japan, the Philippines, and Australia in the Asia Pacic. During
his visit to Australia, Obama announced deploying 2,500 Marines in
Darwin.
51
e United States also reached an agreement with Singapore
to base several combat ships in its ports. In November 2011, Secretary
Clinton visited Manila and signed the “Manila Declaration” to strengthen
the Philippines’ surveillance capabilities in the South China Sea.
52
e US pivot is a clear containment eort in the eyes of Chinese
leaders, although US ocials publicly denied that it targeted China.
53
Facing US pivot pressures in the security arena, China has two strategic
options. e rst one is to form a military-based alliance to deal with
military pressure from the strengthened US alliances in the region. It is
a traditional realist policy rooted in either balance of power or balance of
threat theories. Another option is institutional balancing, which means
to use multilateral institutions to countervail US pressures. It is a policy
option advocated by institutional balancing theory and soft balancing
theory, which suggest that economic interdependence increases the
potential costs of military-based balancing or hard balancing. ere-
fore, multilateral institutions become a useful diplomatic tool for states
to balance against outside pressures.
54
In fact, China has adopted both balancing strategies in dealing with
the US “pivot” pressure. Militarily, China has strengthened its own ca-
pabilities (internal balancing) and tightened strategic ties with Russia
(external balancing). Although neither China nor Russia admitted that
their close military cooperation targeted the United States, their up-
graded “strategic partnership” is widely seen as a “soft alliance” against
the United States, the common threat for both China and Russia.
55
China’s military-based balancing strategy against the United States de-
serves a serious inquiry, which is beyond the scope of this article. Here
the main focus is on China’s institutional balancing strategies through
multilateral institutions, not internal or external balancing as Kenneth
Waltz suggested.
56
Huiyun Feng and Kai He
40 S S Q ♦ W 2017
As mentioned before, the US pivot is multifaceted in nature. Strength-
ening military ties with traditional allies is only one part of the story.
e United States has also used multilateral security institutions (such
as the ARF) to pressure China on the South China Sea issues. Facing
US pressures through multilateral institutions, China can choose either
inclusive institutional balancing or exclusive institutional balancing.
However, which policy China will choose depends on the domain of
action that Chinese leaders are framed in according to the prospect-
institutional balancing model.
Militarily, China is still far away from catching up with the United
States. ere are many military indicators that show the capability dis-
tance between China and the United States in technology, weaponry,
and strategy. One simple way to gauge military power is to compare the
military budgets of the two countries. China’s defense spending is always
a myth for analysts because of its less transparent political system.
57
In
2015, the Chinese government ocially announced its defense budget
of $146 billion, an increase of 11 percent from the budget of $131 billion
in 2014. In comparison, the US defense budget is around $597 billion
in 2015—four times the Chinese budget. Even with the most aggressive
estimate from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute,
China’s actual military spending was $214 billion, still only a third of
the US budget.
58
e huge military power gap between the United States and China
has put the Chinese decision makers in a domain of losses in dealing
with US challenges in the military arena. is disadvantageous situ-
ation encourages Chinese leaders to choose a risk-acceptant behavior
in choosing institutional balancing means. According to the prospect-
institutional balancing model, China is more likely to adopt exclusive
institutional balancing when Chinese leaders are framed in a domain of
losses. rough excluding the United States from a multilateral institu-
tion that China leads, China can utilize the cohesion and unity of the
institutions to oset the pressures from the United States, although it is
a risky institutional choice due to its potential antagonism toward the
United States.
In 2014, China actively reinvigorated the CICA, an old security insti-
tution initiated by small central Asian countries, to exercise its exclusive
institutional balancing against the United States. e CICA was rst
proposed by Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev on 5 October
China’s Institutional Challenges to the International Order
S S Q ♦ W 2017 41
1992. It is a loosely organized, security-oriented multilateral institution
in Asia. Originally, it had 15 members, including China, Russia, and
some Central Asian and West Asian countries. It was not well known in
the world because of its relatively slow institutionalization and development.
e rst foreign minister meeting of the CICA took place in 1999, and
the rst CICA summit meeting was in 2002. Due to the proliferation
of the multilateral institutions in the Asia Pacic, the CICA did not at-
tract much attention until 2014 when China chaired it. China hosted
the fourth CICA summit in Shanghai, which became the largest ever
participation by the heads of state and governments. e UN secretary
general also attended the summit.
rough the “host” diplomacy by the Chinese, President Xi advo-
cated a new “Asian security concept” at the CICA summit. According
to Xi, “it is necessary to advocate common, comprehensive, coopera-
tive, and sustainable security in Asia. We need to innovate our security
concept, establish a new regional security cooperation architecture, and
jointly build a road for security of Asia that is shared by and win-win to
all.”
59
It is worth noting that this was not the rst time China promoted
this type of cooperative security ideas. China advocated a similar “new
security concept” at the ARF meeting in the 1990s.
However, there are two distinctions in Xi’s speech at the CICA. First,
China proposes a new security architecture targeting the US-led regional
security order. It is still not clear what a security architecture based on
“common, comprehensive, cooperative, and sustainable security” looks
like and how Asian countries can achieve it. However, the real message
between the lines of Xi’s speech is that it is time to abandon the US-
led, post–World War II regional security order. Moreover, Xi directly
challenged the presence of the United States in the Asia Pacic. In his
speech, Xi stated “it is for the people of Asia to run the aairs of Asia,
solve the problems of Asia and uphold the security of Asia. e people of
Asia have the capability and wisdom to achieve peace and stability in the
region through enhanced cooperation.”
60
Although Xi did not mention
the United States in name, the implication is clear that Asia is for Asians
and the United States should go home.
e United States is not a formal member of CICA; neither is Japan—
both countries have an observer status. As one reporter mentioned, more
than half of the CICA members are authoritarian regimes according to
the Western standard.
61
erefore, the CICA became a useful diplomatic
Huiyun Feng and Kai He
42 S S Q ♦ W 2017
tool for China to gather support from states with similar ideologies and
political systems. e unity and coherence of the CICA became a valu-
able form of soft power for China to countervail pressures from the
United States. While the United States actively advocated its pivot to
Asia through strengthening bilateral alliances, China (with the endorse-
ment of the other CICA members) strongly promoted a multilateral
security order based on cooperative security ideas. e competition
between US bilateralism and Chinese multilateralism in regional security
signies the inevitable clash of ideas between the hegemon and a rising
power during the power transition period. Although it is still too early
to say whose version of regional security will win out, China’s policy
through the CICA is a clear exclusive institutional balancing strategy
against the United States.
It is worth noting that the CICA is by no means the only institutional
platform for China to challenge the United States. e Shanghai Cooperation
Organization (SCO) is also a non-US security institution led by China
and Russia. Like CICA, the SCO has become an important diplomatic
arena for China to conduct its exclusive institutional balancing against
the United States. e close military cooperation among the SCO members,
such as joint military exercises, might not directly challenge US security
and interests in the short run. In the long run, however, the cohesion of
the SCO will be a valuable institutional asset for China to pool resources
against the United States if necessary.
In short, China has adopted an exclusive institutional balancing strategy
against the US pivot-to-Asia challenge in the security arena. Due to the
huge power gap between the United States and China, Chinese leaders,
especially Xi Jinping, are placed in a domain of losses, which encourages
risk-acceptant behavior. Exclusive institutional balancing is more risky
than inclusive institutional balancing due to its alienating and antago-
nistic nature. Just because no country likes to be excluded by others,
this exclusive design of multilateral institutions becomes an important
diplomatic weapon to address external threats and challenges from an
outside target state.
Finally, it should be noted that prospect-institutional balancing is
only partially supported in this case study. Facing the security challenges
and threats from the United States, China indeed chose both traditional
military-based balancing and exclusive institutional balancing strategies.
But China’s military-based balancing is beyond the explanatory domain
China’s Institutional Challenges to the International Order
S S Q ♦ W 2017 43
of the prospect-institutional balancing model, which reveals the theoreti-
cal limitation of the model. However, the prospect-institutional balancing
model can still serve as an analytical tool to explain a state’s institutional
strategy in dealing with institutional pressures and challenges.
Conclusion
It is too pessimistic to predict or prescribe a conictual and inevitable
clash between China and the existing international order. Although
China will challenge the existing order, how China will do it or which
strategy it will use is still an understudied question. Moreover, which part
of the international order China will take on is still uncertain. erefore,
it is too early to predict a coming conict with China without carefully
examining its various strategies in dierent sub-international orders.
Integrating prospect theory and institutional balancing theory intro-
duces a prospect-institutional balancing model to explain how China
deals with pressures from the United States in dierent issue areas. Facing
US economic pressures through the TPP, Chinese leaders responded in
a domain of gains because the Chinese economy was in much better
shape than the rest of the world after the 2008 nancial crisis. erefore,
China has adopted a risk-averse policy to conduct an inclusive institu-
tional balancing strategy against the US TPP through promoting the
FTAAP, because the FTAAP could reduce US inuence and oset trading
pressure from the TPP.
When the United States challenged China in the security arena through
the pivot-toward-Asia policy in 2011, Chinese leaders were framed in a
domain of losses due to the huge military power gap between the two
nations. Consequently, Chinese leaders have conducted a risk-acceptant
policy, that is, exclusive institutional balancing, against the US pres-
sures in the CICA. Since the CICA is a non-US security institution, it
provides the opportunity and platform for China to gather support and
pool resources from other CICA members against the United States. In
the 2014 CICA meeting in Shanghai, Xi advocated a new Asian security
concept based on multilateralism as well as an “Asia-is-for-Asians” phi-
losophy. Although it is unclear whether Xi’s new Asian security concept
can actually succeed beyond the CICA, the balancing goal of this new
concept has been fullled. On the one hand, China has implied that the
US-pivot policy was an outdated strategy, which should be replaced by
multilateralism and cooperative security. On the other hand, China’s
Huiyun Feng and Kai He
44 S S Q ♦ W 2017
message is clear toward the outside world that the Chinse vision of the
new security architecture will be more peaceful than widely predicted.
In other words, what Xi really suggests is that it is time for other Asian
countries to abandon the old US-led security order and embrace the
new Chinese one.
China’s rise will inevitably challenge the existing international order
as we have seen from China’s “assertiveness turn” in diplomatic strategy
after the global nancial crisis. However, we suggest that institution-
based balancing and counterbalancing between China and the United
States might not lead to war or conict as realists predict. China intends
to write new rules and develop new norms diering from the ones in
the existing international order. However, China will also be constrained
by these new norms and rules. is “lock-in” eect of multilateral
institutions will ensure that a new type of power transition based on
institutional balancing rather than traditional military means might be
more peaceful than widely predicted. However, our case study on the
CICA in the security arena also indicates that both the United States
and China have also pursued military balancing besides institutional
balancing against one another. As Winston Churchill used to say, “To
jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war.” e future of the international
order depends on the wisdom of policy makers in selecting the right
institutional tool to solve traditional problems.
Notes
1. Members of APEC include Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Canada, Chile, China, Hong
Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Republic of Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Papua New
Guinea, Peru, the Philippines, Russia, Singapore, Chinese Taipei, ailand, the United States,
and Vietnam. Members of CICA include Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Bangladesh,
Cambodia, China, Egypt, India, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kazakhstan, the Republic of Korea,
Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Pakistan, Palestine, Qatar, Russia, Tajikistan, ailand, Turkey, United
Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam.
2. For critical reviews on China’s rise and international relations theory, see Kai He and
Huiyun Feng, “Xi Jinping’s Operational Code Beliefs and China’s Foreign Policy,” Chinese
Journal of International Politics 6, no. 3 (1 September 2013): 209–31, http://doi.org/f47mpw;
Kai He and Huiyun Feng, “China’s Bargaining Strategies after the Cold War: Successes and
Challenges,” Asian Security 10, no. 2 (June 2014): 168–87, http://doi.org/cb3k; and Huiyun
Feng and Kai He, “China under Xi Jinping: Operational Code Beliefs, Foreign Policy, and the Rise
of China,” in Chinese Foreign Policy Under Xi, ed. Hoo Tiang Boon (London: Routledge, 2017).
3. John Mearsheimer, e Tragedy of Great Power Politics (New York: Norton, 2001).
China’s Institutional Challenges to the International Order
S S Q ♦ W 2017 45
4. For similar containment arguments, see Denny Roy, “Hegemon on the Horizon? China’s
reat to East Asian Security,” International Security 19, no. 1 (Summer 1994): 149–68,
http://www.jstor.org/stable/2539151; and Gerald Segal, “East Asia and the ‘Constrainment’
of China,” International Security 20, no. 4 (Spring 1996): 107–35, http://www.jstor.org
/stable/2539044.
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York: Knopf, 1958); Organski and Jack Kugler, e War Ledger (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1980); and Robert Gilpin, War and Change in World Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge
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Lemke and Ronald Tammen, “Power Transition eory and the Rise of China,” International
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thediplomat.com/2012/12/americas-pivot-has-no-clothes/. More recently, US ocials have
used the term “rebalance” to describe the pivot to Asia. We have elected to continue using the
original term “pivot” in this article.
11. For some liberal discussions, see James L. Richardson, “Asia-Pacic: e Case for Geo-
political Optimism,” National Interest, no. 38 (Winter 1994/95): 28–39, http://www.jstor
Huiyun Feng and Kai He
46 S S Q ♦ W 2017
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and the Rebuilding of Order after Major War (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001);
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(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011).
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Foreign Aairs 83, no. 3 (May/June 2004): 96–109, http://www.jstor.org/stable/20033978.
For a critical evaluation, see Paul A. Papayoanou and Scott L. Kastner, “Sleeping with the
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World (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008); and Zheng Bijian, “China’s ‘Peaceful
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China, the United States, and the WTO (New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 2001).
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(New York: Routledge, 2005); and Kai He, Institutional Balancing in the Asia Pacic: Economic
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(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008).
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without Government: Order and Change in World Politics, ed. James Rosenau and Ernst-Otto
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23. Hedley Bull, e Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics (London: Macmillan,
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25. See Kai He, “Contested Regional Orders and Institutional Balancing in the Asia Pacic,”
International Politics 52, no. 2 (February 2015): 208–22, http://doi.org/cb3t.
China’s Institutional Challenges to the International Order
S S Q ♦ W 2017 47
26. Randall L. Schweller and Xiaoyu Pu, “After Unipolarity: China’s Visions of Inter-
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aversion. In this article, we focus on the framing eect—that is, how the domains of action with
respect to the reference point inuence risk propensity and behavior. For discussions of other
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.org/stable/3096063; and Kai He, China’s Crisis Behavior: Political Survival and Foreign Policy
after the Cold War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016).
33. A “congruence test” method is employed in case studies. If China’s policy choice ts
what the model suggests, i.e., inclusive institutional balancing in an advantageous situation
and exclusive institutional balancing under a disadvantageous condition, then the model
passes the congruence test. Otherwise, it fails the congruence test and we need to nd a new
model or variables to explain China’s behavior.
34. US President Donald Trump withdrew the United States from the TPP in January 2017.
Without the United States, the inuence and future of the TPP will be full of uncertainties.
35. Jackie Calmes, “Trans-Pacic Partnership Text Released, Waving Green Flag for Debate,”
New York Times, 5 November 2015, https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/06/business/interna
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and Matthew P. Goodman, “After TPP: e Geopolitics of Asia and the Pacic,” Washington
Quarterly 38, no. 4 (Winter 2016): 19–34, http://doi.org/cb3x; and Jane Perlez, “U.S. Allies See
Huiyun Feng and Kai He
48 S S Q ♦ W 2017
Trans-Pacic Partnership as a Check on China,” New York Times, 6 October 2015, https://www
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(2013): 4–22; and Shen Minghui, “Meiguo de Quyu Hezuo Zhanlue: Quyu haishi Quanqiu—
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39. David Barboza, “China Passes Japan as Second-Largest Economy,” New York Times, 12
August 2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/16/business/global/16yuan.html?pagewanted=all
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41. Fred Bergsten, “Plan B for World Trade: Go Regional,” Financial Times, 16 Au-
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42. See He, China’s Crisis Behavior; and Qian Qichen, Ten Episodes in China’s Diplomacy
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Asia” has been used more recently.
46. Clinton, “America’s Pacic Century.”
47. President Barack Obama, “Remarks by President Obama to the Parliament,” Daily
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48. Jane Perlez, “Panetta Outlines New Weaponry for Pacic,” New York Times, 1 June 2012,
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50. Mark E. Manyin, Stephen Daggett, Ben Dolven, Susan V. Lawrence, Michael F. Martin,
Ronald O’Rourke, and Bruce Vaughn, Pivot to the Pacic? e Obama Administration’s “Re-
China’s Institutional Challenges to the International Order
S S Q ♦ W 2017 49
balancing” toward Asia (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, 28 March 2012),
11–12, https://fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/R42448.pdf.
51. Jackie Calmes, “A U.S. Marine Base for Australia Irritates China,” New York Times,
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52. See Oce of the Spokesperson, “Signing of the Manila Declaration on Board the USS
Fitzgerald in Manila Bay, Manila, Philippines,” US Department of State, 16 November 2011,
Washington, DC, https://2009-2017.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2011/11/177226.htm.
53. For Chinese views on the pivot, see Yan Xuetong, “Strategic Cooperation without Mutual
Trust: A Path Forward for China and the United States,” Asia Policy, no. 15 (January 2013): 4–6,
http://doi.org/cb3q; and Lieberthal and Wang, “Addressing U.S.-China Strategic Distrust.”
54. For soft balancing, see R. A. Pape, “Soft Balancing against the United States,” Inter-
national Security 30, no. 1 (Summer 2005): 7–45, http://www.jstor.org/stable/4137457; and
T. V. Paul, “Soft Balancing in the Age of US Primacy,” International Security 30, no. 1 (Summer
2005): 46–71, http://www.jstor.org/stable/4137458.
55. Huiyun Feng, e New Geostrategic Game: Will China and Russia Form an Alliance
against the United States?, DIIS Policy Report 2015:07 (Copenhagen: Danish Institute for
International Studies, 2015), https://www.diis.dk/en/research/the-new-geostrategic-game.
56. For internal and external balancing through military means, see Waltz, eory of Inter-
national Politics.
57. See ChinaPower Team, “What Does China Really Spend on Its Military?,” Center for
Strategic and International Studies, 28 December 2015, http://chinapower.csis.org/military
-spending/.
58. Adam Taylor and Laris Karklis, “is Remarkable Chart Shows How U.S. Defense
Spending Dwarfs the Rest of the World,” Washington Post, 9 February 2016, https://www
.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/02/09/this-remarkable-chart-shows-how
-u-s-defense-spending-dwarfs-the-rest-of-the-world/?utm_term=.d6ae0b5035f2.
59. Jinping Xi, “New Asian Security Concept for New Progress in Security Cooperation”
(remarks, Fourth Summit of the Conference on Interaction and Condence Building Measures
in Asia, Shanghai, 21 May 2014).
60. Ibid.
61. Jamil Anderlini, “China Reinvigorates Regional Clubs to Counter US Power,” Financial
Times, 20 May 2014, http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a01c11b8-e009-11e3-9534-00144feabdc0.html.
50 S S Q ♦ W 2017
Commanding the Trend:
Social Media as Information Warfare
Lt Col Jarred Prier, USAF
Abstract
is article demonstrates how social media is a tool for modern
information-age warfare. It builds on analysis of three distinct topics:
social networking, propaganda, and news and information sharing. Two
case studies are used to show how state and nonstate actors use social
media to employ time-tested propaganda techniques to yield far-reaching
results. e spread of the propaganda message is accomplished by tap-
ping into an existing narrative, then amplifying that message with a
network of automatic “bot” accounts to force the social media platform
algorithm to recognize that message as a trending topic. e rst case
study analyzes Islamic State (IS) as a nonstate actor, while the second
case observes Russia as a state actor, with each providing evidence of suc-
cessful inuence operations using social media. Coercion and persuasion
will continue to be decisive factors in information warfare as more countries
attempt to build inuence operations on social media.
✵ ✵ ✵ ✵ ✵
For years, analysts in the defense and intelligence communities have
warned lawmakers and the American public of the risks of a cyber Pearl
Harbor. e fear of a widespread cyber-based attack loomed over the
country following intrusions against Yahoo! email accounts in 2012,
Sony Studios in 2014, and even the United States government Oce of
Personnel Management (OPM) in 2015. e average American likely
did not understand exactly how, or for what purposes, US adversaries
Lt Col Jarred Prier, USAF, currently serves as director of operations for the 20th Bomb Squadron. He
completed a USAF fellowship at the Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University and earned
a master’s degree from the School of Advanced Air and Space Studies at Air University, Maxwell Air Force
Base, Alabama. Prier also holds a master of science degree in international relations from Troy University,
Alabama. is article evolved from his thesis.
Commanding the Trend: Social Media as Information Warfare
S S Q ♦ W 2017 51
were operating within the cyber domain, but the implications of future
attacks were not dicult to imagine. Enemies of the United States could
target vulnerable power grids, stock markets, train switches, academic
institutions, banks, and communications systems in the opening salvos
of this new type of warfare.
1
In contrast to more traditional forms of cyberattack, cyber operations
today target people within a society, inuencing their beliefs as well as
behaviors, and diminishing trust in the government. US adversaries now
seek to control and exploit the trend mechanism on social media to
harm US interests, discredit public and private institutions, and sow
domestic strife. “Commanding the trend” represents a relatively novel
and increasingly dangerous means of persuasion within social media.
us, instead of attacking the military or economic infrastructure, state
and nonstate actors outside the United States can access regular streams
of online information via social media to inuence networked groups
within the United States. is article analyzes how two US adversaries
hijacked social media using four factors associated with command of
the trend. First it provides a basis for commanding the trend in social
media by analyzing social media as a tool for obtaining and spreading
information. It then looks more specically at how US adversaries use
social media to command the trend and target US citizens with malicious
propaganda. Next, the two most prominent, recent case studies provide
evidence of how nonstate and state actors use social media to counter
the United States. e rst case study covers IS from 2014 to 2016 by
examining the group’s use of social media for recruiting, spreading pro-
paganda, and proliferating terror threats. e second case describes the
pattern of Russian hacking, espionage, disinformation, and manipula-
tion of social media with a particular focus on the United States presi-
dential election of 2016. Evidence for this second case study comes from
nearly two years of research on Twitter accounts believed to be part of
a Russian information warfare network. e article concludes with im-
plications and predictions of how social media will continue to develop,
what can be expected in the future, and how the United States can re-
spond to the growing threat of adversaries commanding the trend.
Commanding the Trend in Social Media
e adaptation of social media as a tool of modern warfare should
not be surprising. Internet technology evolved to meet the needs of
Jarred Prier
52 S S Q ♦ W 2017
information-age warfare around 2006 with the dawn of Web 2.0, which
allowed internet users to create content instead of just consuming online
material. Instead, the individual could decide what was important and
only read what was important, on demand. Not only could users se-
lect what news they want to see, but they could also use the medium to
create news based on their opinions.
2
e social nature of humans ulti-
mately led to virtual networking. As such, traditional forms of media were
bound to give way to a more tailorable form of communication. US
adversaries were quick to nd ways to exploit the openness of the internet,
eventually developing techniques to employ social media networks as
a tool to spread propaganda. Social media creates a point of injection
for propaganda and has become the nexus of information operations
and cyber warfare. To understand this we must examine the important
concept of the social media trend and look briey into the fundamentals
of propaganda. Also important is the spread of news on social media,
specically, the spread of “fake news” and how propaganda penetrates
mainstream media outlets.
Trending Social Media
Social media sites like Twitter and Facebook employ an algorithm to
analyze words, phrases, or hashtags to create a list of topics sorted in
order of popularity. is “trend list” is a quick way to review the most
discussed topics at a given time. According to a 2011 study on social
media, a trending topic “will capture the attention of a large audience
for a short time” and thus “contributes to agenda setting mechanisms.”
3
Using existing online networks in conjunction with automatic “bot”
accounts, foreign agents can insert propaganda into a social media
platform, create a trend, and rapidly disseminate a message faster and
cheaper than through any other medium. Social media facilitates the
spread of a narrative outside a particular social cluster of true believers
by commanding the trend. It hinges on four factors: (1) a message that
ts an existing, even if obscure, narrative; (2) a group of true believers
predisposed to the message; (3) a relatively small team of agents or cyber
warriors; and (4) a network of automated “bot” accounts.
e existing narrative and the true believers who subscribe to it are
endogenous, so any propaganda must t that narrative to penetrate the
network of true believers. Usually, the cyber team is responsible for crafting
the specic message for dissemination. e cyber team then generates
Commanding the Trend: Social Media as Information Warfare
S S Q ♦ W 2017 53
videos, memes, or fake news, often in collusion with the true believers.
To achieve the eective spread of propaganda, the true believers, the
cyber team, and the bot network combine eorts to take command of
the trend. us, an adversary in the information age can inuence the
population using a variety of propaganda techniques, primarily through
social media combined with online news sources and traditional forms
of media.
A trending topic transcends networks and becomes the mechanism
for the spread of information across social clusters. Here the focus is
primarily on Twitter, a “microblogging” site where each post is limited
to 140 characters.
4
Facebook also has a trends list, but it is less visible than
the Twitter trends list, and the two applications serve dierent purposes.
Facebook maintains a function of bringing friends and families together.
On Facebook, your connections are typically more intimate connec-
tions than you would expect on Twitter, which focuses less on bringing
people together and more on bringing ideas together. As a microblog,
Twitter’s core notion is to share your thoughts and feelings about the
world around you with a group of people who share similar interests.
e individuals who follow each other may not be friends but could be
a team of like-minded academics, journalists, sports fans, or politicos.
When a person tweets, that tweet can be viewed by anyone who follows
that person, or anyone who searches for that topic using Twitter’s search
tool. Additionally, anyone can “retweet” someone else’s tweet, which
broadcasts the original to a new audience. Twitter makes real-time idea
and event sharing possible on a global scale.
5
Another method for quick
referencing on Twitter is using a “hashtag.” e tweet would then be
visible to anyone who clicked on the link along with all of the other
tweets using the same hashtag.
A trend can spread a message to a wide group outside of a person’s
typical social network. Moreover, malicious actors can use trends to
spread a message using multiple forms of media on multiple platforms,
with the ultimate goal of garnering coverage in the mainstream media.
Command of the trend is a powerful method of spreading information
whereby, according to an article in the Guardian, “you can take an exist-
ing trending topic, such as fake news, and then weaponise it. You can
turn it against the very media that uncovered it.”
6
Because Twitter is an idea-sharing platform, it is very popular for rapidly
spreading information, especially among journalists and academics;
Jarred Prier
54 S S Q ♦ W 2017
however, malicious users have also taken to Twitter for the same benets
in recent years. At one time, groups like al-Qaeda preferred creating
websites, but now, “Twitter has emerged as the internet application most
preferred by terrorists, even more popular than self-designed websites or
Facebook.”
7
Twitter makes it easy to spread a message to both supporters
and foes outside of a particular network. Groups trying to disseminate
a message as widely as possible can rely on the trend function to reach
across multiple networks.
ree methods help control what is trending on social media: trend
distribution, trend hijacking, and trend creation. e rst method is
relatively easy and requires the least amount of resources. Trend distribu-
tion is simply applying a message to every trending topic. For example,
someone could tweet a picture of the president with a message in the
form of a meme—a stylistic device that applies culturally relevant humor
to a photo or video—along with the unrelated hashtag #SuperBowl.
Anyone who clicks on that trend list expecting to see something about
football will see that meme of the president. Trend hijacking requires
more resources in the form of either more followers spreading the mes-
sage or a network of “bots” (autonomous programs that can interact with
computer systems or users) designed to spread the message automati-
cally. Of the three methods to gain command of the trend, trend cre-
ation requires the most eort. It necessitates either money to promote a
trend or knowledge of the social media environment around the topic,
and most likely, a network of several automatic bot accounts.
Bot accounts are non-human accounts that automatically tweet and
retweet based on a set of programmed rules. In 2014, Twitter estimated
that only 5 percent of accounts were bots; that number has grown along
with the total users and now tops 15 percent.
8
Some of the accounts
are “news bots,” which just retweet the trending topics. Some of the
accounts are for advertising purposes, which try to dominate conversa-
tions to generate revenue through clicks on links. Some bots are trolls,
which, like a human version of an online troll, tweet to disrupt the civil
conversation.
For malicious actors seeking to inuence a population through trends
on social media, the best way to establish trends is to build a network
of bot accounts programmed to tweet at various intervals, respond to
certain words, or retweet when directed by a master account. Figure 1
illustrates the basics of a bot network. e top of the chain is a small
Commanding the Trend: Social Media as Information Warfare
S S Q ♦ W 2017 55
core group. at team is composed of human-controlled accounts with
a large number of followers. e accounts are typically adversary cyber
warriors or true believers with a large following. Under the core group
is the bot network. Bots tend to follow each other and the core group.
Below the bot network is a group consisting of the true believers with-
out a large following. ese human-controlled accounts are a part of
the network, but they appear to be outsiders because of the weaker
links between the accounts. e bottom group lacks a large following,
but they do follow the core group, sometimes follow bot accounts, and
seldom follow each other.
Figure 1. Illustration of a bot network
Enough bots working together can quickly start a trend or take over
a trend, but bot accounts themselves can only bridge the structural hole
between networks, not completely change a narrative. To change a nar-
rative, to conduct an eective inuence operation, requires a group to
combine a well-coordinated bot campaign with essential elements of
propaganda.
Small Core Group
Larger Group with Strong TiesLarger Group with Strong Ties
Small Outsiders with Weak Ties
Jarred Prier
56 S S Q ♦ W 2017
Propaganda Primer
Messaging designed to inuence behavior has been around for centuries
but became easier as methods of mass communication enabled wider dis-
semination of propaganda. Observing the rise of mass media and its pres-
ence in daily life, French philosopher Jacques Ellul noted the simplicity of
propaganda in 1965. According to Ellul, “Propaganda ceases where simple
dialogue begins.”
9
at said, it is worth noting Eric Hoer’s comments that
“propaganda on its own cannot force its way into unwilling minds, neither
can it inculcate something wholly new.”
10
For propaganda to function, it
needs a previously existing narrative to build upon, as well as a network of
true believers who already buy into the underlying theme. Social media helps
the propagandist spread the message through an established network. A per-
son is inclined to believe information on social media because the people
he chooses to follow share things that t his existing beliefs. at person, in
turn, is likely to share the information with others in his network, to others
who are like-minded, and those predisposed to the message. With enough
shares, a particular social network accepts the propaganda storyline as fact.
But up to this point, the eects are relatively localized. e most eective
propaganda campaigns are not conned just to those predisposed to the
message. Essentially, propaganda permeates everyday experiences, and the
individual targeted with a massive media blitz will never fully understand
that the ideas he has are not entirely his own. A modern example of this
phenomenon was observable during the Arab Spring as propaganda spread
on Facebook “helped middle-class Egyptians understand that they were not
alone in their frustration.”
11
In short, propaganda is simpler to grasp if ev-
eryone around a person seems to share the same emotions on a particular
subject. Even a general discussion among the crowd can provide the illu-
sion that propaganda is information.
12
In other words, propaganda creates
heuristics, which is a way the mind simplies problem solving by relying
on quickly accessible data. e availability heuristic weighs the amount and
frequency of information received, as well as recentness of the information,
as more informative than the source or accuracy of the information.
13
Es-
sentially, the mind creates a shortcut based on the most—or most recent—
information available, simply because it can be remembered easily. Often,
the availability heuristic manifests itself in information received through
media coverage. e availability heuristic is important to understanding in-
dividual opinion formation and how propaganda can exploit the shortcuts
our minds make to form opinions. e lines in gure 2 show formation
Commanding the Trend: Social Media as Information Warfare
S S Q ♦ W 2017 57
of opinions temporally, with bold arrows inuencing a nal opinion more
than light arrows. e circled containers indicate a penetration point for
propaganda exploitation. As previously described, mass media enables rapid
spread of propaganda, which feeds the availability heuristic. e internet
makes it possible to ood the average person’s daily intake of information,
which aids the spread of propaganda.
One of the primary principles of propaganda is that the message must
resonate with the target. erefore, when presented with information that
is within your belief structure, your bias is conrmed and you accept the
propaganda. If it is outside of your network, you may initially reject the
story, but the volume of information may create an availability heuristic in
your mind. Over time, the propaganda becomes normalized—and even
believable. It is conrmed when a fake news story is reported by the main-
stream media, which has become reliant on social media for spreading and
receiving news.
Figure 2. Model of individual opinion formation. (Reproduced by permission
from Alan D. Monroe, Public Opinion in America [New York: Dodd, Mead, and
Co., 1975], 147.)
Social
Characteristics
of Parents
Cultural
Values
PAST
TIME
PRESENT
Values
Held by
Parents
Opinions
Expressed
by Peers
Prior
Opinions
Opinion
Events
in the
World
Media
Coverage
of Events
Perception
of Events
Social
Characteristics
of the Individual
Identification
with
Groups
Values
Internalized by
the Individual
Values
Internalized by
Peers
Jarred Prier
58 S S Q ♦ W 2017
Figure 3 maps the process of how propaganda can penetrate a network
that is not predisposed to the message. is outside network is a group
that is ideologically opposed to the group of true believers. e outside
network is likely aware of the existing narrative but does not necessarily
subscribe to the underlying beliefs that support the narrative.
Figure 3. Process map of how propaganda spreads via the trend
Command of the trend enables the contemporary propaganda model,
to create a “rehose of information” that permits the insertion of false
narratives over time and at all times.
14
Trending items produce the illusion
of reality, in some cases even being reported by journalists. Because
untruths can spread so quickly now, the internet has created “both
deliberate and unwitting propaganda” since the early 1990s through
the proliferation of rumors passed as legitimate news.
15
e normaliza-
tion of these types of rumors over time, combined with the rapidity and
volume of new false narratives over social media, opened the door for
“fake news.”
e availability heuristic and the rehose of disinformation can slowly
alter opinions as propaganda crosses networks by way of the trend, but
Existing
Narrative
Idea/Message
Tweets
• Media which supports propaganda
• State-owned media
• Other social media platforms
• Hacked Emails
• Forged Documents/Videos
• Memes
• Fake News
• Real news supporting propaganda
• Threats
• Power demonstration video/photos
*This is optional
Cyber Team
Outside
Network
Trend
Propaganda
Bot Network
Journalists
Other Resources*
True
Believers
Commanding the Trend: Social Media as Information Warfare
S S Q ♦ W 2017 59
the amount of inuence will likely be minimal unless it comes from a
source that a nonbeliever nds trustworthy. An individual may see the
propaganda and believe the message is popular because it is trending but
still not buy into the message itself. Instead, the individual will likely
turn to a trusted source of news to test the validity of the propaganda.
erefore, we must now analyze modern journalism to determine how com-
mand of the trend can transform propaganda from fake news to real news.
Social Networks and Social Media
Currently, 72 percent of Americans get digital news primarily from
a mobile device, and people now prefer online news sources to print
sources by a two-to-one ratio.
16
e news consumer now selects from an
abundance of options besides a local newspaper, based on how the con-
sumer perceives the credibility of the resource. As social media usage has
become more widespread, users have become ensconced within specic,
self-selected groups, which means that news and views are shared nearly
exclusively with like-minded users. In network terminology, this group
phenomenon is called homophily. More colloquially, it reects the con-
cept that “birds of a feather ock together.” Homophily within social
media creates an aura of expertise and trustworthiness where those fac-
tors would not normally exist. Along the lines of social networking and
propaganda, people are more willing to believe things that t into their
worldview. Once source credibility is established, there is a tendency to
accept that source as an expert on other issues as well, even if the issue is
unrelated to the area of originally perceived expertise.
17
Ultimately, this
“echo chamber” can promote the scenario in which your friend is “just
as much a source of insightful analysis on the nuances of U.S. foreign
policy towards Iran as regional scholars, arms control experts, or jour-
nalists covering the State Department.”
18
If social media facilitates self-reinforcing networks of like-minded users,
how can a propaganda message traverse networks where there are no
overlapping nodes? is link between networks is only based on that
single topic and can be easily severed. us, to employ social media
eectively as a tool of propaganda, an adversary cannot rely on individual
weak links between networks. Instead, an adversary must exploit a feature
within the social media platform that enables cross-network data shar-
ing on a massive scale: the trending topics list. Trends are visible to
everyone. Regardless of who follows whom on a given social media plat-
Jarred Prier
60 S S Q ♦ W 2017
form, all users see the topics algorithmically generated by the platform
as being the most popular topics at that particular moment. Given this
universal and unavoidable visibility, “popular topics contribute to the
collective awareness of what is trending and at times can also aect the
public agenda of the community.”
19
In this manner, a trending topic can
bridge the gap between clusters of social networks. A malicious actor can
quickly spread propaganda by injecting a narrative onto the trend list.
e combination of networking on social media, propaganda, and
reliance on unveriable online news sources introduces the possibility of
completely falsied news stories entering the mainstream of public con-
sciousness. is phenomenon, commonly called fake news, has generated
signicant criticism from both sides of the American political spectrum,
with some labeling any contrary viewpoints fake. In reality, fake news
consists of more than just bad headlines, buried ledes, or poorly sourced
stories.
20
Fake news is a particular form of propaganda composed of a
false story disguised as news. On social media, this becomes particularly
dangerous because of the viral spread of sensationalized fake news stories.
A prime example of fake news and social media came from the most
shared news stories on Facebook during the 2016 US presidential elec-
tion. e source of the fake news was a supposedly patriotic American
news blog called “End the Fed,” a website run by Romanian business-
person Ovidiu Drobota. One story stating that the pope endorsed
Donald Trump for president received over one million shares on Face-
book alone, not to mention shares on Twitter.
21
Other fake news stories
from that site and others received more shares in late 2016 than did
traditional mainstream news sources (see gure 4).
22
It is important to recognize that more people were exposed to those
fake news stories than what is reected in the “shares” data. In some
cases, people would just see the story in a Facebook or Twitter feed; in
many cases, people actively sought out news from those sources, which
are ction at best and foreign propaganda at worst. Over time, those
fake news sources become trusted sources for some people. As people
learn to trust those sources, legitimate news outlets become less trust-
worthy. A 2016 poll by Gallup showed American trust in mass media is
at an all-time low.
23
Commanding the Trend: Social Media as Information Warfare
S S Q ♦ W 2017 61
Figure 4. Total Facebook engagements for top 20 election stories
When news is tailorable to one’s taste and new stories are popping up
around the world every second, mainstream journalists have to change
their methods to compete with other sources of news. erefore, if
social media is becoming a source for spreading news and information,
journalists will try to keep up by using social media to spread their stories
and to acquire information rst. According to an Indiana University
School of Journalism study, the most common use of social media for
journalists is to check for breaking news.
24
As a result, mainstream
journalists tend to use tweets as a legitimate source, especially when
there is a lack of more valid or conrmed sources.
25
Overreliance on social
media for breaking news can become problematic in the midst of an on-
going information operation. If an adversary takes control of a trend on
Twitter, the trend is likely to be noticed by mainstream media journalists
who may provide legitimacy to a false story—essentially turning fake
news into real news. is is the initial setup for how social media became
extremely inuential via an adversary’s propaganda. IS and Russia suc-
cessfully manipulated social media, particularly Twitter. Although they
had dierent objectives, the tools and techniques were similar. Both foreign
actors used command of the trend to spread propaganda that inuenced
the emotions, opinions, and behavior of US citizens in a manner anti-
thetical to US interests. In essence, IS and Russia hijacked social media
through propaganda narratives, true believers, cyber warriors, and a
bot network.
15 million
Number of Engagements
2016
12 million
8.7 million
7.3 million
9 million
6 million
3 million
Feb.–April May–July Aug.–Nov. 8
MAINSTREAM NEWS
FAKE NEWS
Jarred Prier
62 S S Q ♦ W 2017
Hijacking Social Media—the Case of IS
IS could be considered either a large terrorist organization or a very
fragile state with a weak army. However, the perception of IS varies. To
believers, IS is a religious caliphate, but much of the rest of the world
assumes it is a terrorist group that represents a perversion of faith. IS
managed to master the art of manipulation because a single message
simultaneously targeted potential allies and foes alike. Its use of social
media is a case study in eective propaganda techniques that bolstered
recruiting, increased brand recognition, and spread terror with minimal
eort. It quickly became the rst organization to use social media eec-
tively to achieve its goals.
Although IS may use terrorism as a tactic, the organization behaves
dierently than any other terrorist organization in the world.
26
e dif-
ferences are apparent in every aspect, from operations to recruiting to
governing. e last factor is the key discriminator. As a descendant of
al-Qaeda in Iraq, the group struggled to nd its way after the death of
leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in 2006; under the leadership of Abu Bakr
al-Baghdadi the group has established clear lines of authority, taxation
and educational systems, trade markets, even policing and a judiciary
(covering civil, criminal, and religious complaints).
27
Gaining and holding
land is just a part of what IS believes is the destiny of the organization
and its followers. Certainly, the desire is to create a caliphate,
28
but its
ultimate purpose is more apocalyptic in nature: IS seeks to usher in the
end of the world.
29
Its members believe that their actions will bring the
forces of the world to attack their caliphate and result in the imminent
defeat of the indel army in the Syrian town of Dabiq, thus triggering
the end of the world and the nal purge of evil.
30
IS is a revolutionary
force with doomsday cult beliefs.
31
To advance the organization’s objectives, IS used messages that served
to spread its propaganda on social media to a broad audience that t
within a narrative of strength for the supporter and a narrative of terror
for the adversary. In other words, IS cyber warriors combined propa-
ganda with command of the trend to accomplish three things with one
message. First, they demonstrated the weakness and incompetence of
the international community to ght them online and on the battle-
eld. Second, they injected terror into the mainstream media. Finally
and most importantly, they recruited new ghters to join them on the
battleeld in Iraq and Syria—and online.
Commanding the Trend: Social Media as Information Warfare
S S Q ♦ W 2017 63
Islamic State Commanding the Trend
rough a combination of ingenious marketing and cyber mastery,
IS bolstered its message around the world. First, the group rened IS
branding. e organization projects a very specic image to the world
that aects the viewer dierently based on beliefs. To a follower, the images
that are shared via social media demonstrate strength and power. To the
nonfollower, the images are grotesque and horrifying. In other words,
no matter what IS puts out in social media the result is a win for the
organization because the same message successfully targets two dierent
groups. e amplication of those messages by creating trends on Twitter
is guaranteed to get further attention once the tweet falls into the main-
stream media. us, IS is capable of using relatively small numbers of
Twitter users (see table 1) to project an aura of strength.
e method for expanding the reach of a single IS tweet or hashtag
involves a network of legitimate retweets combined with bots and unwitting
Twitter users. While IS does maintain a strong network of true believers,
the numbers are relatively small and spread thinly across the Middle
East. erefore, IS must game the system and rig Twitter for a mes-
sage to go viral. One high-tech method for creating a bot network was
a mobile app called “Dawn of Glad Tidings.” e app, designed by IS
cyber warriors, provides updates on IS activities and spiritual guidance
to the user. When users download the app, they create an account that
links to their Twitter account, which then gives the app generous per-
missions, allowing the app to tweet using that user’s account.
32
e app
then retweets on behalf of the user when a master account sends an IS-
branded tweet.
Over time, the hashtag generates enough tweets to start localized
trends. Once the trend surfaces, it is broadcast over trend-monitoring
networks, like the Arabic Twitter account @ActiveHashtags.
33
at
causes the hashtag to gather more attention across the region and then
be retweeted by real followers and other bot accounts. e nal step in
the process is when the trend goes global.
Jarred Prier
64 S S Q ♦ W 2017
Table 1. Snapshot of Islamic State Twitter activity
Twitter-related activity studied Related statistics
Estimated number of overt IS Twitter accounts 46,000
Number of “bot” accounts 6,216
Average number of tweets per day per user 7. 3
Average number of followers 1,004
Most common year accounts created 2014
Top languages Arabic (73%), English (18%), French (6%)
Top locations “Islamic State,” Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia
a
Source: J. M. Berger and Jonathon Morgan, “e ISIS Twitter Census,” Brookings Institute, accessed 20 March 2015, https://www
.brookings.edu/research/the-isis-twitter-census-dening-and-describing-the-population-of-isis-supporters-on-twitter/.
a
Based on location-enabled users and self-dened account locations
Worldwide trends on Twitter have been a boon for IS. Creating and
hijacking trends garnered attention for the group that would otherwise
have gone unnoticed on social media. e peak of IS trend hijacking
was during the World Cup in 2014—as one of the world’s most popular
sporting events, it was no surprise that the hashtag #WorldCup2014
trended globally on Twitter nonstop during the tournament. At one
point though, nearly every tweet under this hashtag had something to
do with IS instead of soccer. e network of IS supporters and bot
accounts hijacked the trend. Because people were using the hashtag to
discuss the matches and advertisers were using the trend for marketing,
Twitter struggled to stop the trend and the subsequent IS propaganda
eort.
In fact, IS cyber warriors and true believers foiled most of the early
attempts by Twitter to stop IS from using their platform to spread pro-
paganda. Twitter’s initial reaction was to suspend accounts that violated
the user terms of the agreement. e result was creative user names by
IS supporters; for example, a user named @jihadISIS42 was created after
@jihadISIS41 was suspended, which was set up after @jihadISIS40 was
suspended.
34
Each new account demonstrated a deep dedication to the
cause that, when combined with the seemingly signicant presence on
social media, presented the group as dominating social media.
In the case of #WorldCup2014, IS took command of the trend by
hijacking, using the opportunity to push recruiting messages, and making
Commanding the Trend: Social Media as Information Warfare
S S Q ♦ W 2017 65
terror threats against the tournament venues in Brazil. Additionally,
the co-opted hashtag often directed users to other hashtags in what
was ultimately a successful attempt to generate worldwide trends of
other IS-related themes. One successful hashtag-creation eort was
#StevensHeadinObamasHands, which included memes of President
Barack Obama and IS-held American journalist Steven Sotlo. e im-
plication was that the president of the United States did not care to or
was powerless to stop the murder of an American citizen. Once again,
IS appeared to be disproportionately powerful because of the command
of the trend.
Due to the organization’s aggressive communications strategy and
branding, the IS social media presence consistently outperforms similar
jihadist groups in the region that have the same number of, or more,
followers.
35
Unlike al-Qaeda, which largely limited its online activity to
websites, IS wanted to communicate with a broader audience—it wants
to communicate directly to the whole world. In addition to spreading
terror threats, the appearance of the group as a powerful state appealed
to a group of true believers who turned to IS as new recruits to ght in
Iraq and Syria. IS used social media from 2014 to 2016 to demonstrate
power, sow fear in the international audience, and recruit the true believers.
All the while, they used the true believers following on social media to
boost their trends on social media. However, the group currently nds
itself altering its modus operandi due to the recent loss of territories in
Iraq and Syria, combined with a spate of successful terrorist-style attacks
in Europe. e ongoing worry for counterterrorism experts is nally
beginning to come to fruition: the recruit staying home to ght instead
of joining IS overseas.
After years of maintaining a signicant presence on social media, IS
is using Twitter less now for ocial communication. e reasoning is
likely twofold. First, the group has lost territory in Iraq and Syria and is
adjusting its strategies. Second, Twitter has removed over 600,000 IS-related
accounts consisting of bots, cyber warriors, and true believers.
36
Additionally,
Twitter has adjusted the program to nd terror-related videos, memes,
and photos soon after an account from the IS network posts the propa-
ganda. e reasons IS seemed so powerful is that, when viewed through
the lens of terrorist groups, it advertised using weaponized social media
campaigns. Its intense social media presence, ghastly videos, massive
Jarred Prier
66 S S Q ♦ W 2017
recruiting, and victories against Iraqi security forces made IS seem dis-
proportionately stronger than it was.
In summation, IS serves as a model for any nonstate group attempting
to use social media for cyber coercion. Table 2 summarizes its use of the
four requirements to gain command of the trend based on the analysis
within this case study.
Table 2. Islamic State case study analysis
Requirement Example
Propaganda narratives
1. IS is strong; everyone else is weak.
2. True believers should join the cause.
True believers Muslims believing in the caliphate of al-Baghdadi
Cyber warriors
Propaganda makers, video editors, app programmers,
recruiters, spiritual leaders using low- and high-tech tools
to advertise IS on social media
Bot network
Unwitting victims of spiritual-guidance app “Dawn of Glad
Tidings”
At the same time IS was weaponizing Twitter, Russia was using it to
simultaneously cause confusion and garner support for its invasion of
Crimea. Soon, Russia’s command of the trend would be used to target
the United States 2016 presidential election.
Russia: Masters of Manipulation
Russia is no stranger to information warfare. e original technique of
Soviet actors was through aktivnyye meropriyatiya (active measures) and
dezinformatsiya (disinformation). According to a 1987 State Depart-
ment report on Soviet information warfare, “active measures are dis-
tinct both from espionage and counterintelligence and from traditional
diplomatic and informational activities. e goal of active measures is
to inuence opinions and/or actions of individuals, governments, and/
or publics.”
37
In other words, Soviet agents would try to weave propaganda into
an existing narrative to smear countries or individual candidates. Active
measures are designed, as retired KGB General Oleg Kalugin once
explained, “to drive wedges in the Western community alliances of all
sorts, particularly NATO, to sow discord among allies, to weaken the
United States in the eyes of the people in Europe, Asia, Africa, Latin
America, and thus to prepare ground in case the war really occurs.” Editor,
translator, and analyst of Russian Federation trends Michael Weiss says,
Commanding the Trend: Social Media as Information Warfare
S S Q ♦ W 2017 67
“e most common subcategory of active measures is dezinformatsiya,
or disinformation: feverish, if believable lies cooked up by Moscow Centre
and planted in friendly media outlets to make democratic nations look
sinister.”
38
e techniques Russia uses today are similar to those they used during the
Cold War, but dissemination is more widespread through social media.
Recently, the Russian minister of defense acknowledged the existence of
their cyber warriors in a speech to the Russian parliament, announcing
that Russia formed a new branch of the military consisting of informa-
tion warfare troops.
39
e Internet Research Agency, as it was called
in 2015, now seems to be the information warfare branch he openly
admitted to. is army of professional trolls’ mission is to ght online.
e Russian trolls have a variety of state resources at their disposal, in-
cluding a vast intelligence network to assist their cyber warriors. e
additional tools available to Russia also include RT (Russia Today) and
Sputnik, the Kremlin-nanced television news networks broadcasting
in multiple languages around the world. Before the trolls begin their
activities on social media, the cyber warrior hackers rst provide hacked
information to Wikileaks, which, according to CIA director Mike Pom-
peo, is a “non-state hostile intelligence service abetted by state actors
like Russia.”
40
In intelligence terms, WikiLeaks operates as a “cutout”
for Russian intelligence operations—a place to spread intelligence in-
formation through an outside organization—similar to the Soviets’ use
of universities to publish propaganda studies in the 1980s.
41
e trolls
then take command of the trend to spread the hacked information on
Twitter, referencing WikiLeaks and links to RT news within their tweets.
ese Russian eorts would be impossible without an existing network
of American true believers willing to spread the message. e Russian
trolls and the bot accounts amplied the voices of the true believers in
addition to inserting propaganda into that network. en, the com-
bined eects of Russian and American Twitter accounts took command
of the trend to spread disinformation across networks.
e cyber trolls produced several hoaxes in the United States and Europe,
like the Louisiana hoax, according to Adrian Chen in his article “e
Agency” in the New York Times Magazine.
42
Protests of police depart-
ments throughout the United States during the summer of 2015 pro-
vided several opportunities to manipulate narratives via social media,
and it is likely Russian trolls hijacked some of the Black Lives Matter–related
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68 S S Q ♦ W 2017
trends to spread disinformation and accuse journalists of failing to cover
important issues.
43
e Russian trolls said the idea was to spread fear,
discrediting institutions—especially American media—while making
President Obama look powerless and Russian president Vladimir Putin
more favorable.
44
Several hijacked hashtags in 2015 attempted to discredit the Obama
administration while spreading racist memes and hoaxes aimed at the
African American community. In other words, the Russian trolls seemed
to target multiple groups to generate anger and create chaos. One
particularly eective Twitter hoax occurred as racial unrest fell on the
University of Missouri campus that fall.
#PrayforMizzou
On the night of 11 November 2015, #PrayforMizzou began trending on
Twitter.
45
e trend was a result of protests at the University of Missouri
campus over racial issues; however, “news” slowly started developing
within the hashtag that altered the meaning and soon shot the hashtag
to the top of the trend list. e news was that the KKK was marching
through Columbia and the Mizzou campus. One user, display name
“Jermaine” (@Fanfan1911), warned residents, “e cops are marching
with the KKK! ey beat up my little brother! Watch out!” Jermaine’s
tweet included a picture of a black child with a severely bruised face; it
was retweeted hundreds of times. Additionally, Jermaine and a handful
of other users continued tweeting and retweeting images and stories of
KKK and neo-Nazis in Columbia, chastising the media for not covering
the racists creating havoc on campus.
Looking at Jermaine’s followers, and the followers of his followers, one
could observe that the original tweeters all followed and retweeted each
other. ose users also seemed to be retweeted automatically by approxi-
mately 70 bots. ese bots also used the trend-distribution technique,
which used all of the trending hashtags at that time within their tweets,
not just #PrayforMizzou. Spaced evenly, and with retweets of real people
who were observing the Mizzou hashtag, the numbers quickly escalated
to thousands of tweets within a few minutes. e plot was smoothly
executed and evaded the algorithms Twitter designed to catch bot tweeting,
mainly because the Mizzou hashtag was being used outside of that
attack. e narrative was set as the trend was hijacked, and the hoax was
underway.
Commanding the Trend: Social Media as Information Warfare
S S Q ♦ W 2017 69
e rapidly spreading image of a bruised little boy was generating
legitimate outrage across the country and around the world. However,
a quick Google image search for “bruised black child” revealed the picture
that “Jermaine” attached to the tweet was a picture of an African Ameri-
can child who was beaten by police in Ohio over one year earlier. e
image and the narrative were part of a larger plot to spread fear and
distrust. It worked.
e University of Missouri student body president tweeted a warning
to stay o the streets and lock doors because “KKK members were con-
rmed on campus.” National news networks broke their coverage to
get a local feed from camera crews roaming Columbia and the campus
looking for signs of violence. As journalists continued to search for signs
of Klan members, anchors read tweets describing shootings, stabbings,
and cross burnings. In the end, the stories were all false.
Shortly after the disinformation campaign at Mizzou, @Fanfan1911
changed his display name from Jermaine to “FanFan” and the prole picture
of a young black male changed to the image of a German iron cross.
e next few months, FanFan’s tweets were all in German and consisted
of spreading rumors about Syrian refugees. Russian active measures in
Europe around this time were widely reported, and the account that
previously tweeted disinformation regarding Mizzou now focused on
messages that were anti-Islamic, anti–European Union, and anti-German
Chancellor Angela Merkel. His tweets reached a crescendo after reports
of women being raped on New Year’s Eve 2016. Some of the reports were
false, including a high-prole case of a 13-year-old ethnic-Russian girl
living in Berlin who falsely claimed that she was abducted and raped by
refugees.
46
Once again, Russian propaganda dominated the narrative.
47
Similar to previous disinformation campaigns on Twitter, the Russians
trolls were able to spread the information because of an underlying fear
and an existing narrative that they were able to exploit. e trolls used
trend-hijacking techniques in concurrence with reporting by Russian
state-funded television network Russia Today. To attempt to generate
more attention to the Russian anti-Merkel narrative in European media,
Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov accused German authorities of a
“politically correct cover-up” in the case of the Russian teen.
48
Because
of the Russian propaganda push, the anti-immigration narrative began
spreading across traditional European media.
49
In fact, a magazine in
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70 S S Q ♦ W 2017
Poland devoted an entire issue to the topic of Muslim immigration with
a disturbing cover photo entitled “Islamic Rape of Europe.”
50
In addition to the German tweets, FanFan began tweeting in English
again in the spring of 2016. His tweets and the tweets of other Russian
trolls were spreading in America. e narrative they spread was develop-
ing a symbiotic relationship with American right-wing news organiza-
tions like Breitbart and its followers on social media—a group of true
believers in the Russian propaganda narrative.
Additionally, the troll network already seeded various social media
platforms with pages designed for spreading disinformation.
51
Seem-
ingly patriotic American Facebook pages linked articles to RT, legiti-
mate American news sources advocating a right-leaning perspective,
Breitbart, right-wing conspiracy sites like InfoWars, and non-factual
“news” sites like the Conservative Tribune and Gateway Pundit. e
Facebook pages also linked to Russia-run sites with nothing but false
news stories. Based on anti-Obama sentiment, the Facebook pages were
popular among conservative users but not getting broad exposure. Be-
fore 2016, Russian active measures were also used in European elections,
most notably the “Brexit” campaign. One European expert on Russia
quoted in the Atlantic article “War Goes Viral” summarized Putin’s intent
as “not to make you love Putin”; instead “the aim is to make you dis-
believe anything. A disbelieving, fragile, unconscious audience is much
easier to manipulate.”
52
Active measures enable manipulation. Smearing
political candidates, hacking, the spread of disinformation, and hoaxes
all contribute to a breakdown of public trust in institutions.
As the 2016 US presidential campaign began in earnest, much of
the online animosity was now directed at Obama’s potential successor:
Hillary Clinton. She became a rallying cry for Trump supporters and a
force-multiplying tool for the Russian trolls.
Inuencing the 2016 Presidential Election
According to the Oce of Director of National Intelligence (ODNI)
Report on Russian Inuence during the 2016 presidential election,
“Moscow’s inuence campaign followed a messaging strategy that blends
covert intelligence operations—such as cyber activity—with overt ef-
forts by Russian Government agencies, state funded media, third-party
intermediaries, and paid social media users, or ‘trolls.’ ”
53
In the case of
the 2016 election, Russian propaganda easily meshed with right-wing
Commanding the Trend: Social Media as Information Warfare
S S Q ♦ W 2017 71
networks known as the “alt-right” and also with supporters of Senator
Bernie Sanders in the left wing of the Democratic Party. Hillary Clinton
had been a target of conservative groups since she rst came into the
national spotlight as rst lady in the 1990s.
54
us, groups on the left
and right presented strong opposition to her candidacy in 2016, which
meant Russian trolls already had a narrative to build upon and a net-
work of true believers on social media to spread their propaganda.
In a September 2016 speech, Clinton described half of candidate
Trump’s supporters as “deplorables.” She went on to say that the other
half of Trump’s supporters were just people who felt the system had left
them behind, who needed support and empathy. Clearly, she was not
referring to all of Trump’s supporters as deplorable, but the narrative
quickly changed after social media users began referring to themselves as
“Deplorable” in their screen names.
Before the “basket of deplorables” comment, the trolls primarily used
an algorithm to rapidly respond to a tweet from Donald Trump. ose
tweets were prominently displayed directly under Trump’s tweet if a user
clicked on the original. ose users became powerful voices with large
followings; Trump himself frequently retweeted many of those users.
55
How-
ever, after the Clinton speech, a “people search” on Twitter for “deplorable”
was all one needed to suddenly gain a network of followers numbering
between 3,000 and 70,000. Once again, FanFan’s name changed—this
time to “Deplorable Lucy”—and the prole picture became a white,
middle-aged female with a Trump logo at the bottom of the picture. e
FanFan follower count went from just over 1,000 to 11,000 within a few
days. His original network from the Mizzou and European campaigns
changed as well: tracing his follower trail again led to the same groups
of people in the same network, and they were all now dened by the
“Deplorable” brand. In short, they were now completely in unison with
a vast network of other Russian trolls, actual American citizens, and bot
accounts from both countries on Twitter. With a large network consist-
ing of Russian trolls, true believers, and bots, it suddenly became easier
to get topics trending with a barrage of tweets. e Russian trolls could
employ the previously used tactics of bot tweets and hashtag hijacking,
but now they had the capability to create trends.
Besides creating trends, the trolls could relay strategy under the radar
using Twitter. at is to say, a message could be delivered in the form
of a picture that did not include any words. e lack of words would
Jarred Prier
72 S S Q ♦ W 2017
spread the message to the followers in a timeline, but retweets would
not develop any trends—only that network of followers or someone ac-
tively observing the network saw the messages. Often, anonymous users
discussed the tactics behind the trend creation on the social media site
4Chan or on the bulletin board called “/pol/” and subsequently coor-
dinated the trend within the Deplorable Network on Twitter. e most
eective trends derived from this strategy came in the days following the
release of the “Access Hollywood” tape from 2005 in which Trump had
made vulgar remarks.
56
e Deplorable Network distributed the corre-
sponding strategy throughout the network to drown out negative atten-
tion to Trump on Twitter. Coinciding with the implementation of the
strategy to mask anti-Trump comments on Twitter, WikiLeaks began re-
leasing Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta’s stolen emails.
57
e
emails themselves revealed nothing truly controversial, but the narrative
that the trending hashtag created was powerful. First, the issue of hacked
emails developed into a narrative conating Podesta’s emails to the issue
of Clinton’s use of a private email server while she was secretary of state.
e Clinton server was likely never hacked, but the problem of email
loomed over her candidacy.
Secondly, the Podesta email narrative took routine issues and made
them seem scandalous. e most common theme: bring discredit to
the mainstream media. Podesta, like any campaign manager in modern
politics, communicated with members of the press. Emails communi-
cating with reporters were distributed via trending tweets with links to
fake news websites. e fake news distorted the stolen emails into
conspiracies of media “rigging” of the election to support Hillary Clin-
ton. e corruption narrative also plagued the Democratic National
Committee (DNC), which experienced a hack earlier in the year, by
Russian sources and revealed by WikiLeaks.
58
A month after the election, a man drove from his home in North
Carolina to Washington, DC, to uncover the truth behind another news
story he read online. He arrived at Comet Ping-Pong, a pizza restaurant,
with an AR-15, prepared to free children from an underground child
sex tracking ring in the restaurant. After searching the store, he found
no children. e story was a hoax. One of the emails stolen from John
Podesta was an invitation to a party at the home of a friend that prom-
ised good pizza from Comet Ping Pong and a pool to entertain the kids.
Fake news sites reported the email as code for a pedophilic sex party; it
Commanding the Trend: Social Media as Information Warfare
S S Q ♦ W 2017 73
was widely distributed via the trending #PodestaEmail hashtag and an
associated new hashtag, #PizzaGate.
e #PizzaGate hoax, along with all of the other false and quasi-false
narratives, became common within right-wing media as another indica-
tion of the immorality of Clinton and her sta. Often, the mainstream
media would latch onto a story with unsavory backgrounds and false
pretenses, thus giving more credibility to all of the fake news; however,
the narrative from the #PizzaGate hoax followed the common propa-
ganda narrative that the media was trying to cover up the truth and that
the government failed to investigate the crimes. Ultimately, that is what
drove the man to inquire into the fake news for himself.
59
Finally, the stolen emails went beyond sharing on social media. e
trend became so sensational that traditional media outlets chose to cover
the Podesta email story, which gave credibility to the fake news and the
associated online conspiracy theories promulgated by the Deplorable
Network. e WikiLeaks release of the Podesta emails was the peak of
Russian command of the trend during the 2016 election. Nearly every
day #PodestaEmail trended as a new batch of supposedly scandalous
hacked emails made their way into the mainstream press.
By analyzing the followers of a suspected Russian troll, a picture
emerges regarding the structure of the network that was active during
the 2016 election. e core group in the Deplorable Network consisted
of Russian trolls and popular American right-wing accounts like Jack
Posobiec, Mike Cernovich, and InfoWars editor Paul Joseph Watson.
e Network also consisted of two bot accounts while the remaining
nodes are individual accounts likely consisting of human-managed ac-
counts. In total, the Deplorable Network was approximately 200,000
Twitter accounts consisting of Russian trolls, true believers, and bots.
Based on my analysis, the bot network appeared to be between 16,000
and 34,000 accounts.
60
e cohesiveness of the group indicates how a
coordinated eort can create a trend in a way that a less cohesive net-
work could not accomplish. To conduct cyberattacks using social media
as information warfare, an organization must have a vast network of bot
accounts to take command of the trend. With unknown factors like the
impact of fake news, the true results of the Russian inuence operation
will likely never be known. As Ellul said, experiments undertaken to
gauge the eectiveness of propaganda will never work because the tests
“cannot reproduce the real propaganda situation.”
61
e concept itself
Jarred Prier
74 S S Q ♦ W 2017
is marred by the fact that much of the social media support Trump re-
ceived was through real American true believers tweeting. However, two
numbers will stand out from the 2016 election: 2.8 million and 80,000.
Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by 2.8 million votes, and Donald
Trump won the electoral vote via a combination of just over 80,000
votes in three key states. One could easily make the case—as many on
the left have done—that Clinton lost because of the Russian inuence.
62
Conversely, one could also argue she was destined to lose because of a
botched campaign combined with a growing sense of disenchantment
with the American political system. However, one cannot dispute the
fact that Russia launched a massive cyberwarfare campaign to inuence
the 2016 presidential election.
63
For the most part, the Russian trolls became savvier with their tech-
niques as they adapted to the inuence operation in the United States.
However, some users, like FanFan, were sloppy with their tradecraft and
were obvious to anyone monitoring. e trolls were occasionally sloppy
with their IP address locations as well. Following the rst presidential
debate, the #TrumpWon hashtag quickly became the number one trend
globally. Using the TrendMap application, one quickly noticed that the
worldwide hashtag seemed to originate in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Rus-
sian trolls gave obvious support to Donald Trump and proved that
using social media could create chaos on a massive scale, discredit any
politician, and divide American society.
Adrian Chen, the New York Times reporter who originally uncovered
the troll network in Saint Petersburg in 2015, went back to Russia in the
summer of 2016. Russian activists he interviewed claimed that the pur-
pose of the trolls “was not to brainwash readers, but to overwhelm social
media with a ood of fake content, seeding doubt and paranoia, and
destroying the possibility of using the Internet as a democratic space.”
64
e troll farm used similar techniques to drown out anti-Putin trends
on Russian social media in addition to pumping out disinformation to
the United States.
A Congressional Research Service Study summarized the Russian
troll operation succinctly in a January 2017 report: “Cyber tools were
also used [by Russia] to create psychological eects in the American
population. e likely collateral eects of these activities include com-
promising the delity of information, sowing discord and doubt in the
Commanding the Trend: Social Media as Information Warfare
S S Q ♦ W 2017 75
American public about the validity of intelligence community reports,
and prompting questions about the democratic process itself.”
65
For Russia, information warfare is a specialized type of war, and modern
tools make social media the weapon. According to a former Obama
administration senior ocial, Russians regard the information sphere
as a domain of warfare on a sliding scale of conict that always exists
between the US and Russia.
66
is perspective was on display dur-
ing a Russian national security conference “Infoforum 2016.” Andrey
Krutskih, a senior Kremlin advisor, compared Russia’s information war-
fare to a nuclear bomb, which would “allow Russia to talk to Americans
as equals,” in the same way that Soviet testing of the atomic bomb did
in 1949.
67
Table 3. Russia case study analysis in 2016 election
Types Examples
Propaganda
narratives
• Anything discrediting to Hillary Clinton
• News media hides information
• Politicians are rigging the system
• Global elite trying to destroy the world
• Globalism is taking jobs and destroying cultures
• Refugees are terrorists
• Russian foreign policy is strong on antiterrorism
• Democrats and some Republicans want WWIII with Russia
True believers
Alt-right, some Bernie Sanders supporters, followers of InfoWars and
Breitbart, 4Chan and /pol/ users.
Cyber warriors Hackers and professional trolls
Bot network
Large, sophisticated network that leveraged cyber warriors and true
believer accounts to create the “Deplorable Network.”
From 2015 to 2016, Russian trolling modus operandi took a logical
path from small stories designed to create panic and sow seeds of doubt
to a social media machine that IS could only imagine. In warfare strategy,
narrative manipulation through social media cyber operations is the cur-
rent embodiment of taking the ght directly to the people. e 2016
election proved that using social media to inuence political outcomes,
as opposed to violence or Cold War–like posturing, is a highly eective
strategy in modern information warfare—a strategy that will likely
continue as technology continues to develop and adapt to the ever-
growing social media landscape as more actors gain the ability to take
command of the trend.
Jarred Prier
76 S S Q ♦ W 2017
e Future of Weaponized Social Media
Smear campaigns have been around since the beginning of politics,
but this article illustrated novel techniques recently employed by a
terrorist group and foreign state actor, with each attack gaining popu-
larity and credibility after trending on Twitter. e attacks, often under
the guise of a “whistleblower” campaign, make routine political actions
seem scandalous. Additionally, WikiLeaks advertises that it has never
published anything requiring retraction because everything it posts is
supposedly authentic stolen material. Just like the Podesta email releases,
several politicians and business leaders around the world have fallen victim
to this type of attack.
Recall the 2015 North Korean hacking of Sony Studios. Lost in the
explosive nature of the hacking story is that the fallout at the company
was not because of the hacking itself but from the release of embarrass-
ing emails from Sony senior management, as well as the salaries of every
employee at Sony. e uproar over the content of the emails dominated
social media, often fed by salacious stories like the RT headline: “Leaked
Sony emails exhibit wealthy elite’s maneuvering to get child into Ivy
League school.” Ultimately, Sony red a senior executive because of the
content of her emails.
68
In another example from May 2017, nine gigabytes of email stolen
from French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron’s campaign were
released online and veried by WikiLeaks. Subsequently, the hashtag
#MacronLeaks trended to number one worldwide. It was an inuence
operation resembling the #PodestaEmail campaign with a supporting
cast of some of the same actors. During the weeks preceding the French
election, many accounts within the Deplorable Network changed their
names to support Macron’s opponent, Marine LePen. ese accounts
mostly tweet in English and still engage in American political topics as
well as French issues.
69
Some of the accounts also tweet in French, and a
new network of French-tweeting bot accounts uses the same methods as
the Deplorable Network to take command of the trend.
In his book Out of the Mountains, David Kilcullen describes a future
comprising large, coastal urban areas lled with potential threats, all
connected.
70
e implications of his prediction are twofold. First, net-
works of malicious nonstate actors can band together to hijack social
media using a template similar to IS. Although these groups may not
have the power to create global trends, they can certainly create chaos
Commanding the Trend: Social Media as Information Warfare
S S Q ♦ W 2017 77
with smaller numbers by hijacking trends and creating local trends.
With minimal resources, a small group can create a bot network to amplify
its message. Second, scores of people with exposure to social media are
vulnerable to online propaganda eorts. In this regard, state actors can
use the Russian playbook.
Russia will likely continue to dominate this new battlespace. It has
intelligence assets, hackers, cyber warrior trolls, massive bot networks,
state-owned news networks with global reach, and established networks
within the countries Russia seeks to attack via social media. Most impor-
tantly, the Russians have a history of spreading propaganda. After the
2016 elections in the United States, Russian trolls again worked toward
inuencing European elections. Currently, Russian trolls are active in
France, the Balkans, and the Czech Republic using active measures and
coercive social media messages.
71
It is clear that other countries are at-
tempting to build capabilities to match the Russian cyber troll inuence.
Already, Turkey, Iran, and Venezuela are noted as having bot networks
and cyber warriors similar to Russian trolls.
72
With these other states, a
popular use for the trolls in the social media battlespace is to stoke nation-
alism and control the narrative within their own borders. For example, the
fake Twitter followers of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro number
so many that he is now the “third-most-retweeted public gure in the
world, behind only the king of Saudi Arabia and the pope.”
73
With a large enough bot network, states can also control messages
outside of social media using similar techniques. Manipulating search
engines is called “search engine optimization,” which uses bot accounts
to increase the number of clicks to a particular web page after perform-
ing a search. e search engine algorithm then prioritizes that page in re-
sponse to subsequent searches using the same keyword. A Google search
for “ODNI Report” is illustrative: in March 2017, the top Google re-
sults were RT articles lambasting the intelligence assessment that named
the Russian government as the perpetrators behind the 2016 election
interference.
Techniques like search engine optimization and command of the trend
will become common in future wars to sow discord and spread false in-
formation, with the aim of causing the other side to change its course of
action. ese online weapons should frighten every leader in a democ-
racy. Perhaps most frightening is the Oxford Internet Institute Unit for
Propaganda discovery that “hundreds of thousands of ‘sleeper bots’ exist
Jarred Prier
78 S S Q ♦ W 2017
on Twitter.”
74
ese bots are accounts that are active but have not yet
started tweeting. Researchers do not know who owns the accounts or
what will trigger them. e ease of use and large numbers of active bots
and sleeper bots indicate a high likelihood of social media continuing to
be used for propaganda, especially as more and more state and nonstate
organizations realize the impact they can make on an adversary.
us far, the United States response has been relatively weak. For one,
the US government does not prioritize information operations the way
it once did during the Cold War. When President Eisenhower started
the United States Information Agency (USIA), the objective was to
compete with Soviet propaganda around the world. e mission state-
ment of USIA claried its role: “e purpose of the United States Infor-
mation Agency shall be to submit evidence to peoples of other nations
by means of communication techniques that the objectives and policies
of the United States are in harmony with and will advance their legiti-
mate aspirations for freedom, progress, and peace.”
75
Knowing what we know now about Russian disinformation active
measures, USIA was never truly equipped to ght an information war.
e agency became a public diplomacy platform with a positive message
rather than a Soviet-style campaign of negative smear tactics. Accord-
ingly, several questions arose: should USIA spread propaganda? Should
it seek out and attempt to remove negative publicity about the US?
Should it slander opponents? Most importantly: should it do any or all
of these things when the American public could be inuenced by a mes-
sage intended for an international audience?
76
ose problems persist today because the government lacks a central-
ized information authority since the mission of USIA was relegated to
the Department of State. Several failed attempts to counter IS on Twit-
ter show the US government’s weakness when trying to use social media
as a weapon. One example is the Center for Strategic Counterterrorism
Communications, created in 2010, which started the program “ink
Again, Turn Away.” e State department awarded a $575,046 contract
to a Virginia-based consulting rm to manage the project.
77
e intent
was to curb the appeal of IS by creating a counternarrative to the
IS message on social media. Unfortunately, the Twitter campaign had
undesirable consequences after the account sent tweets arguing the ner
points of the Islamic faith with IS sympathizers. Rita Katz best summa-
rized the failure: “In order to counter a problem, one must rst study it
Commanding the Trend: Social Media as Information Warfare
S S Q ♦ W 2017 79
before adopting a solution. Had the people behind ‘ink Again, Turn
Away’ understood jihadists’ mindsets and reasons for their behavior, they
would have known that their project of counter-messaging would not
only be a waste of taxpayer money but ultimately be counterproductive.”
78
In the end, the “ink Again, Turn Away” campaign was almost
comical as it could not communicate eectively with any audience and
severely discounted the importance of its message. Jacques Ellul noted
that democracies were prone to having problems with outward commu-
nication through propaganda. Because democracies rely on presenting
an image of fairness and truth, “propaganda made by democracies is
ineective, paralyzed, mediocre.”
79
e United States was ill equipped
to combat Soviet active measures during the Cold War, and it remains
unable to compete using social media as an inuence operation.
Unfortunately, countering Russian inuence operations has taken a
partisan slant within the United States. Many downplay the Russian role
in the 2016 election while others appear to be so blinded by the Russian
operation that they cannot see the underlying conditions that allowed
for the spread of that narrative in the rst place.
80
With the two parties
unable to reach a consensus on what happened or the impact of the op-
eration, they fail to realize that as technology improves and proliferates
around the world, disinformation campaigns and inuence operations
will become the norm. e attack in a future information war could be
toward either political party and come from any of the several countries
attempting to build an online army in the mold of Russia’s trolls and
bot network.
Conclusion
In the 1987 book Truth Twisters, Richard Deacon laments the future
of independent thinking, as computers “could become the most dangerous
hypnotic inuence in the future. . . . [T]he eect of a reliance on com-
puterology, of allowing oneself to be manipulated and controlled by it,
is certainly hypnotic in that the mind allows itself to accept whatever the
computer tells it.”
81
He believed that such technology could lead one
to commit treason without realizing any manipulation. Propaganda is
a powerful tool, and, used eectively, it has been proven to manipulate
populations on a massive scale. Using social media to take command
of the trend makes the spread of propaganda easier than ever before for
both state and nonstate actors.
Jarred Prier
80 S S Q ♦ W 2017
Fortunately, social media companies are taking steps to combat mali-
cious use. Facebook has been at the forefront of tech companies taking
action to increase awareness of fake news and provide a process for re-
moving the links from the website.
82
Also, although Facebook trends are
less important to information warfare than Twitter trends, the website
has taken measures to ensure that humans are involved in making the
trends list. Furthermore, Twitter has started discreetly removing unsavory
trends within minutes of their rise in popularity. However, adversaries adapt,
and Twitter trolls have attempted to regain command of the trend by
misspelling a previous trend once it is taken out of circulation. Still,
even if the misspelled word regains a spot on the trend list, the message
is diminished.
e measures enacted by Facebook and Twitter are important for pre-
venting future wars in the information domain. However, Twitter will
also continue to have problems with trend hijacking and bot networks.
As demonstrated by #PrayforMizzou and #WorldCup2014, real events
happening around the world will maintain popularity as well-intending
users want to talk about the issues. In reality, removing the trends func-
tion could end the use of social media as a weapon, but doing so could
also devalue the usability of Twitter. Rooting out bot accounts would
have an equal eect since that would nearly eliminate the possibility
of trend creation. Unfortunately, that would have an adverse impact
on advertising rms that rely on Twitter to generate revenue for their
products.
With social media companies balancing the interests of their busi-
nesses and the betterment of society, other institutions must respond
to the malicious use of social media. In particular, the credibility of our
press has been put into question by social media inuence campaigns—
those groups should respond accordingly. For instance, news outlets
should adopt social media policies for their employees that encourage
the use of social media but discourage them from relying on Twitter as a
source. is will require a culture shift within the press and fortunately
has gathered signicant attention at universities researching the media’s
role in the inuence operation. It is worth noting that the French press
did not cover the content of the Macron leaks; instead, the journalists
covered the hacking and inuence operation without giving any cred-
ibility to the leaked information.
Commanding the Trend: Social Media as Information Warfare
S S Q ♦ W 2017 81
Finally, our elected ocials must move past the partisan divide of
Russian inuence in the 2016 election. is involves two things: rst,
both parties must recognize what happened—neither minimizing nor
overplaying Russian active measures. Second, and most importantly,
politicians must commit to not using active measures to their benet.
Certainly, the appeal of free negative advertising will make any politi-
cian think twice about using disinformation, but the reality of a foreign
inuence operation damages more than just the other party, it damages
our democratic ideals. Senator John McCain summarized this sentiment
well at a CNN Town Hall: “Have no doubt, what the Russians tried to
do to our election could have destroyed democracy. at’s why we’ve got
to pay . . . a lot more attention to the Russians.”
83
is was not the cyber war we were promised. Predictions of a cata-
strophic cyberattack dominated policy discussion, but few realized that
social media could be used as a weapon against the minds of the popula-
tion. IS and Russia are models for this future war that uses social media to
directly inuence people. As technology improves, techniques are rened,
and internet connectivity continues to proliferate around the world, this
saying will ring true: He who controls the trend will control the narrative—
and, ultimately, the narrative controls the will of the people.
Notes
1. Elisabeth Bumiller and om Shanker, “Panetta Warns of Dire reat of Cyberattack
on U.S.,” New York Times, 11 October 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/12/world
/panetta-warns-of-dire-threat-of-cyberattack.html?mcubz=0/.
2. Jeremy Scott-Joynt, “What Myspace Means to Murdoch,” BBC News Analysis, 19 July
2005, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/4697671.stm.
3. Sitaram Asur, Bernardo A. Huberman, Gabor Szabo, and Chunyan Wang, “Trends in Social
Media: Persistence and Decay” (unpublished manuscript, submitted to Cornell University Library
arXiv 7 February 2011), 1, https://arxiv.org/abs/1102.1402?context=physics.
4. “Blog” is short for “web log.” A blog is a way to share your thoughts via the internet. A
microblog is a blog with a character limit to the text.
5. Rani Molla, “Social Studies: Twitter vs. Facebook,” Bloomberg Gady, 12 February 2016,
https://www.bloomberg.com/gady/articles/2016-02-12/social-studies-comparing-twitter-with
-facebook-in-charts.
6. Carole Cadwalladr, “Robert Mercer: e Big Data Billionaire Waging War on the Main-
stream Media,” Guardian, 26 February 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017
/feb/26/robert-mercer-breitbart-war-on-media-steve-bannon-donald-trump-nigel-farage.
7. Gabriel Weimann, Terrorism in Cyberspace: e Next Generation (Washington, DC:
Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2015), 138.
Jarred Prier
82 S S Q ♦ W 2017
8. Alex Lubben, “Twitter’s Users Are 15 Percent Robot, but at’s Not Necessarily a Bad
ing,” VICE News, 12 March 2017, https://news.vice.com/story/twitters-users-are-15-percent
-robot-but-thats-not-necessarily-a-bad-thing.
9. Jacques Ellul, Propaganda: e Formation of Men’s Attitudes (New York: Knopf, 1965), 6.
10. Eric Hoer, e True Believer: oughts on the Nature of Mass Movements (New York:
Harper and Row, 1951), 105.
11. omas Rid, Cyber War Will Not Take Place (New York: Oxford University Press,
2013), 132.
12. Ellul, 85.
13. Daniel Kahneman, inking, Fast and Slow (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux,
2011), 87.
14. Christopher Paul and Miriam Matthews, e Russian “Firehose of Falsehood” Propaganda
Model, RAND Report PE-198-OSD (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2016), 4, https://www.rand
.org/pubs/perspectives/PE198.html.
15. Garth Jowett and Victoria O’Donnell, Propaganda & Persuasion, 5th ed. (ousand
Oaks, CA: SAGE, 2012), 159.
16. Katerina Eva Matsa and Kristine Lu, “10 Facts about the Changing Digital News
Landscape,” Pew Research Center, 14 September 2016, http://www.pewresearch.org/fact
-tank/2016/09/14/facts-about-the-changing-digital-news-landscape/.
17. Jowett and O’Donnell, Propaganda & Persuasion, 300.
18. Tom Hashemi, “e Business of Ideas Is in Trouble: Re-injecting Facts into a Post-
truth World,” War on the Rocks, 9 December 2016, https://warontherocks.com/2016/12/the
-business-of-ideas-is-in-trouble-re-injecting-facts-into-a-post-truth-world/.
19. Asur, Huberman, Szabo, and Wang, “Trends in Social Media,” 1.
20. Merriam-Webster Dictionary Online, s.v. “lede,” accessed 10 October 2017, https://
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/lede. “e introductory section of a news story that is
intended to entice the reader to read the full story.”
21. Tess Townsend, “e Bizarre Truth behind the Biggest Pro-Trump Facebook Hoaxes,” Inc.
com, 21 November 2016, https://www.inc.com/tess-townsend/ending-fed-trump-facebook.html.
22. Craig Silverman, “is Analysis Shows How Viral Fake Election News Stories Outper-
formed Real News on Facebook,” BuzzFeed News, 16 November 2016, https://www.buzzfeed
.com/craigsilverman/viral-fake-election-news-outperformed-real-news-on-facebook?utm
_term=.qwWdA0G8G#.fcEv1Qono.
23. Art Swift, “Americans’ Trust in Mass Media Sinks to New Low,” Gallup, 14 September
2016, http://news.gallup.com/poll/195542/americans-trust-mass-media-sinks-new-low.aspx.
24. Andrea Peterson, “ree Charts that Explain how U.S. Journalists Use Social Media,”
Washington Post, 6 May 2014, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2014/05/06
/three-charts-that-explain-how-u-s-journalists-use-social-media/?utm_term=.9cdd82cb8fa7.
25. Weimann, Terrorism in Cyberspace, 138.
26. Audrey Kurth Cronin, “ISIS Is Not a Terrorist Group,” Foreign Policy (March/April
2015), https://www.foreignaairs.com/articles/middle-east/isis-not-terrorist-group.
27. Stephen M. Walt, “ISIS as Revolutionary State,” Foreign Policy (November/December
2015): 42, https://www.belfercenter.org/publication/isis-revolutionary-state.
28. Caliphate is dened as “a form of Islamic government led by a—a person considered a
political and religious successor to the Islamic prophet, Muhammad, and a leader of the entire
Muslim community. Source: Wadad Kadi and Aram A. Shahin, “Caliph, caliphate,” in e
Princeton Encyclopedia of Islamic Political ought, ed. Gerhard Bowering, Patricia Crone, Wadad
Commanding the Trend: Social Media as Information Warfare
S S Q ♦ W 2017 83
Kadi, Devin J. Stewart, Muhammad Qasim Zaman, and Mahan Mirza (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 2013), 81–86, http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1r2g6m.8.
29. Graeme Wood, “What ISIS Really Wants,” Atlantic, March 2015, 3, https://www
.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/03/what-isis-really-wants/384980/.
30. Dabiq is also the name of the ISIS magazine, which is available electronically and
spread via social media.
31. Walt, “ISIS as Revolutionary State,” 43.
32. J. M. Berger, “How ISIS Games Twitter,” Atlantic, 16 June 2014, https://www.theatlantic
.com/international/archive/2014/06/isis-iraq-twitter-social-media-strategy/372856/.
33. Ibid.
34. “Terrorist Use of Social Media: Policy and Legal Challenges,” roundtable forum (Wash-
ington, DC: Council on Foreign Relations, 14 October 2015).
35. Berger, “How ISIS Games Twitter.”
36. Carleton English, “Twitter Continues to Wage its Own War against ISIS,” New York Post, 21
March 2017, http://nypost.com/2017/03/21/twitter-continues-to-wage-its-own-war-against-isis/.
37. United States Department of State, report, Soviet Inuence Activities: A Report on Active
Measures and Propaganda, 1986–87 (Washington, DC: Bureau of Public Aairs, 1987), viii.
38. Natasha Bertrand, “It Looks Like Russia Hired Internet Trolls to Pose as Pro-Trump Ameri-
cans,” Business Insider, 27 July 2016, http://www.businessinsider.com/russia-internet-trolls-and
-donald-trump-2016-7.
39. Vladimir Isachenkov, “Russia Military Acknowledges New Branch: Info Warfare Troops,”
AP News, 22 February 2017, https://www.apnews.com/8b7532462dd0495d9f756c9ae7d23c.
40. Richard Gonzalez, “CIA Director Pompeo Denounces WikiLeaks as ‘Hostile Intelligence
Service,’ ” NPR, 23 April 2017, http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/04/13/523849965
/cia-director-pompeo-denounces-wikileaks-as-hostile-intelligence-service.
41. Malcolm Nance, e Plot to Hack America: How Putin’s Cyberspies and WikiLeaks Tried
to Steal the 2016 Election (New York: Skyhorse Publishing, 2016), Kindle edition, 1,839.
42. Adrian Chen, “e Agency,” New York Times Magazine, 2 June 2015, https://www.nytimes
.com/2015/06/07/magazine/the-agency.html. On 11 September 2014, the small town of St.
Mary Parish, Louisiana, was thrown briey into a panic when residents began hearing reports
through text, social media, and on local television stations that a nearby chemical plant re was
spreading toxic fumes that would soon endanger the whole town. e entire narrative was based
on falsied—but very real looking—online news stories, hashtag manipulation, and mass
texts (SMS) to various numbers with the local area code and dialing prex. e actual source
for the news was not the chemical factory; it was a nondescript building in St. Petersburg,
Russia, where an army of online cyber-warrior trolls seeks to distribute false information.
43. Statement of Clint Watts, Foreign Policy Research Institute fellow, in “Disinformation:
A Primer in Russian Active Measures and Inuence Campaigns,” testimony before the Senate
Intelligence Committee, 115th Cong., 1st sess., 30 March 2017, https://www.intelligence
.senate.gov/sites/default/les/documents/os-cwatts-033017.pdf.
44. Chen, “e Agency.”
45. Because of the Adrian Chen article, I observed particular tweeting patterns of certain
individuals involved in a hoax on the campus of the University of Missouri that seemed to match
the methods of the Russian trolls interviewed by Chen. I mention only one particular user in this
article, but I also monitored a dozen or so accounts that contributed to that hoax. Each account
followed a pattern that also happened to align with noted Russian inuence operations in Europe
and eventually in the US presidential election. I describe that transition in the article. From
those accounts, I built a database of suspected Russian bot accounts to build a network map. e
Jarred Prier
84 S S Q ♦ W 2017
Mizzou hoax was a trend hijacking eort launched by actors who later proved to match the Rus-
sian modus operandi of using cyber trolls originally observed by Adrian Chen and conrmed by
the Oce of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) report and Foreign Policy Research In-
stitute fellow Clint Watts in his testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee (note 43).
46. Nadine Schmidt and Tim Hume, “Berlin Teen Admits Fabricating Migrant Gang-Rape
Story, Ocial Says,” CNN, 1 February 2016, http://www.cnn.com/2016/02/01/europe/germany
-teen-migrant-rape-false/index.html.
47. Judy Dempsey, “Russia’s Manipulation of Germany’s Refugee Problems,” Carnegie
Europe, 28 January 2016, http://carnegieeurope.eu/strategiceurope/?fa=62611.
48. Schmidt and Hume, “Berlin Teen Admits Fabricating Migrant Gang-Rape Story.”
49. Barbara Tasch, “ ‘e Aim Is to Weaken the West’: e Inside Story of How Russian
Propagandists Are Waging War on Europe,” Business Insider, 2 February 2017, http://www
.businessinsider.com/russia-propaganda-campaign-weakening-europe-2017-1?r=UK&IR=T.
50. Harriet Sherwood, “Polish Magazine’s ‘Islamic Rape of Europe’ Cover Sparks Out-
rage,” 18 February 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/feb/18/polish-magazines-
islamic-of-europe-cover-sparks-outrage.
51. Chen, “e Agency.”
52. Robinson Meyer, “War Goes Viral: How Social Media Is Being Weaponized across the
World,” Atlantic, 18 October 2016, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/11
/war-goes-viral/501125/.
53. Oce of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), Intelligence Community As-
sessment Report, Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections, 6 January
2017, ii, https://www.dni.gov/les/documents/ICA_2017_01.pdf.
54. Hanna Rosin, “Among the Hillary Haters,” Atlantic, 1 March 2015, 63, https://www
.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/03/among-the-hillary-haters/384976/.
55. K. or Jensen, “Inside Donald Trump’s Twitter-Bot Fan Club,” New York Magazine,
15 June 2016, http://nymag.com/selectall/2016/06/inside-donald-trumps-twitter-bot-fan
-club.html.
56. David A. Farenthold, “Trump Recorded Having Extremely Lewd Conversation
about Women in 2005,” Washington Post, 8 October 2016, https://www.washingtonpost
.com/politics/trump-recorded-having-extremely-lewd-conversation-about-women-in
-2005/2016/10/07/3b9ce776-8cb4-11e6-bf8a-3d26847eeed4_story.html.
57. “e Podesta Emails,” Politico LiveBlog, accessed 6 December 2016, http://www.politico
.com/live-blog-updates/2016/10/john-podesta-hillary-clinton-emails-wikileaks-000011.
58. ODNI Report, 2.
59. Faiz Siddiqui and Susan Svrluga, “N.C. Man Told Police He Went to D.C. Pizzeria
with Gun to Investigate Conspiracy eory,” Washington Post, 5 December 2017, https://
www.washingtonpost.com/news/local/wp/2016/12/04/d-c-police-respond-to-report-of-a
-man-with-a-gun-at-comet-ping-pong-restaurant/?utm_term=.c33057f66007.
60. is count is based on analysis of the followers of followers of suspected troll accounts
and bots. e study was conducted 15 March 2016. e number of accounts appears to
have reduced dramatically since May, following the French election, implying that Twitter
suspended some of the accounts. Unfortunately, software limitations prevent this analysis
from being more accurate. Additionally, it is nearly impossible to derive the exact number of
Russian accounts from that network using my available resources.
61. Ellul, Propaganda, 6.
62. Many on the left have mischaracterized the attack as “Russian hacking of the election,”
which has in turn conated the issue of the John Podesta email theft with a hacking of the
Commanding the Trend: Social Media as Information Warfare
S S Q ♦ W 2017 85
actual election systems. To be clear: there is no evidence of any sort of hack on any ballot-
counting systems, only evidence outlined in this paper of two hacks (Democratic National
Committee and Podesta) combined with an inuence/information operation.
63. ODNI Report, 1.
64. Adrian Chen, “e Real Paranoia-Inducing Purpose of Russian Hacks,” New Yorker,
27 July 2016, https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-real-paranoia-inducing-purpose
-of-russian-hacks.
65. Catherine eohary and Cory Welt, “Russia and the U.S. Presidential Election,” CRS
Report no. IN10635 (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, 2017).
66. David Ignatius, “Russia’s Radical New Strategy for Information Warfare,” Washington
Post, 18 January 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2017/01/18/
russias-radical-new-strategy-for-information-warfare/?utm_term=.da53e31d7aaa.
67. Ibid.
68. “Ex-Sony Chief Amy Pascal Acknowledges She Was Fired,” NBCNews.com, 12
February 2015, https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/sony-hack/ex-sony-chief-amy-pascal
-acknowledges-she-was-red-n305281.
69. e political left in the United States seems to have a large group of bot accounts
forming around the “Resist” movement. It is unclear whether those accounts are foreign cyber
warriors or bots, but external actors can certainly feed o the underlying narratives and tap
into existing networks of true believers.
70. David Kilcullen, Out of the Mountains: e Coming Age of the Urban Guerrilla (New
York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 231.
71. Anthony Faiola, “As Cold War Turns to Information War, a New Fake News Police
Combats Disinformation,” Washington Post, 22 January 2017, https://www.washingtonpost
.com/world/europe/as-cold-war-turns-to-information-war-a-new-fake-news-police/2017/01
/18/9bf496-d80e-11e6-a0e6-d502d6751bc8_story.html?utm_term=.7c99cc2fadd5.
72. Meyer, “War Goes Viral.”
73. Ibid.
74. Cadwalladr, “Robert Mercer: e Big Data,” 1.8.
75. Malcolm Mitchell, Propaganda, Polls, and Public Opinion: Are the People Manipulated?
(Englewood Clis, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1977), 12.
76. Ibid., 13.
77. Rebecca Carroll, “e State Department Is Fighting with ISIL on Twitter.” Defense
One, 25 June 2014, http://www.defenseone.com/technology/2014/06/state-department-ghting
-isil-twitter/87286/.
78. Rita Katz, “e State Department’s Twitter War with ISIS Is Embarrassing,” Time, 16
September 2014, http://time.com/3387065/isis-twitter-war-state-department/.
79. Ellul, Propaganda, 241.
80. Adrian Chen, “e Propaganda about Russian Propaganda,” New Yorker, 1 December
2016, https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-propaganda-about-russian-propaganda.
81. Richard Deacon, e Truth Twisters (London: Macdonald, 1987), 95.
82. Michelle Castillo, “Facebook Found Fake Accounts Leaking Stolen Info to Sway Presi-
dential Election,” CNBC.com, 27 April 2017, https://www.cnbc.com/2017/04/27/facebook-
found-eorts-to-sway-presidential-election-elect-trump.html.
83. Eric Bradner, “At CNN Town Hall, McCain and Graham Give eir View of Trump’s
Presidency so Far,” CNN, 2 March 2017, http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/01/politics
/john-mccain-lindsey-graham-town-hall/index.html.
86 S S Q ♦ W 2017
Overcoming the Cyber Weapons Paradox
Maj Timothy M. Goines, USAF
Abstract
To increase the eectiveness of its cyber deterrence policy, a US De-
partment of Defense ocial recently called for “loud” cyber weapons:
cyber weapons that could be easily discovered and traced to the United
States. ese weapons, if employed, could oer unique advantages for
US deterrence policy. However, the prospect of employing cyber weapons
creates a paradox between overt factors of deterrence and the covert
nature of oensive cyber operations—and the paradox of cyber weapons
themselves. e current processes in place for using cyber weapons are
not adequate to ensure such employment avoids the cyber-weapons
paradox. A better process is to use interagency coordination that pro-
vides for a whole-of-government approach. e results of this evalua-
tion demonstrate that, by using an interagency coordination process,
the United States will be better positioned to employ an eective cyber
deterrence policy.
✵ ✵ ✵ ✵ ✵
With thousands of malicious cyber acts occurring daily, the United
States appears to be rather unsuccessful at deterring bad actors from
attempting to inltrate its networks and do damage.
1
For example, the
Department of Defense (DOD) reported in 2008 that it was probed
hundreds of thousands of times each day, and the problem has only
grown.
2
One reason for the lack of success stems in part from the covert
nature of cyber operations.
3
Under current policy, US cyber operations
are highly classied; operations may be conducted in response to cyber
acts, but the operations and the specic actor are obscured. Recently,
Maj Timothy M. Goines serves as an assistant professor of law, at the US Air Force Academy, Colorado
Springs, Colorado. He is a judge advocate and has earned a master of arts degree from the Air Command
and Sta College in 2017 as well as a master of laws degree from the University of Nebraska in 2016.
Overcoming the Cyber Weapons Paradox
S S Q ♦ W 2017 87
however, the commander of US Cyber Command (USCYBERCOM)
stated the command is looking for attributable or “loud” cyber weapons
that can be used by the DOD and denitively traced to the US military.
As proposed, when using these new cyber weapons, the United States
would not obscure the operation or actor from being discovered by the
victim and attributed to the United States. It would broadcast US use
of cyber weapons, making them easily discoverable. e logic is that by
using loud cyber weapons, the United States gains a deterrent advantage.
First, it allows the United States to signal its intent to defend specied
domestic assets and its willingness to engage in aggressive cyber opera-
tions against an adversary.
4
Second, it informs the cyber adversary of US
cyber capabilities—something that is suspected but not known. Finally,
it increases the credibility of the US deterrence program by demon-
strating that the United States is capable and committed to respond-
ing to malicious cyber acts. Upon consideration, this appears to be a
rather simple and eective solution to the current problems with US
cyber deterrence policy. Making cyber weapon use easily discoverable
and allowing actors to trace the use back to the United States will open
a line of communication, albeit rather indirect. Nevertheless, this line
of communication allows the United States to indicate which targets it
is willing to defend as well as its capabilities, its commitment, and the
credibility of its future threats. In other words, this solution meets the
requirements of deterrence, allowing the United States to communicate
its system of rules and signal its commitment and credibility in the cyber
environment.
However, two US government communities concurrently conduct
cyber operations: the intelligence community and the DOD. ese two
communities have complementary capabilities, resources, and sta but
often conict with each other because of exclusive planning, unknown
vulnerabilities or exploits, uncoordinated timing, and detrimental tar-
geting. As the DOD starts to employ loud cyber weapons, these opera-
tions could render future missions ineective or substantially degraded.
While some overt oensive cyber use adds to deterrence, at the same
time it creates a sort of cyber weapons paradox between overt cyber de-
terrence and covert cyber usefulness because any overt use can render the
weapon useless. e paradox also exists because of the nature of cyber
weapons themselves.
Timothy M. Goines
88 S S Q ♦ W 2017
In addressing the paradox, this article explores the following question:
How can the United States most eectively employ oensive cyber
weapons to achieve maximum deterrent eect without foreclosing the
US ability to conduct covert oensive cyber operations? e article begins
by dening deterrence and discussing the essential factors for eective
cyber deterrence. Next it analyzes the paradox that emerges within
current oensive cyber processes and the existence of a paradox within
cyber weapons themselves. Following this, the article proposes overcoming
the cyber weapons paradox through interagency working groups that
focus on prioritizing cyber weapons.
Unfortunately, the employment of these weapons raises a slew of
other concerns. First, there are policy concerns. For example, what are
the potential consequences of using these weapons? If employed against
certain actors, what are their likely responses? Does responding to these
actions result in the escalation of conict? If so, is that advisable? What
would the threshold be for potential responses? Is the United States will-
ing to accept these potential responses? By revealing its hand, the United
States exposes itself to scrutiny from the international community and
potential cyber responses from the actor. Given the signicant policy
considerations, this article cannot adequately address and resolve them
all. Instead, it assesses the more practical concerns associated with employing
attributable cyber weapons—specically, the paradox that results from loud
versus covert and used versus useless cyber weapons.
Essentials of Cyber Deterrence
A thorough history and analysis of deterrence theory is provided by
deterrence scholars Alexander L. George and Richard Smoke.
5
ey
have noted that deterrence theory traces its roots back to ucydides
and the Peloponnesian War, but its most signicant employment was
far later, during the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet
Union. As both parties attempted to avoid a nuclear war during this
period, many theorists studied deterrence theory in its various forms:
strategic (thermonuclear), limited, and “sublimited” deterrence.
6
From
these studies, deterrence theory across all forms was reduced to a goal
of aecting the decision-making calculus in the mind of the actor: “In
its simplest form, deterrence is merely a contingent threat: ‘If you do x
I shall do y to you.’ If the opponent expects the costs of y to be greater
than the benets of x, he will refrain from doing [x]; he is deterred.”
7
Overcoming the Cyber Weapons Paradox
S S Q ♦ W 2017 89
While the practice of deterrence is rarely this simple, the heart of the
theory is logically sound. If the potential costs of a particular action out-
weigh the potential benets of that action, the actor should rationally
choose not to pursue that action. More accurately, if the actors believe
the deterring state will defend itself and the actors believe the costs of
such a response will exceed the benets of their proposed action, they
will not conduct the action.
8
us, the goal of any viable deterrence policy
should be to raise the credibility of the potential response. From this,
we can extract important requirements of a successful deterrence policy.
Rules, Signals, Commitment, and Credibility
e deterring state must develop a clear policy that contemplates
qualifying actions (such as threshold questions), qualifying targets,
qualifying actors, and the corresponding responses, which this article
will term a system of rules.
9
By developing these rules, the deterring state
fully forms its intent to protect certain aspects of the nation (such as
national infrastructure, institutions, and territory) and develops the cor-
responding responses to any of these threats. Nuclear deterrence is a
prime example, whereby the United States declared that any launch of a
nuclear weapon by an adversary would result in a retaliatory strike.
After a system of rules is created, the rules must be communicated to
the actor to be deterred; if that actor does not know about the potential
consequences, the actor is not likely to change his actions.
10
is is com-
monly completed through signaling, where the deterring state declares
its intent and the consequent actions.
11
For example, in conventional
operations, if states want to deter an adversary from invading their ter-
ritory, they can “signal” their intent to resist an invasion by amassing
troops along the border. Similarly, if states want to demonstrate their
global reach, they may send naval squadrons to a particular area.
Next, the deterring states must be committed to carrying out their
prescribed consequences.
12
If deterring states are or appear unable or
unwilling to employ their system of rules, they would do little to im-
pact the decision calculus of the other actor. With nuclear deterrence
example, if the United States were unwilling to resort to nuclear war,
adversaries would not be aected by the threat of a strike. Similarly, if
the United States were incapable of launching a retaliatory strike (due
to monetary or deployment constraints), the adversary would not likely
be deterred. us, this requirement has two components: the state must
Timothy M. Goines
90 S S Q ♦ W 2017
have the will to employ the system of rules, and it must also have the
“acquisition and deployment of capacities to back up the intent.”
13
Finally, the deterrence policy, as a whole, must be credible.
14
is re-
quirement is related to both the commitment by the deterring states and
the capability of the deterring states to carry out the actions within their
system of rules. For example, if the response threat were (or appeared to
be) outlandish or unreasonable, an adversary would likely not believe
the potential threat and likely not be deterred.
It is important to note that the general goal is to deter, but this is by
no means an all-or-nothing theory; in other words, deterrence theory
considers that it may succeed at times and it may fail at times.
15
is
especially applies in the cyber environment, where deterrence of every mali-
cious cyber act is an unrealistic goal. Although this might seem to be a
drawback with deterrence strategy, it is not exclusive to deterrence—after
all, military operations can and do fail, as do other political attempts.
us the goal of any deterrence policy should be to designate actions we
want to deter and then coordinate operations to maximize our ability to
deter those acts.
From general deterrence theory, the United States has formulated its
deterrence policy. e most recent version was articulated in the 2006
publication Deterrence Ops, Joint Operating Concept, Version 2.0.
16
More
recently, in 2015, the DOD Cyber Strategy was issued, which also ad-
dresses deterrence (specically, cyber deterrence) and reinforces the
concepts in Deterrence Ops.
17
e stated goal of the DOD deterrence policy is “to decisively inuence
the adversary’s decision-making calculus in order to prevent hostile
actions against US vital interests.”
18
As such, an adversary’s decision-
making calculus consists of weighing three factors: (1) the benets of
a course of action, (2) the costs of a course of action, and (3) the im-
plications of restraint.
19
Deterrence operations, therefore, seek to aect
adversary decision-making calculus by providing the basic framework
for all deterrence operations to build upon, including cyber deterrence.
Denying Benets
e rst way to deter an adversary is by denying the benets of a
course of action. In the cyber domain, the primary method through
which a state denies benets is through a robust and eective cybersecurity
system, reducing the number of vulnerabilities within its network and
Overcoming the Cyber Weapons Paradox
S S Q ♦ W 2017 91
preventing inltration and exploitation. is method of denying benets
is a purely defensive operation.
20
As a result, this article will not discuss
denying benets in great detail since its primary focus is oensive cyber
operations, which are more appropriately categorized under cost impo-
sition and encouraging adversary restraint.
Imposing Costs
e second way to deter an adversary is to credibly threaten to im-
pose costs as a consequence of an aggressive cyber act. Examples of cost
imposition range from criminal prosecution to oensive cyber operations
to conventional military operations.
21
It is worth highlighting the dis-
tinction between cost imposition and the threat of cost imposition. In
essence, once costs have to be imposed, the act has occurred and deter-
rence has failed. erefore, the goal of a deterrence strategy should be
to eectively threaten cost imposition such that an actor chooses not to
engage in the act in the rst place. DOD policy reects this logic, stating
one of its goals is “to declare or display eective response capabilities to
deter an adversary from initiating an attack” (emphasis in original).
22
Implications of Restraint
e third and nal way to deter an adversary—to encourage restraint—
is accomplished primarily through voluntary agreements to restrain,
such as multilateral and bilateral agreements in the form of arms control
treaties or conventions. For example, in September 2015, the United
States and China agreed to stop all economic espionage in cyberspace
against one another.
23
While this eort has been somewhat successful,
most efforts have been rather unsuccessful at achieving adversary
restraint.
24
Fortunately, a state looking to deter actors can also encourage
restraint through general deterrence, demonstrating its ability to deny
benets (through defensive operations) and impose costs (through
oensive operations) by interacting with other countries. Upon seeing
the capability of the deterring state, an adversary is more likely to see
a greater benet and less cost in not attempting a cyber act against the
deterring state.
Underlying this DOD deterrence policy is the concept (borrowed
from deterrence theory) that the decision to act is made by individuals
based on their perception of these factors, given their values and perceived
probabilities of alternate outcomes.
25
So the DOD’s policy recognizes
Timothy M. Goines
92 S S Q ♦ W 2017
that deterrence is not a one-size-ts-all approach; to be eective, it must
be tailored to specic adversaries within their specic contexts.
26
For
example, knowing why an actor carried out a cyber act oers insight
into its decision-making calculus (motive and what it stands to lose or
gain from an act) and can help in creating an eective deterrence strategy,
whether criminal prosecution or responding with oensive cyber opera-
tions is more appropriate.
27
e Paradox of Cyber Processes
As with most things relating to cyber operations, the current US
government process used to approve oensive cyber operations is classied.
While the unclassied instruction Joint Publication (JP) 3-12, Cyber-
space Operations, does provide general information on the employment
of oensive cyber operations, it fails to provide much, if any, description
of the current process for employment and approval.
28
JP 3-12 discusses
the employment of oensive cyber operations, where it highlights valid
concerns including transregional eects, conict probability, and foreign
policy implications.
29
Unfortunately, it does not specify how to account
for these concerns within an established process. Instead, it appears to
endorse an ad hoc approach, requiring initiation, planning, coordinating,
deconicting, and executing each operation, one at a time. is requires
any oensive cyber operation to start from ground zero instead of being
able to use an established process.
Beyond that, there is very little description of the approval process
for oensive cyber operations. e lone reference to any approval pro-
cess simply states that approval for oensive cyber operations requires
“national level approval.”
30
What can reasonably be assumed is that
“national level approval” requires authority beyond the hierarchy of any
one US agency (the DOD, the National Security Agency [NSA], the
Department of Justice [DOJ], the Department of Homeland Security
[DHS]). is would likely put the approval level at the National Security
Council (NSC), the president, or vice president.
Although more information is likely contained within classied docu-
ments, there is no evidence that it extends beyond an ad hoc nature and
the approval authority is at the “national level.” For example, there is
no evidence of an established interagency process within the NSC or
outside of it. In fact, JP 3-12 is a DOD-specic instruction and only
applies to DOD operations. Furthermore, given the covert nature of
Overcoming the Cyber Weapons Paradox
S S Q ♦ W 2017 93
cyber operations and the historical desire to keep operations classied,
having a process that crosses multiple agencies, especially when it comes
to the employment of oensive cyber operations, is not likely to exist.
erefore, given the limited access to classied information, it is a
reasonable assumption that the current process to approve and employ
oensive cyber operations begins solely within the DOD, funneled
through the secretary of defense, and approved by someone at the
national level.
31
When evaluated under the specic factors outlined
earlier, there are a number of concerns with this process.
Limited Visibility of Other Operations
With national-level approval, the current process allows oensive
cyber operations to be a smaller piece in the larger deterrence policy.
Unfortunately, the responsibility to assess the eectiveness of every
operation falls on the DOD chain of command and the national level
approval authority, without the assistance of knowledgeable outside or-
ganizations, experts, and technicians. is is a signicant stress on the
process, since the responsibility of maximizing each oensive operation’s
deterrent eect is left to one authority.
Second (and related to the rst concern since it originates solely
within the DOD community), the particular vulnerability and exploit
are not vetted through each organization for past use, current use, or
potential future use. It is highly unlikely that the single national-level
approval authority would know each vulnerability and exploit previously,
currently, and intended to be employed by all the disparate agencies
with cyber capabilities. Furthermore, it is even more unlikely that the
national-level authority would have a system in place to consult with
these organizations, consolidate the vulnerabilities and exploits in a unied
database, and set rules and priorities for their employment. e likely
consequence is that, unless the authority is informed of other opera-
tions, he or she is likely to approve an oensive cyber operation that
could conict with current or future operations.
No Whole-of-Government Approach
e current process also does not use a whole-of-government ap-
proach. ere are a number of agencies that either possess or could
easily possess oensive cyber capabilities, for instance USCYBERCOM,
the NSA, the DOJ, and the Central Intelligence Agency. Each has access
Timothy M. Goines
94 S S Q ♦ W 2017
to certain vulnerabilities and exploits, and each has a mission they are
attempting to accomplish. Currently, these agencies do not work in
concert. Instead, they are segregated from one another to ensure the
secrecy of their operations. ese disparate missions likely contribute to
the paradox.
Moreover, cyber threats come from various types of individuals, in-
cluding state actors, state-sponsored actors, organized criminal groups,
individual hackers, and extremist groups with radical ideologies. Each
of these actors can and must be deterred in dierent ways, through
dierent mechanisms. Achieving deterrence is not exclusive to oensive
cyber operations. Rather, a cyber operation is just one of many possible
alternatives for a deterring state; other options include criminal prosecu-
tion, sanctions, public condemnation, and conventional military opera-
tions. Each of these alternatives can be eective at deterring future
actors, depending on the circumstances.
As noted above, oensive cyber operations originate solely within
the DOD and its chain of command. ey are only elevated beyond
the DOD when they are seeking approval to conduct the specic cyber
operation on the specic target. Not only does this result in a lack of
vetting the specic cyber vulnerabilities and exploits with other cyber-
capable agencies, but it also does not consider other response options
from other agencies. It is conceivable that an oensive cyber operation
could be used where prosecution of a conventional military operation
would have a greater deterrent eect.
From a practical perspective, it is not likely that the DOD self-initiates
the process for employing an oensive cyber operation in response to
a cyber act. Rather, it is more likely that the national-level authority
requests a proposed oensive cyber operation when weighing all the re-
sponse options. Unfortunately, much like the vetting process, this puts a
signicant strain on the approval authority to determine which action is
likely to be the most eective, especially considering the various political
factors. is is aggravated by the ad hoc nature of the current process.
Slow Decision Timelines
Under the current process, when a cyber response is desired, an oen-
sive cyber operation is planned, reviewed, and elevated throughout the
DOD. is process likely includes reviews for viability, legality, conict
escalation, and policy concerns. It is then sent forward to the national-
Overcoming the Cyber Weapons Paradox
S S Q ♦ W 2017 95
level authority for consideration. is process, like any process requiring
multiple reviews within multiple layers of bureaucracy, takes time. Also,
because each oensive cyber operation must start from ground zero, un-
familiarity with the process can produce unnecessary delays. As a result,
the ad hoc nature of the current process can produce slow operation
timelines, leaving more time for the adversary to nd and patch vulner-
abilities.
Stress on Decision Maker
With the designation of the national-level authority for the approval
of oensive cyber operations, there appears to be a single authority de-
ciding which vulnerabilities and exploits to employ for which purpose.
As noted with the previous factors, the current process puts a tremen-
dous amount of strain on the decision maker. is is due to the lack of
a vetting process, the lack of a whole-of-government approach, and the
ad hoc nature of the current approval process. As a result, even though
a nal authority is designated, the process does not have the intended
eect of creating a cooperative environment and avoiding the potential
for multiple agencies employing the same cyber weapon for two dierent
purposes.
For these reasons, the current processes for oensive cyber operations
are not adequate to ensure their employment is conducted to avoid the
paradox and mission conict. is situation creates problems for the use
of loud cyber weapons—which are paradoxical themselves.
e Paradox of Cyber Weapons
Before discussing the paradox inherent in cyber weapons, it is impor-
tant to rst consider some of the unique aspects of cyber weapons that
undergird the paradox.
Perishability and Obsolescence
Cyber weapons (both attributable and covert) are perishable and
rendered obsolete over time. A cyber operation is composed of two
parts, a vulnerability and an exploit. A vulnerability is a “weakness in
an information system, system security procedures, internal controls,
or implementation that could be exploited by a threat source.”
32
e
Timothy M. Goines
96 S S Q ♦ W 2017
prototypical example of a vulnerability is a zero-day vulnerability, which
is a hole in the software that is unknown to the author.
33
e upside with vulnerabilities is that the operator of the system is
unaware of them, providing another actor the ability to access their
system. e downside is that, once the vulnerabilities are discovered,
they are often xed by the vendor, manufacturer, or owner quickly. For
example, Microsoft has historically released security patches to x holes
in its Windows Operating System (OS) on the second Tuesday of each
month.
34
So, a vulnerability has a window from the time it is known to a
potential actor to when it is discovered and xed by the operator. Using the
Windows OS schedule as an example, a vulnerability could be xed in
as little as 30 days after its discovery; the time could be longer or shorter
depending on a number of factors (the nature of the vulnerability, how
prevalent it is, and so forth). e greatest factor in determining a vulner-
ability’s lifetime is discovery. e longer it can remain undiscovered, the
longer an actor can exploit it.
Vulnerabilities are discovered through self-initiated examinations,
through notices from government or cybersecurity organizations (such
as the United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team or the
Symantec Corporation), or in response to an exploit. us vulnerabilities
suer from perishability (xed once discovered through its use with an
exploit) and obsolescence (xed once discovered by self-initiated exami-
nations or discovery by other organizations).
35
Exploits are “operations [or] intelligence collection capabilities
conducted . . . to gather data from target or adversary information
systems or networks.”
36
Essentially, the exploit is the code, worm, virus, or
Trojan horse that is inserted via the vulnerability to do damage, collect
information, or complete another operation. Perhaps the most famous
example of this is the Stuxnet worm, which was inserted into the Iranian
nuclear material enrichment facility and caused many of the centrifuges
to spin out of control.
37
Similarly to vulnerabilities, exploits also suer from perishability and
obsolescence; once they are used, the operator can develop a patch that
can render the exploit ineective (although this is less eective than
patching the vulnerability). For example, once Stuxnet was discovered,
the author of the targeted devices’ OS developed a patch that rendered
the code useless.
38
Additionally, certain exploits can be rendered ineec-
tive if they are sophisticated, only becoming active once specic condi-
Overcoming the Cyber Weapons Paradox
S S Q ♦ W 2017 97
tions exist. For example, Stuxnet depended on the specic conditions to
exist (a certain version of the OS, a certain type of logic controller, and
a certain type of centrifuge).
39
is was a positive thing, since it limited
the impact it would have on other computers if it propagated outside of
the nuclear facility. However, the negative of this was that, if any of these
conditions changed, Stuxnet would have been rendered useless.
Reusability and Forensic Data
Another attribute of an exploit that can lead to problems is that, once
discovered, exploits can be replicated and forensically studied. Once the
“code” is out in the world, nothing can be done to erase or destroy it.
is leads to two potential problems. First, any discovered exploit could
be studied, modied, and then used again, potentially against the creator.
For example, Stuxnet was a very sophisticated exploit with thousands
of lines of code.
40
Once discovered, Stuxnet was widely distributed
throughout the internet, allowing many to study its tactics and its ability
to avoid detection.
41
It has since been replicated hundreds of times, pos-
sibly serving as the foundation for many new cyber weapons.
42
Granted,
many of these variants would likely be ineective given the widespread
knowledge of Stuxnet’s code, but many devices may remain vulnerable
to its methods. In any event, cyber operators must be cognizant of the
reusability of cyber exploits before employing certain code within an at-
tributed cyber weapon.
Second, any discovered exploit can be studied and compared to other
exploits for similarities in methods and organization. is may lead to
the conclusion that two exploits came from the same organization. For
example, Stuxnet was studied extensively by many organizations around
the world. Within the code, information was discovered that allegedly
tied Stuxnet to certain countries, although no one has ocially con-
rmed these suspicions.
43
is particular attribute of cyber weapons can be disastrous for cyber
operations—each discovered cyber weapon gives the target forensic evi-
dence that can expose other (more covert) operations. Consequently,
any misuse of these vulnerabilities and exploits could result in either the
DOD or intelligence community (IC) compromising the eectiveness
of the other. For example, if the DOD deployed a cyber weapon that
exploited a vulnerability that the IC was using for intelligence gathering,
the vulnerability could be xed quickly by the target, and the IC’s operation
Timothy M. Goines
98 S S Q ♦ W 2017
would be degraded. Similarly, if the IC developed an exploit and it was
discovered, the target could adapt its system to be immune from future
exploits of this nature. In another scenario, the DOD could develop an
exploit and deploy it, and once discovered, it could bear similarities to
other covert operations by the IC. is could link the two operations
and expose covert operations to the international community.
As the DOD starts to employ attributable cyber weapons, it is easy to
imagine how its operations could conict with those of the intelligence
community, rendering one or both of the missions ineective. Fortu-
nately, it does not appear that this paradox as played out has resulted
in any disastrous eects thus far. However, as loud cyber weapons are
employed more frequently, the potential for these operations to conict
increases. us, the United States should anticipate the potential prob-
lems and be proactive in overcoming the paradox.
Perishability and obsolescence make deployment of cyber weapons
unlike that of other weapons in the US arsenal. Once a vulnerability
or exploit is used, future use is foreclosed; however, waiting too long to
use a vulnerability or exploit provides the target time and opportunity
to discover the aws, also resulting in the foreclosure of its future use.
us, oensive cyber operations must strike a balance between waiting
for the best opportunity to employ a particular weapon and not waiting
too long such that the exploit or vulnerability is rendered obsolete.
44
e problem this paradox poses is made more signicant by the fact
that the number of vulnerabilities and exploits are somewhat limited.
While these are theoretically unlimited (a computer system is manmade,
so it will likely never be without a aw, and there are always creative ways
to code an exploit), the discovery of vulnerabilities and development of
exploits is increasingly expensive. Accordingly, available vulnerabilities
and exploits must be closely guarded and cautiously used.
e large majority of cyber operations conducted by the United States
are classied. erefore, the following discussion is limited to the un-
classied information available. As detailed below, however, this does
not detract from the conclusions. Instead, the covert nature of US cyber
operations hits on a major problem for cyber deterrence: the inability to
communicate the deterrence policy. is inability prevents the United States
from communicating its system of rules, signaling, and commitment—all
necessary for eective deterrence.
Overcoming the Cyber Weapons Paradox
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Lack of a Clear System of Rules
While current US deterrence policy does specically identify certain
protected targets, it leaves ample ambiguity surrounding potentially
protected targets.
45
While this may appear to allow leeway as technology
changes and the protected targets shift, it works both ways. e poten-
tial actors are unclear as to what targets will generate a response and
what targets will not. What qualies as the “DOD network” and “DOD
data”? Since the majority of DOD trac ows over civilian networks,
where does the United States draw the line between the civilian network
and the DOD network?
46
Perhaps in an eort to clear up some of this confusion, in July 2016,
President Obama approved a Presidential Policy Directive (PPD), which
directly addressed the federal government’s classication and response to
cyber acts.
47
Along with this PPD, the president also released a Cyber
Incident Severity Schema (CISS), which identied “targets” and sought
to establish a framework through which the severity of cyber incidents
would be classied.
48
Identied targets include critical infrastructure,
national security, public health, civil liberties, and the lives of US per-
sons. Unfortunately, the CISS did little to clear up the confusion. What
qualies as an act targeting US national security, critical infrastructure,
or civil liberties? If it is unclear to those who execute the PPD, it is de-
nitely unclear to potential foreign actors who lack familiarity with US
culture and internal operations.
While in certain categories of deterrence ambiguity can be a benet, this
is not necessarily the case in cyber operations. For example, in nuclear
deterrence, being unclear as to what targets would provoke a retaliatory
strike has been benecial. A nuclear strike is on the highest end of the
escalation ladder, so the prospective response is extreme. A potential ad-
versary would not want to chance a debilitating retaliatory strike to see
whether the United States would respond. Instead, the adversary would
avoid any action that may provoke a response. In cyber operations, this
relationship is reversed: cyber operations are on the lower end of the es-
calation ladder, so a prospective response would also be low. Given this
scenario, adversaries are more willing to “poke and prod” US networks
to determine what they can do and what provokes a US response; the
worst response is still very low on the escalation ladder. us, ambiguity
in what would provoke a response ostensibly serves to tempt adversaries to
probe US networks and see where the United States will draw the line.
Timothy M. Goines
100 S S Q ♦ W 2017
e more clearly the United States denes what will generate a response
and draw the line proactively, the less likely an adversary will be tempted
to test the waters. Until the United States develops a comprehensive system
of rules, the confusion that results only reduces the eectiveness of the
current deterrence policy.
Also, the current DOD policy completely ignores civilian targets and
civilian infrastructure. e CISS attempts to include some civilian as-
pects, but they are framed in vague generalizations. While the reluctance
to incorporate specic civilian targets under the umbrella of already
overworked DOD cyber operators is understandable, their exclusion is
noteworthy. If anything, the absence of specic civilian targets creates
confusion over what targets would generate a response and what targets
would not.
Inability to Signal
Signaling is the method by which deterring states communicate their
intent to defend certain targets or areas.
49
In conventional operations,
the United States communicates its intent to defend a particular target
and expresses a commitment to the defense with a show of force, lend-
ing credibility to the threat. However, with the covert nature of cyber
operations, the United States is unable to signal potential actors. Con-
sequently, the United States does not eectively communicate which
targets it is committed to defend and the credibility of its potential
response is not conrmed, at least not in any meaningful way. Further-
more, even if adversaries suspect certain capabilities and assume that a
target is one that the United States will defend, they do not know what
actions will result in a US response.
Unacknowledged Responses
Moreover, the covert nature of operations prevents eective commu-
nication after an oensive cyber act. Even if the United States responds
with an eective cyber operation, the target of the response may not dis-
cover the response and, if discovered, may never know that the United
States was the responsible party. is is another area where cyber
deterrence contrasts signicantly with nuclear deterrence. In nuclear
deterrence, not only would a response be easily recognizable (e.g., a
launched missile), but the source of the response would also be easily
identiable.
Overcoming the Cyber Weapons Paradox
S S Q ♦ W 2017 101
However, in cyber operations, there is considerable ambiguity, and
the ambiguity actually hurts the eectiveness of deterrence. Many
adversaries may suspect the United States could and would respond,
but they may not be able to conrm the response or the source. is can
be a lost opportunity, where an adversary is left with the perception that
he “got away with it.” at perception can render a deterrence policy
wholly ineective.
To be fair, there are certainly scenarios where the United States may
prefer ambiguity or to mask the source of the operation. For example,
US operators may desire to monitor the actor’s activities for intelligence-
gathering purposes or to prevent conrmation of the source of the response.
However, it must be acknowledged that these types of operations have little
to no deterrent eect; if an actor does not know of the monitoring or the
source of the response, it is very unlikely to impact his decision-making
calculus—the primary goal of deterrence.
Another side eect of this ambiguity is that it puts too much power
into the hands of potential adversaries. As an adversary “pokes and
prods” US networks and as the United States seemingly ignores those
actions, the adversary continues to push the boundary. If the United
States has not clearly articulated its system of rules (and communicated
them), this can actually allow the adversary to dene the threshold for a
response. In other words, until the United States draws a line in the sand,
the adversary is empowered to do so—to the detriment of US interests.
Overcoming the Cyber Weapons Paradox
Overcoming the cyber weapons paradox means balancing a number
of factors relating to cyber operations and national security. Any process
or system employed to overcome the paradox must be empowered to
work within the existing national deterrence framework in two ways.
First, it will necessarily be a smaller piece of a larger deterrence policy
that meets the characteristics of deterrence: rules, signals, commitment,
and credibility. Obviously, as framed here, the paradox specically
addresses oensive cyber operations with the advent of attribution,
which is a narrow issue in relation to a national deterrence policy. While
this article does not specically address the larger deterrence policy, it
recognizes the need that any proposed solution must work within it.
Determining when to employ one of the many dierent options should
be the main responsibility of the larger deterrence policy, which high-
Timothy M. Goines
102 S S Q ♦ W 2017
lights the need for a whole-of-government approach in that component
as well. But, more specically for the purposes of this article, any process
or system must funnel its work product into the larger deterrence policy
to inform it of the potential oensive cyber responses available for each
situation. Additionally, there must be a nal authority to make the deci-
sion on what response to employ in every scenario. is decision maker
is critical for oensive cyber weapons, where it is important to have a
single authority deciding which weapons to employ for which purpose.
Channeling this decision to a single authority creates a cooperative en-
vironment and avoids the potential for multiple agencies employing the
same cyber weapon for two dierent purposes.
Second, the process or system must be given the necessary authority and
scope to manage oensive cyber operations in a manner that maximizes
their eectiveness. is authority must include the authority over US
government organizations that possess cyber capabilities or authorities (IC,
DOD, DOJ, DOS, and DHS). In other words, the process or system
must have the authority to gather the various vulnerabilities and exploits
across all relevant organizations and set the rules for their employment,
by which these organizations must abide. is authority should be dis-
tinguished from the decision maker having the power to authorize the
employment of an oensive cyber weapon, which is not a prerequisite
for overcoming the paradox. Rather, the process or system is only re-
quired to consult with US government organizations regarding oensive
cyber weapons, consolidate these weapons in a unied database, and set
binding rules and priorities for their employment. Without this authority,
the prioritization serves as guidance, which can seemingly be ignored
and produce the very paradox it is meant to prevent. e process must
also recognize time is a signicant factor in cyber operations where some
vulnerabilities only last 30 days. erefore, overcoming the paradox re-
quires a process or system that accounts for time, using a streamlined
process that minimizes the time from discovery of the vulnerability or
exploit to its employment.
Proposed Interagency Working Groups
e approach to overcome the paradox requires establishing two inter-
agency working groups.
50
e rst will be the cyber interagency working
group (CIWG) comprising the government agencies with cyber capabil-
ities. Membership of the group would include all government agencies
Overcoming the Cyber Weapons Paradox
S S Q ♦ W 2017 103
with cyber capabilities, both oensive and defensive; this membership
will ensure all past, present, and future operations are considered. is
interagency working group will have the mission to consolidate all the
known vulnerabilities and exploits into a unied list and set rules and
priorities for their employment. It will also have the authority to require
compliance with the rules and priorities they determine.
Given the disparate nature of the missions of the organizations in the
CIWG, a lead agency should be appointed to ensure that progress is
made at a sucient rate. USCYBERCOM is currently delegated respon-
sibility for planning and conducting cyber operations for the DOD.
51
Due to the signicant role it plays in US cyber operations, the lead
agency for the CIWG should be USCYBERCOM.
It should be noted that private technical (tech) companies are not in-
cluded as members of the CIWG. While having private tech companies
participate in the consolidation and prioritization process would appear
to be an advantage due to their technical capabilities, their participation
would create a conict of interest. Private companies aspire to create
software that is secure from potential penetration by hackers and other
governments. In addition, they currently sell their software worldwide,
to allies and adversaries. By disclosing the known vulnerabilities in their
software and the potential exploits to these civilian tech companies, we
would create a potential conict of interest, whereby these companies
would be tempted, if not obligated by their shareholders, to nd and x
the vulnerabilities as soon as possible.
e concern was recently highlighted by the president of Microsoft,
Brad Smith, who declared that civilian tech companies should proclaim
their neutrality in the cyberspace battleeld.
52
A neutral party would
clearly not endeavor to assist any government in nding vulnerabili-
ties and developing exploits. Furthermore, as Smith added, private tech
companies must be committed to “100% defense and zero percent of-
fense.”
53
erefore, it appears that at least some tech companies recog-
nize this conict of interest and do not wish to participate in planning
or executing oensive operations.
To ensure the eectiveness of larger deterrence policy, the second inter-
agency working group will be the deterrence interagency working group
(DIWG). is deterrence working group will serve as a component of
the NSC, be responsible for assembling the various agencies that can
impose costs on cyber adversaries, and advise the NSC on the courses
Timothy M. Goines
104 S S Q ♦ W 2017
of action that maximize the deterrent eect. e CIWG would be sub-
ordinate to the DIWG. A representative from the cyber working group
would participate in discussions of cyber policy and serve as the subject-
matter expert within the DIWG.
e placement of the sub-working group under the DIWG may ap-
pear to limit its deconiction responsibilities and usefulness to deter-
rence purposes only; however, loud cyber weapons have utility outside
of deterrence eects. erefore, while the sub-working group is placed
under the DIWG, it will provide deconiction services for all cyber op-
erations, including covert cyber operations. Given that the majority of
loud cyber operations will be for deterrence purposes, the placement
under the DIWG provides the most logical supervisory structure.
Once again, given the disparate nature of the missions of DIWG
members, a lead agency should be appointed. e DHS is an executive
agency with the mission to “ensure a homeland that is safe, secure, and
resilient against terrorism and other hazards.”
54
is mission specically
includes preventing terrorism, enhancing security, and securing cyber-
space.
55
Considering the eects that cyber acts have on the United States
and its citizens, the lead agency for this larger working group should be
DHS. However, the nal authority for any action taken would be the NSC.
Practically, the process would begin with the sub-working group,
which would be a standing committee, meeting regularly to discuss,
consolidate, and prioritize cyber vulnerabilities and exploits. As individual
vulnerabilities and exploits are employed, perish, or are rendered obso-
lete, the list would be updated to account for the changes. Given the
nature of cyber operations, this would likely be a continuous process. In
the event an act occurred, the proposed DIWG would determine what
response would provide the maximum deterrent eect, consulting the
representative of the cyber sub-working group for potential options. If
the best course of action is a cyber response, the representative from the
cyber sub-working group would reference the current list of priorities
and designate a vulnerability and exploit for employment. When evalu-
ated under the specic criteria outlined above, these working groups
oer a number of benets for overcoming the cyber weapons paradox.
Benets of the Integrated Working Groups
With the DIWG serving as an advisor to the NSC, it would be em-
powered to advise on the response that would result in the greatest
Overcoming the Cyber Weapons Paradox
S S Q ♦ W 2017 105
deterrence eect. As a component of the DIWG, the sub-working group
on cyber operations would similarly be empowered. It would have the
necessary authority and scope to manage oensive cyber operations in
a manner to maximize their eectiveness. Part of this empowerment
would come from the sub-working group’s position within the NSC and
the authority given by the president; the other part would come from
the fact that all the cyber-capable agencies would be members and part
of the prioritization process. So, not only would the agencies be required
to follow the prioritization scheme, but they would also be shareholders
of the process.
e DIWG and the sub-working group on cyber would both be made
up of agencies that have parts to play in the larger deterrence policy and
cyber capabilities. ese agencies include the DOD, DOJ, DOS, NSA,
and DHS—all agencies that can oer the NSC response options. For
the DIWG, these agencies can work together; sort through the various
options, consequences, and policy limitations; and select the most ap-
propriate response option to maximize deterrence. is process helps
provide comprehensive advice to the NSC and ensures all options are
appropriately considered.
A similar construct would exist for the sub-working group on cyber.
It would be made up of similar agencies, but the membership would
largely be the technical experts within these agencies. By working to-
gether to prioritize the various cyber vulnerabilities and exploits, the
working group ensures that each vulnerability or exploit is used dis-
criminately, ensuring that loud operations do not conict with current
or future operations or expose covert options. In addition, the prioritiza-
tion ensures that each cyber vulnerability and exploit is used in the most
eective way.
As proposed, the CIWG will be a standing committee, meeting regu-
larly to consolidate, prioritize, re-prioritize, develop, and designate cyber
weapons for employment. Given the membership and the organization
of the sub-working group, this proposal appears to add a layer (or layers)
of bureaucracy, which can potentially lead to delay. However, as pro-
posed, this sub-group employs two mechanisms to avoid delay. First,
it appoints a lead agency, USCYBERCOM, to consolidate and priori-
tize the process. is gives the NSC and the larger DIWG a designated
agency to assign duties and dene timelines, ensuring the process is ac-
complished in a timely manner.
Timothy M. Goines
106 S S Q ♦ W 2017
Second, instead of an ad hoc arrangement, the CIWG meets well
before a cyber act occurs and continually prioritizes available cyber re-
sponses. Once a malicious cyber act occurs, the prioritized list allows the
DIWG to review and select a cyber response in a timely manner. is
greatly reduces the likelihood that a vulnerability or exploit will be kept
past the window of usability. Also, by speeding up the timeline between
approval and execution, the US signals “this action and others like it will
not be tolerated.”
e nal authority for the employment of all cyber weapons would
be the NSC. Positioning the DIWG as a component of the NSC and
utilizing a whole-of-government approach alleviates some of signicant
strain on the nal authority to account for the numerous variables within
foreign relations. Instead of relying on the nal authority to consider
the numerous factors at play, this process allows the nal authority to
consult with the DIWG, consider the guidance, and make the nal call.
Drawbacks and Limitations
While the interagency process provides for an improved practice,
certain drawbacks exist. For example, anytime a number of dierent
agencies with disparate missions and unique cultures attempt to work
together, the likelihood of disagreement is high, which can introduce
deadlock and delay. Additionally, there will be an initial period when the
member agencies adjust to the procedure and the proposed hierarchy.
However, the goal of the proposed process is not to design cyber opera-
tions by committee; rather, the goal is to foster a collaborative environ-
ment for all agencies to have a voice in the selection and employment
of oensive cyber operations. Unfortunately, this requires the various
agencies to buy in to the process and cede some of their power and in-
dependence. erefore, the proposed process may suer from an initial
lack of cooperation and collaboration.
Another limitation with the proposed interagency process is that it
exposes US cyber operations to more vulnerabilities—specically, human
vulnerabilities. ose who have access to the system with certain privi-
leges or those who know of US cyber operations are vulnerable to
exploitation. For example, a malicious cyber actor can access informa-
tion on a particular person, which can be used as threats or other tactics
to gain intelligence about potential cyber operations. Under the current
Overcoming the Cyber Weapons Paradox
S S Q ♦ W 2017 107
process, the covert nature of cyber operations reduces the number of
people with access, thereby reducing the number of human vulnerabilities.
Another limitation is the vulnerabilities equities process (VEP), a
classied procedure by which the US government determines when
to publicly disclose discovered software and hardware vulnerabilities.
56
Some of the documents detailing the process were made public in 2010
in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.
57
In short, the
VEP has existed within the US government, in some form, since 2008;
it also went through a “reinvigoration” in 2014, when the administra-
tion made some changes to the process. e goal of the VEP is to iden-
tify vulnerabilities and then determine whether to share them with the
US public for their security or to retain the vulnerability for oensive
use. Unfortunately, the VEP has been a source of frustration for both
civil liberty groups arguing that the US government should disclose all
known vulnerabilities and government agencies arguing that the VEP
serves to frustrate cyber operations.
e interagency process proposed in this article is not a substitute for
the VEP. Instead, the interagency working group would work in concert
with the VEP. In this regard, the proposed interagency process diers
from the VEP in two signicant ways. First, the VEP focuses on the dis-
closure or retention of vulnerabilities. On the contrary, the interagency
working group does not consider the disclosure of vulnerabilities but
rather the most eective use of vulnerabilities (regardless of the decision
of the VEP) and exploits. Additionally, the VEP’s goal is the privacy of
the US public and the security of its devices and network, whereas the
proposed interagency working group is focused on criminals and US
adversaries.
It is possible that employment of loud cyber weapons can and will
result in disclosure of vulnerabilities. erefore, it is critical that the
CIWG work with the VEP to ensure the exploited vulnerability has been
quietly and properly disclosed prior to its employment—particularly for
critical infrastructure and the defense industrial base.
Finally, the main criticism of the VEP has been the tension between
the strategic disadvantages of disclosure and the risks to security and
privacy due to retention. at same tension does not exist within the
interagency process. While the CIWG must consider the strategic dis-
advantages of disclosure, it would be less concerned with security and
privacy; any vulnerability will be shared prior to employment.
Timothy M. Goines
108 S S Q ♦ W 2017
Conclusion
is article touches on but does not discuss at length the various other
concerns raised by loud oensive cyber weapons. Opportunities exist for
further research in this area on questions such as: What are the potential
consequences? What are their likely responses? What is the threshold for
potential responses? Is the United States willing to accept these potential
responses? ese concerns are signicant and would benet from more
consideration. In addition, although the proposed solution discusses a
framework for developing and selecting oensive cyber operations, it
does not discuss the specic methods and means to consider when im-
plementing this framework; further research is needed regarding specic
cyber adversaries and how best to deter them. For example, what are
the best cyber techniques to deter terrorist organizations, cyber armies,
and cyber criminals? How do these techniques dier from state actors?
Regardless, the proposal here represents a viable solution to the cyber
weapons paradox. In short, this process ensures the United States can
employ oensive cyber weapons to most eectively achieve maximum
deterrent eect without foreclosing the US ability to conduct clandestine
oensive cyber operations.
Notes
1. Commission on Cybersecurity for the 44th Presidency, Securing Cyberspace for the 44th
Presidency (Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies, 2008), 11–13.
2. Ibid.
3. For the purposes of this article, a cyber operation is considered to have two necessary
pieces: a “vulnerability,” which is a aw in the target system’s security, and an “exploit,” which is
the software (or code) that uses a vulnerability. Both vulnerabilities and exploits are perishable
and rendered obsolete over time. Perishability denes the characteristic of a cyber weapon when
it is no longer eective after being used due to the identication and subsequent elimination of
the vulnerability or exploit. Obsolescence refers to a cyber weapon becoming ineective because
time has aorded the opportunity to identify (and subsequently eliminate) the vulnerability.
ese two characteristics of cyber weapons are unique among the US arsenal since any discovered
use of a cyber weapon can foreclose the ability to use it again.
4. Alexander L. George and Richard Smoke, Deterrence in American Foreign Policy: eory
and Practice (New York: Columbia University Press, 1974), 60.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid., 1.
7. Ibid., 48.
8. Ibid., 60.
9. Ibid.
Overcoming the Cyber Weapons Paradox
S S Q ♦ W 2017 109
10. Ibid.
11. Ibid.
12. Ibid.
13. Ibid., 64.
14. Ibid., 60.
15. Ibid., 93.
16. Department of Defense (DOD), Deterrence Ops Joint Operating Concept, Version 2.0
(Washington, DC: Oce of the Secretary of Defense, December 2006), http://www.dtic.mil
/doctrine/concepts/joint_concepts/joc_deterrence.pdf.
17. DOD, Department of Defense Cyber Strategy (Washington, DC: Oce of the Secretary
of Defense, April 2015).
18. DOD, Deterrence Ops, 5.
19. Ibid. Presented another way, an adversary may consider the relative benets and costs
of action versus restraint.
20. While other methods for denying benets are available outside of the cyber domain
(i.e., refusing to relent to an adversary’s demands), they are not the primary focus of this article.
21. Matthew J. Sklerov, “Solving the Dilemma of State Responses to Cyberattacks: A Justica-
tion for the Use of Active Defenses against States Who Neglect eir Duty to Prevent,” Military
Law Review 201 (Fall 2009): 1–85, https://www.jagcnet.army.mil/DOCLIBS/MILITARYLAW
REVIEW.NSF/20a66345129fe3d885256e5b00571830/d471dd1e07eb949d85257672004463bc
?OpenDocument.
22. DOD, Cyber Strategy, 11.
23. Ellen Nakashima and Steven Mufson, “e U.S. and China Agree not to Conduct
Economic Espionage in Cyberspace,” Washington Post, 25 September 2015, https://www
.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/the-us-and-china-agree-not-to-conduct-economic
-espionage-in-cyberspace/2015/09/25/1c03f4b8-63a2-11e5-8e9e-dce8a2a2a679_story
.html?utm_term=.a31d532717a5.
24. Joseph Menn and Jim Finkle, “Chinese Economic Cyber-Espionage Plummets in U.S.:
Experts,” Reuters, 21 June 2016, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-cyber-spying-china/chinese
-economic-cyber-espionage-plummets-in-u-s-experts-idUSKCN0Z700D; and Michael A. Vatis,
Proceedings of a Workshop on Deterring Cyberattacks: Informing Strategies and Developing Options for
U.S. Policy (Washington, DC: e National Academies Press, 2010), 207–24, https://www.nap
.edu/read/12997/chapter/14.
25. DOD, Deterrence Ops, 11.
26. Ibid., 44.
27. Martin C. Libicki, Cyberdeterrence and Cyberwar (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2009), 75.
28. Joint Publication (JP) 3-12(R), Cyberspace Operations (Washington, DC: Joint Chiefs
of Sta, 5 February 2013), http://www.dtic.mil/doctrine/new_pubs/jp3_12R.pdf.
29. Ibid., II-7.
30. Ibid., II-7–8.
31. While other agencies may have cyber capabilities, only the DOD, as the military cyber
force, would have the role of employing oensive cyber operations.
32. Committee on National Security Systems Instruction (CNSSI) 4009, “Committee on
National Security Systems Glossary,” 6 April 2015, 131, https://www.cnss.gov/CNSS/openDoc
.cfm?LlSjfKedpJ/cVMi+7zozig==.
33. PC Tools, “What Is a Zero-Day Vulnerability?” PC Tools by Symantec, accessed 17
February 2017, http://www.pctools.com/security-news/zero-day-vulnerability/.
Timothy M. Goines
110 S S Q ♦ W 2017
34. Microsoft Security Tech Center, “Microsoft Security Bulletins,” Microsoft.com, accessed
17 February 2017, https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/security/bulletins.aspx.
35. Christopher A. Bartos, “Cyber Weapons Are Not Created Equal,” Proceedings 142 (June
2016), https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2016-06/cyber-weapons-are-not-created-equal.
36. CNSSI 4009, “Glossary,” 25.
37. Kim Zetter, “An Unprecedented Look at Stuxnet, the World’s First Digital Weapon,”
Wired, 3 November 2014, https://www.wired.com/2014/11/countdown-to-zero-day-stuxnet/.
38. Ibid.
39. Ibid.
40. Ibid.
41. Ibid.
42. Ibid.
43. Ibid.
44. Robert Axelrod and Rumen Iliev, “Timing of Cyber Conict,” Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 111, no. 4 (January 2014): 1298–1303, http://
doi.org/f5q64n.
45. DOD, Cyber Strategy.
46. Eric Talbot Jensen, “Cyber Deterrence,” Emory International Law Review 26, no. 2 (2012):
773–824, http://law.emory.edu/eilr/_documents/volumes/26/2/symposium/jensen.pdf.
47. e White House, Fact Sheet: Presidential Policy Directive on United States Cyber Incident
Coordination (Washington, DC: Oce of the Press Secretary, 26 July 2016), https://obamawhite
house.archives.gov/the-press-oce/2016/07/26/presidential-policy-directive-united-states-cyber
-incident.
48. Ibid.
49. George and Smoke, Deterrence in American Foreign Policy, 60.
50. It should be noted that this proposal is not without a precedent. In 2015, the DOD es-
tablished the Joint Interagency Combined Space Operations Center (JICSpOC), which assembles
representatives from the DOD, the intelligence community, and other agencies in the national
security space enterprise. e JICSpOC serves as an example for implementation of the inter-
agency process. See “New Joint Interagency Combined Space Operations Center to Be Estab-
lished,” news release, DOD, 11 September 2015, https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Releases
/News-Release-View/Article/616969/new-joint-interagency-combined-space-operations-center
-to-be-established/. Also see Colin Clark, “JICSPOC Morphs to ‘National Space Defense Center’;
What It Means,” Breaking Defense, 4 April 2017, http://breakingdefense.com/2017/04/jicspoc
-morphs-to-national-space-defense-center-what-it-means/.
51. United States Strategic Command (USSTRATCOM), accessed 17 February 2017,
http://www.stratcom.mil/Media/Factsheets/Factsheet-View/Article/960492/us-cyber-com
mand-uscybercom/; and “About,” USSTRATCOM, accessed 17 February 2017, http://www
.stratcom.mil/About/.
52. Elizabeth Weise, “Microsoft Calls for ‘Digital Geneva Convention,’ ” USA Today, 14
February 2017, http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/news/2017/02/14/microsoft-brad-smith
-digital-geneva-convention/97883896/.
53. Ibid.
54. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), “Our Mission,” DHS, accessed 17 February
2017, https://www.dhs.gov/our-mission.
55. Ibid.
Overcoming the Cyber Weapons Paradox
S S Q ♦ W 2017 111
56. Dave Altel and Matt Talt, “Everything You Know about the Vulnerability Equities
Process Is Wrong,” Lawfare, 18 August 2016, https://www.lawfareblog.com/everything-you
-know-about-vulnerability-equities-process-wrong.
57. Ibid.
112 S S Q ♦ W 2017
Fighter Jets, Supercars,
and Complex Technology
Ian MacMillan
Abstract
e history of America’s joint ghter programs is one marred by cost
overruns, late deliveries, and cancellations. A neoliberal component of
American political culture provides rhetoric to argue these are symptoms
of public-sector management; furthermore, private-sector models oer
greater eciency standards. However, the public-private distinction is
largely hyperbole. Especially with complex technological projects, neither
sector is invulnerable to inated costs and schedule slippage. rough
a “Most Dierent Systems Design” method, this article compares the
Joint Strike Fighter program to Honda’s arduous journey to design a
second-generation Acura NSX supercar. As a “plausibility probe,” the
ndings in this article oer a starting point for further research examin-
ing public- and private-sector commonalities. ere are problems with
the F-35, but this should come as no surprise. Like modern supercars,
complex weapons are not designed and built overnight. With patience,
there can be a silver lining. Years of redesigns, cancellations, and more
redesigns can eventually lead to revolutionary new capabilities. Many
close to the Joint Strike Fighter agree that something special will emerge.
Although the impatience directed toward the JSF program is politically
eective, it is a poor basis for sound policy making. Given the strategic
imperativeness of the F-35, patience is essential. e nancial sacrice is
a modest trade-o necessary to maintain US airpower competitiveness.
✵ ✵ ✵ ✵ ✵
“It’s been a scandal and the cost overruns have been disgraceful.”
1
Heavily critical of the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) program’s expensive,
Ian MacMillan is a PhD candidate in strategic studies at the University of Calgary, Canada. His
primary research interests include defense procurement, international relations, and culturally based
analysis of government decision making. MacMillan’s background in political science is complemented
by his years as a media and policy analyst with Canada’s federal public service.
Fighter Jets, Supercars, and Complex Technology
S S Q ♦ W 2017 113
15-year development schedule, Sen. John McCain has led a chorus seek-
ing to eliminate the F-35’s program oce. In December 2016, accusing
the JSF program of being “out of control,” president-elect Donald Trump
Tweeted a Boeing alternative was being considered.
2
In January 2017,
the president suggested Boeing’s Super Hornet could be equipped with
stealth capabilities and replace the F-35.
3
Impatience with the JSF is
understandable, but forgoing the capabilities of the F-35 may harm
America’s national interest.
e situation is not unique. Specically, the history of America’s joint
ghter programs is one marred by cost overruns, late deliveries, and can-
cellations.
4
Condemnation of complex military programs like the JSF
reects a neoliberal political culture, critical of public spending in general.
5
Neoliberal proponents would argue JSF problems are symptomatic of
poor public-sector management. Moreover, private-sector models would
mitigate America’s chronic problem with defense procurement.
6
Flow-
ing from neoliberalism—an ideology with roots in American culture but
which primarily emerged in the 1980s—New Public Management was
envisioned as a system to “recongure the state along more cost-ecient
(and eective) lines.”
7
Henceforth, public spending habits were generally
characterized as wasteful, and they continue to be held in sharp contrast
to private-sector eciency. Prima facie, this characterization is satisfying.
It is easily understood and appeals to a critical mass of middle-class voters.
However, the historical record shows that private-sector projects can also
experience problems with delays and cancellations.
One example of a private-sector counterpart to the JSF is the Honda
Motor Company’s Acura NSX project. rough a comparative approach
known as the “Most Dierent Systems Design,” this article helps dem-
onstrate that both public and private sectors can experience setbacks
with complex technological projects.
8
e Honda case is appropriate be-
cause it is a private-sector company with multiple decades of success as
an automobile manufacturer, especially its revolutionary rst generation
NSX. In spite of being a skilled and experienced company, designing
an innovative and cutting-edge next-generation NSX led to schedule
delays, redesigns, cancellations, and more redesigns before any success.
ere are other examples of private-sector companies experiencing de-
sign problems. But, before extensively researching additional private-
sector cases, this “plausibility probe” acts as an eective method for
exploring the suitability of the hypothesis: private-sector companies like
Ian MacMillan
114 S S Q ♦ W 2017
Honda experience design setbacks.
9
e strength of neoliberal political
culture helps us forget that, especially with complex technology designs,
both public and private sectors can be burdened by ambitious goals and
ambitious delivery schedules.
To begin, this article will examine the main problem neoliberalism
poses, for the public sector and for the JSF more specically. To clarify
the outlook toward delayed public-sector projects, a short history of
neoliberalism in the US must be provided. e two case studies and
results will follow. Although the impatience directed at the JSF program
is politically eective, it is a poor basis for sound policy making. Given
the strategic imperative of the F-35, patience is essential.
e Problem of Neoliberalism in American Politics
In spite of considerable literature pertaining to American military
procurement, as well as how culture shapes military doctrine and in-
novation, yet to be addressed is the problem neoliberal politics poses for
military procurement in the United States.
10
e neoliberal proposition
is so classically American in logic and assertion, and comes up so fre-
quently, that it must be addressed to move on to a more factual and fully
analytic debate that can lead to better outcomes in the future.
e neoliberal tone in which the JSF program is criticized is not new
or particular to American military procurement. Neoliberal political
culture emerged several decades ago, henceforth providing rhetoric
designed to reduce government spending and shift remaining programs
toward private-sector type business practices.
11
Although there is a certain
noble quality in serving the national interest through ecient government
spending—especially in an era in which the American national debt has
reached a critical phase—the JSF criticism is a problem. It perpetuates
an oversimplied perspective that public-sector programming should
somehow meet a set of unrealistic eciency standards attained in the
private sector. As John A. Alic notes, a private-sector approach toward
military procurement began before President Ronald Reagan with Robert
McNamara’s attempt to enforce the use of business planning to sup-
port national security objectives. It was largely unsuccessful. Emulating
private-sector practices may work with routine contracts, but it fails to
eectively approach the complexity of major acquisition programs like
the JSF.
12
In the particular case of military technological production,
the private-sector practices lauded by neoliberal political culture do not
Fighter Jets, Supercars, and Complex Technology
S S Q ♦ W 2017 115
necessarily improve program eciency. Rather, they may serve to strain
further an industry already operating under challenging conditions.
13
Between 1960 and 2010, 27 studies on defense procurement in the
United States were completed. In 2011, Harvard professor J. Ronald
Fox reviewed these studies; he concluded major defense programs re-
quire more than 10 years to deliver less capability than planned, at two
to three times the initial cost. It could be argued that scheduling and
cost goals established, generally in the beginning stages of military tech-
nology programs, are overly ambitious.
14
Private-sector practices will
not necessarily alleviate the challenges posed by inventing complex mili-
tary technology. Delays are a common reality. However, the inveterate
quality of neoliberal politics in American political culture consigns
alternative perspectives to a position of anathema.
e distinction between public and private organizations is embedded
in the social fabric of American culture.
15
e country’s collective imagi-
nation is one characterized by self-reliance, entrepreneurship, and private
enterprise. Emphasizing a limited and accountable government from its
point of inception, the United States instilled Lockean classical liberal-
ism.
16
In an ironic twist, the continued operationalization of America’s
entrepreneurial spirit necessitated greater public institutional involve-
ment. In tandem with a creeping reliance on public services, stronger
federal control continued throughout the better part of the twentieth
century. Governmental involvement became a matter of course in both
domestic and international arenas.
e end of the Second World War gave rise to the welfare state,
strengthening the position of public-sector involvement in society.
rough a comprehensive tax system and a burgeoning bureaucracy, the
American government—and other western governments for that matter—
were able to ensure unprecedented economic development, employ-
ment, and social security. is creation of a “social domain” was a hedge
against the risks of an industrial economy, pooling collective responsibility
to ensure individual reimbursement. But during the late twentieth and
early twenty-rst centuries, socially oriented programs came under
attack for supposed inecient government spending.
17
As Donald Warwick
notes, “Critics claim that governmental organizations become the
master rather than the servant of the people, stie initiative, inculcate
fear, multiply reporting requirements, circumscribe action, waste time,
and deplete the federal treasury.”
18
ere was a growing concern that,
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116 S S Q ♦ W 2017
in addition to draining public resources, social programming interfered
with free market expansion, stied entrepreneurialism, and encouraged
dependency on the government at the cost of individual autonomy.
19
In step with economist Milton Friedman, the 1980s saw western leaders
such as Ronald Reagan and Margaret atcher endorse a neoliberal
governmental approach, one that downplayed the value of large, public-
sector projects.
20
Stated simply, the idea was that national economic
prosperity was linked to attaining smaller scal decits by decreasing
public-sector reliance through privatization, thus containing govern-
ment spending.
21
Self-reliance, entrepreneurship, and private enterprise
returned as the thematic lodestars of future prosperity. Reagan argued
against the idea that big business and big labor required big government.
22
Of course, total abolishment of public-sector responsibility never
occurred. But the idea that the public sector was inecient gained a
foothold. Stressing the utility of a private-sector management style,
neoliberal proponents argued a New Public Management system would
enable governments to achieve parsimony in resource use by, among
other things, the cutting of direct costs and the enhancement of labor
discipline via the resistance of union demands.
23
e one-dimensional
characterization of the private enterprise as the harbinger of scal e-
ciency generated a narrative still used to undermine public-sector spend-
ing. Programs falling behind schedule and accruing unanticipated costs
are characterized as a product of government mismanagement.
24
Some-
times these assessments are correct, but there are exceptions.
America’s Joint Strike Fighter Program
Speaking at an April 2016 Senate Armed Services Committee meeting,
Republican Sen. John McCain led a withering critique of the JSF pro-
gram. Indeed, the F-35 has been plagued by several notable develop-
ment problems, causing delivery delays since its inception in 2001.
25
However, it stands to reason that ghter-jet technology is complex, not
to mention short take-o and vertical landing (STOVL) as a necessary
component in the creation of a stealthy, multi-role ghter.
e JSF program emerged in the restrictive budgetary environment at
the end of the Cold War. Individual ghter programs were incongruent
with other political goals. Although the United States Navy (USN), the
United States Air Force (USAF) and the United States Marine Corps
(USMC) had diering aircraft objectives, scal frugality imposed a mar-
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S S Q ♦ W 2017 117
riage of convenience. Whereas the USMC wanted a STOVL enhanced
aircraft, the USAF desired stealth. e USN predominantly wanted
something with a robust airframe. e outcome of these disparate desires
was the Pentagon establishing the JSF program in March 1996 and is-
suing a request for proposal for a design prototype shortly thereafter.
26
In a winner-takes-all competition, Boeing and Lockheed Martin
were selected to construct the JSF prototypes and compete to build the
production aircraft. e initial deadline to submit their prototypes was
2000 so a winner could be selected in March 2001.
27
Problems designing and testing the STOVL component postponed
the submission of ight test data until July 2001. Delayed slightly by
the 9/11 attacks, Pentagon Acquisition Chief Pete Aldridge’s announce-
ment of the winner was made in October 2001.
28
Lockheed Martin was
granted a 126-month, $13 billion contract.
29
What emerged over the
course of a decade and a half was the F-35 family, composed of three
single-seat variants with unique and complex characteristics to match
the requirements of the USAF, USMC, and USN. Designed for the
USAF, the most basic variant is the F-35A. Because it operates from con-
ventional runways, it only requires conventional take-o and landing
capabilities. However, unlike the USMC and USN versions, the F-35A
was designed to carry an internally housed cannon to provide close air
support for ground troops. is also means it can hold less fuel.
30
e F-35B was designed for the Marines. In desperate need of a
Harrier replacement, the USMC required an aircraft capable of providing
STOVL so it could operate from austere, short-eld bases and a range
of air-capable ships operating near frontline combat zones. STOVL was
made possible through a Rolls Royce–patented, shaft-driven “LiftFan”
propulsion system and an engine that can swivel 90 degrees when in
STOVL mode. Including this LiftFan required the variant to have a smaller
internal weapon bay and even less internal fuel capacity than the F-35A.
31
e F-35C was designed to be the Navy’s rst ever fth-generation,
radar-evading stealth aircraft, capable of long-range missions and built
explicitly for aircraft carrier operations. It was also designed to be the
Navy’s rst-day-of-the-war strike ghter, capable of overcoming a variety
of threats (such as surface-to-air and air-to-air missiles), thereby opening
up the battleeld for non-stealth aircraft. To enhance survivability and
mission success, the F-35C combined stealth, advanced jamming, and
threat system destruction. is variant has a larger wingspan and more
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118 S S Q ♦ W 2017
robust landing gear than the other variants, making it suitable for catapult
launches and y-in arrestments. Its wingtips also fold to allow for more
room on the carrier’s deck. Accommodating nearly 20,000 pounds of
fuel internally, the F-35C has the greatest internal fuel capacity of the
three variants, giving it longer range than any other ghter in a combat
conguration. Like the F-35B, the F-35C uses probe and drogue refueling;
this allows the USN to operate its carriers a safe distance from the threat
while its ghters reach remote targets.
32
at the Pentagon’s JSF program constitutes an egregious mismanage-
ment of public money is a false assumption. A program of this magnitude—
a single airframe that operates across services and mission sets—is not
a simple undertaking, and it is well known that military technology
takes time to perfect. Furthermore, if the past is any indication of future
events, current problems (such as software deciencies, F-35B fuel tank
redesign, lightning strike vulnerability, ight control problems, helmet
display issues, component unreliability) are not insurmountable. When
Lockheed Martin was contracted to develop a stealth ghter, complet-
ing the task was not a foregone conclusion. As the makers of the F-117
Nighthawk and B-2 Spirit know all too well, stealth technology presents
a considerable challenge in aeronautical design. A problem faced early
on by the JSF program was designing an aircraft that could evade
radar, while carrying sucient payloads and fuel for mission prociency,
and still reach supersonic speed. Dierent from most previous ghters
(for example, F-14 Tomcat, F-16 Falcon, and F/A-18 Super Hornet), a
stealthy F-35 required a larger and heavier airframe, one capable of stor-
ing all necessary weapons and fuel internally. e entire F-35 had to be
scaled up to make room for a weapon bay able to carry a 5,000-pound
payload. Since carrying drop tanks was out of the question, the plane
had to include enough room for large internal fuel tanks. With a maxi-
mum takeo weight of 60,000 pounds, the F-35 is considerably heavier
than its non-stealthy predecessors.
33
To ensure the F-35 could both y at
a reasonable pace as well as deliver its payload, it was equipped with the
Pratt & Whitney F135 engine. With a maximum thrust of over 50,000
pounds, this engine became the most powerful ever installed in a ghter
aircraft as of 2010.
34
Developing this engine took many years, and success in its creation
was by no means guaranteed. For instance, the Pratt & Whitney F135-400
engine used for carrier-based operations faced issues with “pop stalls.”
35
A
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S S Q ♦ W 2017 119
pop stall is when an aircraft’s engine stops working as a result of hot gas
ingestion. USN aircraft carriers use something called a launch catapult
system to get aircraft airborne. e steam emitted from this system can
cause a pop stall. Since the F-35 was designed as a single-engine air-
craft, a pop stall created considerable risk as far as losing the aircraft and
even the pilot during takeo. To solve this, a risk-reduction team was
assembled to evaluate the pattern of steam during an aircraft launch.
Engineers from Lockheed Martin, Pratt & Whitney, General Electric,
and NAVAIR cooperated to test and reduce the risk for the F135 engine.
An additional problem occurred in June 2004 when the Pratt & Whitney
F135-600 engine used for the STOVL F-35B variant experienced an
“erosion problem” caused by the size of the restrictor plate that regu-
lates the ow of cooling air to certain parts of the engine. e plate was
undersized and was therefore not allowing enough cool air to reach the
second-stage vanes of the turbine section. A revised restrictor plate was
put in place, and the engine was permitted to rejoin testing.
36
In January 2016, the Pentagon’s Oce of the Director of Operational
Test and Evaluation (DOT&E) released its annual report for scal year
2015. Regarding the JSF program, the report listed a variety of prob-
lems and technical glitches and was largely viewed as a testimony to the
program’s supposed failure.
37
For instance, in 2011 it became clear that
Rockwell Collins—the company contracted to build the F-35’s Helmet
Mounted Display System—was experiencing technical setbacks. Prob-
lems with “jitter,” “alignment,” the ability to set “symbology intensity,”
“latency in imagery projections,” and performance of the night vision
camera convinced Pentagon ocials to hire BAE Systems to build a
back-up helmet. Two years later, improvements in the helmet led the
Pentagon to continue with Rockwell Collins. e DOT&E report noted
that following Generation III testing, developmental test pilots reported
signicant improvements in the helmet.
38
In spite of overall improvements, the Senate Armed Services Com-
mittee submitted a bill to disband the F-35 program oce after the
F-35 reaches full-rate of production in April 2019. Notwithstanding
President Trump’s Twittersphere campaign to drive down the cost of the
F-35, McCain’s bill was a dramatic move. Responsibility for follow-on
modernization of the three F-35 variants—estimated to cost more than
$8 billion for the rst block upgrade—would be taken from the Depart-
ment of Defense (DOD) and given to the Navy and Air Force, to be
Ian MacMillan
120 S S Q ♦ W 2017
treated as separate defense acquisition programs.
39
A summary of the
bill states, “Devolving this program to the services will help ensure the
proper alignment of responsibility and accountability the F-35 program
needs and has too often lacked. . . . Given the Department of Defense’s
poor track record on upgrade programs like this one, a separate program
will enable rigorous oversight by the Congress to protect taxpayers.”
40
As
one journalist argued, “e move is a shot across the Pentagon’s bow.”
41
John Alic argues the major lesson of the past half century is sensible
military acquisition begins with increased power of civilian ocials, not
increased inuence of the military services or even emulation of private
sector practices.
42
Discussing neoliberalism was a way for this article to bring a degree
of clarity to McCain’s and Trump’s reactions to JSF program delays.
Although neither are necessarily strictly neoliberal guided politicians,
their words and demeanour toward the JSF program echoed that brand
of ideology. Criticizing government programs for running over bud-
get is eective political maneuvering but not necessarily an approach
that translates into sound public policy. Shifting responsibility from the
DOD to the Air Force and Navy—or choosing the older Super Hornet
over the JSF—is more of a punishment than an optimal policy decision.
ere is no reason to believe the service branches will improve any as-
pect of a program that is more or less on track. And in spite of Boeing’s
2013 Advanced Super Hornet concept, which generated a 50 percent
improvement in stealth, the Super Hornet is still a fourth-generation
ghter—same axe head, new handle.
43
Although it is important to hold programs to account—and McCain
and Trump are likely doing a good job of that—there is a balance to
strike between demanding a return on an investment and showing
patience with an especially complicated piece of technology. It is not as
though program management acted irresponsibly with public money.
As evidenced by their testimony at the Senate Armed Services Committee,
the JSF management team—Frank Kendall, Lt Gen Christopher Bogdan,
and Dr. Michael Gilmore—publicly acknowledged production schedule
shortfalls and took steps to correct them. Impatience therefore demon-
strated a degree of myopic, short-term thinking. Despite the propensity
for setbacks when designing new technology, it is a necessary investment—a
factor the private sector is familiar with.
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Honda’s Acura NSX
In January 1984, Japan’s Honda Motor Company began research
to develop an underoor, midship-engine, rear-wheel drive sports car.
Generally characterized as a practically oriented, front-engine/front-wheel
drive, economical car company, Honda had returned to Formula One
(F-1) racing just one year earlier. According to Honda engineer Shigeru
Uehara, the company’s aspiration in building a sports car was to bridge
its mass production models with its F-1 cars. In addition, plans were
being made to launch an Acura Division at American Honda, and the
company needed a car that would serve as its agship. After ve years
in design and development, the Acura NSX was unveiled at the 81st
Chicago Auto Show in February 1989. With an elegant Pininfarina
exterior that Honda claims was inspired by the F-16 ghter jet, the NSX
was an instant success.
44
Many praised the car as revolutionary in that
it irreversibly changed the supercar world. According to Motor Trend
Channel’s Johnny Lieberman, the 1989 Ferrari 348 represented a low
point in Ferrari craftsmanship. Not only did the NSX perform better,
it cost much less, did not break, and was easier to drive on a daily basis.
“e NSX, in fact, blew people’s minds. e entire industry sat up and
took notice.”
45
A testament to the car’s true original quality, between 1990 and 2005,
only minor upgrades were made to keep the NSX popular. Unfortu-
nately, in that time, the NSX was surpassed by many of its competitors,
including a sedan by the Ford Motor Company: the 24-valve, double-
overhead cam, V-6 Taurus.
46
Honda returned to the drawing board and
in January 2007 unveiled the Acura Advanced Sports Car Concept.
Boasting a powerful, front-mounted 5.0-liter V-10 engine, many as-
sumed this to be the NSX successor. Later that year, Honda conrmed
these assumptions and stated a possible introduction date of 2010. But
the car was not well received.
47
Many did not like the exterior design,
and supercar purists felt a front-mounted engine on an all-wheel drive
car neglected Acura’s powerful NSX lineage. Honda executives decided
a second supercar concept would headline for Acura at the Tokyo auto
show in October 2007, and not a production NSX as promised.
48
In spite of making considerable advancements in a short period of
time, by December 2008, CEO Takeo Fukui announced Honda would
cancel the costly next-generation NSX program due to poor economic
conditions. A strong Japanese yen caused US sales to plummet, and
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122 S S Q ♦ W 2017
Fukui cited a 67 percent drop in operating prots. But by early 2011,
rumors of an NSX project revival were circulating. In April that year,
Honda’s president Takanobu Ito told Automotive News that an NSX
successor was being developed but that it would be considerably dierent
from previous designs. e dierence Ito was alluding to was the pairing
of Honda’s 3.5-liter V-6 gasoline engine with a series of electric motors,
making the car a hybrid.
49
is made the next generation NSX unique
in the 2011 supercar world. But by mid-2012, new problems emerged.
Needing to confront an era in which horsepower levels were increas-
ing, NSX project leader Ted Klaus changed the performance targets and
asked Honda’s Japanese research and development executives for per-
mission to add turbos. Permission was granted, but the problem Klaus
soon discovered was that it is dicult to cool turbos on a transversely
mounted V-6 engine. So Klaus scrapped the design again and started
over, this time mounting the engine longitudinally.
50
Honda nally unveiled its next generation NSX supercar at the North
American International Auto Show in 2015. Although it received mixed-
reviews, overall, the NSX was recognized as a complex masterpiece of
modern engineering. In addition to a twin-turbo V-6 augmented by
three electric motors for a total output of 573 horsepower, the NSX is
host to computer software that changes everything from the drive mode
to the electrohydraulic brakes. An additional piece of complex technology
is the rapid torque vectoring system. e basic objective with torque
vectoring is to enhance traction to improve high-speed handling by way
of a computer that controls each of the front wheels individually: one
can push forward while the other pushes back; they can both push forward;
or they can both push back. is allows the computer to steer the NSX
without the steering wheel moving.
51
Honda’s second generation NSX exemplies the commonality of risk
in developing new technology. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk anticipated the
possibility of his Falcon 9 rockets crashing in the multiple attempts to
execute mid-ocean landings on a robotic landing pad.
52
e company’s
fourth attempt in February 2016 ended in a fourth consecutive crash.
Quick to determine the problem, SpaceX followed that crash with three
successful landings in April and May 2016. Yet, problems persisted for
Musk’s ambitious plans.
53
Like the Falcon 9, the NSX required experi-
mentation. Sometimes experiments pay o. As with the NSX, cancella-
tions and redesigns were part of the process required to get it right. In
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S S Q ♦ W 2017 123
executing their vision for a new and protable supercar, Honda execu-
tives had to be willing to scrap designs, wait for the right moment and
start over. is required patience.
Results and Conclusions
e idea that public sector–led projects are slow and expensive is not
incorrect, though it is often overstated. e meaning we attribute to a
measurement is often the product of an exercise in comparison. ough
this comparison would benet from additional cases in both public-
and private-sector production, a plausibility probe works as an eective
starting point before additional research is undertaken. Especially with
new and complex technological projects, problems—regardless of sector—
should be expected. is is not to say problems should be accepted out-
of-hand. Just as a company’s shareholders are owed a return on their
investment, a nation’s citizens are owed ecient output in exchange for
their tax-dollars; one set of concerns is commercially oriented, the other
aects the national interest. e US government spends several trillion
dollars a year.
54
Although it is beyond the scope of this article to de-
velop a broader understanding of those expenses, a sizable portion of the
budget covers unanticipated costs in government programs. e mis-
take is concluding all unanticipated costs qualify as waste. Creating new
and innovative technology is complicated and is therefore riddled with
unforeseen consequences. It appears neither public- nor private-sector
projects are excused from this burden.
e JSF program was given approximately 10 years to deliver three
similar, but dierent, ghter jets; by 2016, the program was ve years
past its deadline. Each of the three variants had to have stealth capabili-
ties while satisfying a series of branch-specic requirements. Whereas the
F-35A had to make room for an internal cannon, the F-35C required
a larger wingspan, more robust landing gear, folding wingtips, and a
larger internal fuel tank. Even more problematic, the F-35B had to have
a STOVL capability. For 15 years, with only minor and mostly cosmetic
changes, Honda kept producing the same NSX model it designed in
the late 1980s. After 2005, it took an additional decade of cancellations
and redesigns to deliver a second-generation Acura NSX. In designing
and constructing the NSX, Honda was being squeezed by the pressure
of delivering another revolutionary supercar. Honda decided that a new
NSX not only had to look dierent from its Pininfarina predecessor,
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124 S S Q ♦ W 2017
but it also had to somehow look as elegant while providing the complex
computerized luxuries drivers were becoming accustomed to.
But the primary complication shared by both the JSF program and
the Acura NSX project was designing technically sophisticated equipment
capable of reaching the speeds required to remain competitive in their
relative spheres. Designed to be a stealth ghter, the JSF required all
components (e.g. gas tanks and munitions) to be carried internally. Honda’s
objective of designing a truly modern supercar required including a
variety of electronic luxuries and computer systems (e.g. dynamic mode
selector, computerized electrohydraulic brakes, and torque vectoring).
Whereas the F-35’s airframe had to be scaled up to carry its compo-
nents internally, the NSX required signicantly more horsepower than
its predecessor in order to hold its new technical components. Both the
F-35 and NSX required larger, more powerful engines. Major setbacks
in the delivery schedule were the result of complications in designing and
accommodating their respective engines.
Honda was able to work through its design problems. ese took
considerable time and eort, but the result was an exceptionally mod-
ern, yet fast and eective supercar. Likewise, technical glitches with the
F-35’s computerized systems continued to slow delivery. Problems with
the helmet system, for instance, drew attention to the project’s highly
innovative qualities, leading some to ask why the United States required
a ghter jet more complex than the F-16 or F/A-18. Although techni-
cal glitches caused delays, scathing vitriol proclaiming it a disgrace was
unnecessary.
At $400 billion for 2,457 aircraft, the program cost was almost twice
the initial estimate.
55
But focusing on the price tag of an essential piece
of military equipment distracts from the main issue, namely the F-35
is a vital component in the continuation of American military competi-
tiveness.
56
Generally, “a state with airpower supremacy is in a position
to dominate any location of its choosing by suppressing the naval and
land forces of the opposing side.”
57
e F-35 is an “engineering marvel”;
its stealth technology will greatly increase strike capacity and lethality,
thus providing the United States with continuing airpower competitive-
ness.
58
Specically, the F-35 will not only be necessary in deterring Rus-
sian and Chinese aggression, but also it will be crucial to the success of
overseas deployments. On the one hand, Russia, for instance, resumed
its long-range bomber patrols near North American airspace in 2007.
59
Fighter Jets, Supercars, and Complex Technology
S S Q ♦ W 2017 125
is concern has only been exacerbated by Russia’s construction of a
new long-range stealth bomber (the PAK-DA) in addition to resuming
production of the Tu-160 Blackjack supersonic strategic bomber.
60
On
the other hand, the proliferation of missile technology among irregular
forces is increasing the danger of overseas deployments. As there is no
compelling reason to believe the United States will altogether stop foreign
military action, stealth capabilities will be an essential ingredient in the
American airpower mix. In addition, the quantity and variety of Ameri-
can airpower will continue to be reduced, placing increased pressure on
the level of sophistication in its remaining arsenal.
61
ere have been technological problems, and these have cost the US
government considerably. is is the nature of inventing, designing, and
producing complex, revolutionary technology.
62
Like the F-16, the F-4
Phantom, and the V-22 Osprey, examples of aeronautical design prob-
lems are the rule and not the exception. Indeed, it is the cost of doing
business. But with these examples, we are also reminded that solutions
are possible. e F-35 is certainly no exception to that. Congressional
testimony from the JSF management team made clear the JSF program
is progressing. Experts are solving problems as they arise and meeting
evolving objectives, including demands for a lower “yaway” cost.
63
Americans, like Honda shareholders, deserve an honest account of
how and where their money is spent. They also deserve success-
ful returns. However, they are owed explanations of public spending
that account for what the government is trying to achieve on a wider
scale. On the surface, a budget-led acquisition approach appears sen-
sible. Applying it to government spending coincides with a neoliberal
political ideology that appeals to the millions of middle-class Ameri-
cans trying to run their households in the face of rising living costs and
stagnant wages. But the US government is not a household. It is the
most powerful, and by extension the most threatened, nation-state in the
system. In their article on the military’s responsibility to lead technologi-
cal development, Newt Gingrich and Ronald Weisbrook argue that to
prevent the eclipse of American military supremacy requires a recap-
turing of the “urgency and capability of past national mobilization ef-
forts.”
64
Although “supremacy” may not be attainable or even necessary,
US competitiveness is essential.
65
Remaining competitive requires the
modest degree of patience necessary to support and complete important
military technology programs. Just as late-nineteenth century economic
Ian MacMillan
126 S S Q ♦ W 2017
interests demanded a Mahanian three-link chain approach, twenty-rst
century security interests necessitate continual investment in sophisti-
cated military technology.
66
Contrary to neoliberal idealism, public-sector programs are not that
dierent from their private-sector counterparts. Especially when new
and innovative technologies are being designed, problems are often im-
minent. is is the cost of doing business. Honda looked carefully at
the future of supercar ingenuity, realized the past’s technology was going
to be replaced, and decided to reach ahead by engineering something
special. Succinctly stated by Seyth Miersma, executive editor at Motor1,
“Acura’s intricately driven NSX is a compelling preview of how sports
cars will exist in the years soon to come.”
67
e process of reaching
ahead was challenging for Honda—but a worthwhile investment. e
same can be said for the ongoing JSF program. Despite a number of
signicant problems, the US DOD has persevered to develop an air-
craft that will replace aging equipment, revolutionize the way Ameri-
can ghter pilots conduct air warfare, and rearm American airpower
capabilities in the emerging multi-polar system. Given the long-term
strategic implications of the F-35 family, schedule setbacks constitute
a modest sacrice that deserves patience. In his last speech addressing
national reunication following the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln said,
“We shall sooner have the fowl by hatching the egg than by smashing
it.”
68
Notes
1. Richard Lardner, “Senator Says Fighter Program Has Been Scandal and Tragedy,” As-
sociated Press, 26 April 2016, http://bigstory.ap.org/article/5f64228336014b158de3d8b351e
c728e/senator-says-ghter-program-has-been-scandal-and-tragedy.
2. Valerie Insinna, “Trump Makes the ‘Out Of Control’ F-35 His Latest Target,” Defense
News, 12 December 2016, http://www.defensenews.com/articles/trump-makes-the-out-of-control
-f-35-his-latest-target.
3. David Pugliese, “Super Hornet Could Face Some Tough Opposition in the Battle against
the F-35,” Ottawa Citizen, 5 April 2017, http://ottawacitizen.com/news/national/defence
-watch/super-hornet-could-face-some-tough-opposition-in-the-battle-against-the-f-35.
4. Mark A. Lorell, Michael Kennedy, Robert S. Leonard, Ken Munson, Shmuel Abramzon,
David L. An, and Robert A. Guey, Do Joint Fighter Programs Save Money? (Washington, DC:
Rand Corporation, 2013).
5. Robert A. Dahl, and Charles E. Lindblom, Politics, Economics and Welfare (New York: Harper
& Brothers, 1953); Anthony Downs, Inside Bureaucracy (Boston: Little, Brown, 1967); Richard
E. Boyatzis, e Competent Manager: A Model for Eective Performance (New York: Wiley, 1982);
Fighter Jets, Supercars, and Complex Technology
S S Q ♦ W 2017 127
Emanuel S. Savas, How to Shrink Government: Privatizing the Public Sector (Chatham, NJ:
Chatham House, 1982); Michael Keating, “Quo Vadis? Challenges of Public Administration,”
Australian Journal of Public Administration 48, no. 2 (June 1989): 123–31, http://doi.org/d7shtn;
omas I. Palley, “From Keynesianism to Neoliberalism: Shifting Paradigms in Economics,”
Foreign Policy in Focus (May 2004), http://fpif.org/from_keynesianism_to_neoliberalism
_shifting_paradigms_in_economics/; Jonathan D. Ostry, Prakash Loungani, and Davide Furceri,
“Neoliberalism: Oversold?,” Finance and Development 53 no. 2 (June 2016): 38–41, http://www
.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2016/06/pdf/ostry.pdf; and omas Volscho, “e Revenge of the
Capitalist Class: Crisis, the Legitimacy of Capitalism and the Restoration of Finance from the 1970s
to the Present,” Critical Sociology 43 no. 2 (2017): 249–66, http://doi.org/cdb6.
6. John A. Alic, “Managing US Defense Acquisition,” Enterprise & Society 14, no. 1
(March 2013): 30, http://www.jstor.org/stable/23701646. Alic does not specically mention
neoliberalism, but he does discuss the problem with the assumption private sector models
necessarily improve military procurement. He notes there could be an argument emulation
of private rms would be appropriate for “relatively straightforward administrative functions,
including the ve million or so routine contract actions that Department of Defense (DOD)
personnel execute each year, not for major acquisition programs.” Alic uses the JSF program
as an example of a major acquisition program.
7. Rhys Andrews and Stephen van de Walle, “New Public Management and Citizens’ Per-
ceptions of Local Service Eciency, Responsiveness, Equity and Eectiveness” (working paper,
Coordinating for Cohesion in the Public Sector of the Future [COCOPS], no. 7, June 2012),
http://www.cocops.eu/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/COCOPS_workingpaper_No7-.pdf.
8. Carsten Anckar, “On the Applicability of the Most Similar Systems Design and the Most
Dierent Systems Design in Comparative Research,” International Journal of Social Research
Methodology 11, no. 5 (December 2008): 389–401, http://doi.org/drws9g. Because the JSF pro-
gram and the Acura NSX project are dissimilar in many respects, this article falls under the inves-
tigative rubric of the Most Dierent Systems Design. is method can be used to compare cases
that, despite certain dissimilarities, possess the same dependent variable. e basic idea is to show
that cases with dierent structural characteristics can generate similar outcomes.
9. Alexander L. George and Andrew Bennett, Case Studies in eory Development in the
Social Sciences (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005); and Jack S. Levy, “Case Studies: Types,
Designs, and Logics of Inference,” Conict Management and Peace Science 25 (2008): 1–18,
http://doi.org/dd4wfx. George and Bennet dene a plausibility probe as a preliminary study
on a relatively untested theory to determine whether more intensive testing is warranted. e
theoretical purpose of this article is to show that both public- and private-sector technology projects
experience delays and setbacks, a factor neoliberal political culture neglects to acknowledge. A
plausibility probe is a way of developing this theory before approaching a multi-case analysis.
10. J. Ronald Fox, e Defense Management Challenge: Weapons Acquisition (Boston: Harvard
Business School Press, 1988); omas L. McNaugher, New Weapons, Old Politics: America’s
Military Procurement Muddle (Washington, DC: Brookings Institutions, 1989); Elizabeth
Kier, Imagining War: French and British Military Doctrine between the Wars (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1997); Terry Terri, “Innovate or Die: Organizational Culture
and the Origins of Maneuver Warfare in the United States Marine Corps,” Journal of Strategic
Studies 29, no. 3 (2006): 475–503, http://doi.org/c9xxns; Alic, “Managing US Defense
Acquisition”; Donald MacKenzie, Inventing Accuracy: A Historical Sociology of Nuclear Missile
Guidance (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1990); omas Hone, Norman Friedman, and Mark
Mandeles, American and British Aircraft Carrier Development, 1919-1941 (Annapolis, MD:
Naval Institute Press, 1999); and J. Ronald Fox, Defense Acquisition Reform, 1960-2009: An
Ian MacMillan
128 S S Q ♦ W 2017
Elusive Goal (Washington, DC: Center of Military History, United States Army, 2011). ere
is a considerable amount of literature examining American military procurement. As noted by
Harvard faculty member J. Ronald Fox, a sizable amount of it includes studies commissioned
by presidents, Congress, secretaries of defense, government agencies, studies and analyses
organizations, and universities. One such study in particular is Fox’s own Defense Management
Challenge, which deals with the roles of government personnel in procuring military equip-
ment, as well as various other aspects of the acquisition process, such as cost estimating. Other
American military procurement literature deals with the interplay of the various organizations
and players involved in procurement and suboptimal outcomes such as cost overruns, schedule
slippage, and contract cancellations. omas McNaugher identies the complex technical
interaction between a military interested in improved weapons systems, a political sector
focused on appeasing constituent interests, and a bureaucracy with procedural obsessions and
parochial budgetary concerns. Despite this and other literature describing the bureaucratic
political aspects of military procurement, the research dealing with American acquisitions has
not yet addressed the eects neoliberal political cultural has on acquisitions.
ere is of course, a more than sucient amount of literature examining the role culture
plays in shaping the military, both in terms of the doctrines they pursue as well as the weapons
acquired to pursue these doctrines. For example, Elizabeth Kier examines the role French and
British political values played in forming interwar defense policy. Budget choices of course
aected the doctrinal and military capabilities of the French and British forces, as well as what
type of weapons they could aord, which largely dictated what they could do. Terry Terri
argues that following the Vietnam War the US Marine Corps was forced to adapt its mystical
amphibious marine warfare culture by innovating towards a total mechanized force, empha-
sizing mobility and maneuver warfare.
John Alic notes there has been a modest number of works dealing with military technological
innovation. Donald MacKenzie’s book considers both technical and political-organizational
issues of the nuclear missile age. He tries to show that continued innovation in missile tech-
nology is a product of institutional structures, not a natural course of evolution. Take away
those structures, and nuclear missile innovation crumbles. Seeking to understand why the
Royal Navy and US Navy went in dierent and unique directions with regard to aircraft
carrier innovation, omas Hone, Norman Friedman, and Mark Mandeles examine the inter-
action between strategy, technological alternatives, and organizational politics. Alic’s 2013
article argues the business models used in major DOD investments in innovation, such as the
F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, are not necessarily compatible with major private-sector investment
models. Reform, Alic states, would begin with legislation further limiting the inuence of
individual services over weapons choice, augmented by greater civilian control.
Alic carries his argument into his review of Ronald Fox’s 2011 book on defense acquisition
reform in the US. In analyzing 27 studies on defense procurement in the United States, Fox
argues what the DOD requires is better trained defense acquisition managers, procient in the
complex and continuing negotiations between government departments and large industrial
rms—moreover, managers that emulate private sector practices. Based on his own extensive
research, Alic argues there is no evidence to suggest emulating private-sector management
practices would guarantee better organizational performance.
Alic reminds us that following World War II, as civilian control over military procurement
was slowly reasserted, elements of private-sector managerial practices followed close behind.
As secretary of defense, beginning in 1961, Robert McNamara instituted administrative pro-
cedures, along with the planning, programming, and budgeting system, that evoked prac-
tices widespread in private industry. In spite of best eorts, procurement schedules remained
Fighter Jets, Supercars, and Complex Technology
S S Q ♦ W 2017 129
lengthy, and budgets continued to grow to cover their costs. It is here where this article on the
JSF proceeds. e misconception that eciency is intrinsic to private-sector practice and that
if only the public sector could emulate such practice, programs would be delivered on time
and on budget, is reection of a neoliberal political culture. is article seeks to examine this
contention through the JSF and NSX cases.
11. Palley, “From Keynesianism to Neoliberalism.”
12. Alic, “Managing US Defense Acquisition,” 30.
13. Robert Perry, Giles K. Smith, Alvin J. Harman, and Susan Henrichsen, System Acquisi-
tion Strategies (Santa Monica, CA: United States Air Force Project Rand and Advanced Research
Projects Agency, June 1971): 39, http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/730921.pdf.
14. Fox, Defense Acquisition Reform.
15. Bruce Buchanan II, “Red-Tape and the Service Ethic: Some Unexpected Dierences
between Public and Private Managers,” Administration and Society 6 no. 4 (February 1975):
423–44, http://doi.org/ft3thf. Also see Elizabeth Kier, Imagining War: French and British Mili-
tary Doctrine between the Wars (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997), 28. Kier
denes culture as “a set of basic assumptions, values, norms, beliefs and formal knowledge that
shape collective understandings.”
16. Eva Brann, “A Reading of the Gettysburg Address,” in Abraham Lincoln, e Gettysburg
Address, and American Constitutionalism, ed. Leo Paul S. de Alvarez (Irving, TX: University of
Dallas Press, 1976), 15–53; Walter R. Mead, Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How
It Changed the World (New York: Alfred A. Knopf); and John Locke, Two Treatises of Government
(New York: Cambridge University Press, [1689] 1988). omas Jeerson, who composed the
original draft of the Declaration of Independence, borrowed from seventeenth-century English
political theorist John Locke. Locke’s Two Treatises of Government argued that although people in
the state of nature transferred some of their rights to a central authority in exchange for a stable
society, government not only requires the consent of the governed but also must be restricted to
a minimal role in society. Because individuals are rational and self-interested and therefore in the
best position to care for themselves, classical liberals like Locke argued for limited state power,
primarily ensuring the right to liberty and protection of property. Governments that failed in
these duties or acted tyrannically—as in the case of British Monarch George III toward the ir-
teen Colonies—had to be overthrown. is suspicious mindset exists to this day in the United
States, sometimes to the benet of the country, but not always.
17. Suzan Ilcan, “Privatizing Responsibility: Public Sector Reform under Neoliberal Govern-
ment,” Canadian Review of Sociology 46, no. 3 (August 2009): 207–34, http://doi.org/cw3f29.
18. Donald P. Warwick, A eory of Public Bureaucracy: Politics, Personality, and Organiza-
tion in the State Department (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1975), 3.
19. Ilcan, “Privatizing Responsibility,” 211.
20. omas Volscho, “e Revenge of the Capitalist Class: Crisis, the Legitimacy of Capital-
ism and the Restoration of Finance from the 1970s to Present,” Critical Sociology 43, no. 2 (2017):
18, http://doi.org/cdb6.
21. Ostry, Loungani, and Furceri, “Neoliberalism: Oversold?.” Also see Campbell Parker
Jones and Rene Martin ten Bos, “For Business Ethics” (New York: Routledge, 2005).
22. Volscho, “Revenge of the Capitalist Class,” 17; Gérard Duménil and Dominique Lévy,
e Crisis of Neoliberalism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011), 17; and John
A. Alic, Trillions for Military Technology: How the Pentagon Innovates and Why It Costs so Much
(New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2007), 2, 10, 50. Although Duménil and Lévy refer to Presi-
dent Ronald Reagan as one of the “emblematic gures” of neoliberalism, Alic points out Reagan
presided over a major defense buildup, even though the Cold War was coming to a close.
Ian MacMillan
130 S S Q ♦ W 2017
Cancelled by the Carter administration, the B1-bomber entered production when Reagan
took oce. Designed to outpace Soviet ghter technology, design work on the F-22 began in
the early years of Reagan’s presidency. By 1989, the defense budget had reached $300 billion,
a gure that was not increased until 2002. e irony is not lost. However, in politics, actions
do not always reect rhetoric. Sometimes circumstances change, and campaign promises get
ignored. But other times, rhetoric can catch on with voters, requiring a president to follow
through on a promise, even if it no longer makes sense to do so.
23. Christopher Hood, “A Public Management for All Seasons?,” Public Administration 69,
no. 1 (Spring 1991): 5, http://doi.org/bdwb.
24. See note 5.
25. Mia De Graaf and Mark Prigg, “John McCain Slams F-35 Striker Jet Project as “a
Scandal,’ ” Daily Mail Online, 27 April 2016, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3562189
/John-McCain-slams-F-35-striker-jet-project-scandal-disgraceful-aircraft-s-development
-stretches-15th-year-costing-Pentagon-nearly-400-BILLION.html.
26. Lorell, et al., Do Joint Fighter Programs Save Money?, 1. e US DOD has started
numerous joint tactical ghter programs since the 1960s. e conventional wisdom behind
these programs was that one common airframe could be used to support the needs of the
USAF, USN, and USMC, with reduced costs. Savings would be found by “eliminating duplicate
research, development, test, and evaluation (RDT&E) eorts and by realizing economies of
scale.” According to Lorell et al., this approach towards commonality and integration com-
plicates already sizable technical challenges leading to cost growth that could negate potential
savings. What these authors fail to acknowledge are the minor successes that emerged from
ambitious joint programs like the Tactical Fighter, Experimental (TFX), and the Air Combat
Fighter. In spite of a failure to achieve 100 percent commonality between a variety of service
aircrafts, the TFX produced the highly successful F-111A as well as the incredibly successful
A-10 from the close air support portion of the project. ese projects are meant to supply
American military needs, but they are also acknowledged to some degree as experimental. It
is well known ahead of time there will be problems. Acting astonished after schedule slippage
is asinine.
27. Bill Sweetman, Ultimate Fighter: Lockheed Martin F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (Saint Paul,
MN: Zenith Press, 2004), 22–47.
28. Ibid., 94. Interestingly, Pentagon acquisition chief Pete Aldridge’s announcement
stated the incorrect designation. e previous ghter in the US designation system was
Northrop’s YF-23A. e JSF should have therefore been the F-24. At the conference, a reporter
asked Aldridge about the designation. Not knowing the answer o-hand, Aldridge turned
to Program Director General Mike Hough. “Momentarily confused, Hough said ‘X-35.’ ”
Aldridge misheard him and stated the designation as F-35. Instead of the Pentagon admitting
a mistake, the JSF oce ocially requested F-35 under the Mission Design Series, on the
grounds that it was consistent with Aldridge’s statement.
29. Gerard Keijsper, Lockheed F-35 Joint Strike Fighter: Design and Development of the
International Aircraft (South Yorkshire, UK: Pen & Sword Aviation, 2007), 34.
30. “Conventional Takeo and Landing Variant, F-35A Lightning II,” Lockheed Martin,
2016, accessed 24 January 2017, https://www.f35.com/about/variants/f35a.
31. “Short Takeo/Vertical Landing, F-35B Lightning II,” Lockheed Martin, 2016, accessed
24 January 2017, https://www.f35.com/about/variants/f35b.
32. “Carrier Variant, F-35C Lightning II,” Lockheed Martin, 2016, accessed 24 January
2017, https://www.f35.com/about/variants/f35c.
Fighter Jets, Supercars, and Complex Technology
S S Q ♦ W 2017 131
33. Andy Nativi, “F-35 Air Combat Skills Analyzed,” Aviation Week, 5 March 2009,
http://aviationweek.com/awin/f-35-s-air-combat-skills-analyzed.
34. Guy Norris, “Pratt Raises Stakes in JSF Engine Battle,” Aviation Week, 27 August
2010, http://aviationweek.com/awin/pratt-raises-stakes-jsf-engine-battle-0.
35. Keijsper, Lockheed F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, 199.
36. Ibid., 200–2.
37. Reuven Ben-Shalom, “Cultural Prism: Supremacy, Lethality and Transparency,”
e Jerusalem Post, 16 June 2016, http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Supremacy-lethality-and
-transparency-457023. Also see Director of Operational Test and Evaluation, FY 2015 Annual
Report (Washington, DC: Department of Defense, 2016), http://www.dote.osd.mil/pub/reports
/FY2015/pdf/other/2015DOTEAnnualReport.pdf.
38. Christian Davenport, “Meet the Most Fascinating Part of the F-35: the $400,000 Helmet,”
Washington Post, 1 April 2015, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2015/04/01
/meet-the-most-fascinating-part-of-the-f-35-the-400000-helmet/. Also see Director of Operational
Test and Evaluation, FY 2015 Annual Report, (Washington, DC: Department of Defense, 2016),
http://www.dote.osd.mil/pub/reports/FY2015/pdf/other/2015DOTEAnnualReport.pdf.
39. Loren ompson, “Why Sen. McCain Is Right in Trying to Put the Military Services
in Charge of Buying Weapons,” Forbes, 28 September 2015, http://www.forbes.com/sites
/lorenthompson/2015/09/08/why-sen-mccain-is-right-to-put-the-military-services-in-charge
-of-buying-weapons/#3e056c692933.
40. US Senate Committee on Armed Services, National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal
Year 2017: Bill Summary (Washington, DC, 2016), 11, http://www.armed-services.senate.gov
/imo/media/doc/FY17%20NDAA%20Bill%20Summary.pdf.
41. Dave Majumdar, “US Senate Proposes to Disband F-35 Joint Program Oce,” e
National Interest, 13 May 2016, http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/us-senate-proposes
-disband-f-35-joint-program-oce-16206.
42. Alic, “Managing US Defense Acquisition.”
43. Eric Tegler, “Could Trump Really Replace the F-35 with a Super Hornet? No. But also
Yes,” Popular Mechanics, 10 January 2017, http://www.popularmechanics.com/military/aviation
/a24682/f-35-vs-super-hornet/.
44. “Let’s Build a Sportscar!,” Honda Corporation, 2005, http://world.honda.com/history
/challenge/1990thensx/index.html.
45. Johnny Lieberman, “Lexus LFA versus Acura NSX!,” 25 July 2012, in Motor Trend
Channel’s Head 2 Head, episode 13, video, 17:07, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLJ2lw0b
Ckk&index=9&list=PLXooetYap97WexVvxqJQs0zCsPySCYhDh; and Jason Cammisa, “2017
Acura NSX: e Slowest Supercar in the World?,” 7 December 2015, in Motor Trend Channel’s
Ignition, episode 143, video, 13:35, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUDLUSqfqxg.
46. Lieberman, “Lexus LFA versus Acura NSX!”
47. Jake Holmes, “2010 Acura NSX: No Longer a Design Study, the New NSX Shows
its Face,” Car and Driver, June 2008, http://www.caranddriver.com/spy-shots/2010-acura-nsx
-spied-1.
48. Alissa Priddle, “Acura Supercar Concept, Part 2,” Car and Driver, September 2007,
http://www.caranddriver.com/news/acura-supercar-concept-part-2-auto-shows.
49. Jake Holmes, “Revival, Part Deux: Honda President Dishes on New NSX Successor,”
Automobile, 25 April 2011, http://www.automobilemag.com/news/revival-part-deux-honda
-president-dishes-new-nsx-successor-42779/.
50. Aaron Robinson, “2016 Acura NSX Dissected: Powertrain, Chassis, and More,” Car
and Driver, April 2015, http://www.caranddriver.com/features/2016-acura-nsx-dissected
Ian MacMillan
132 S S Q ♦ W 2017
-powertrain-chassis-and-more-feature; and Cammisa, “2017 Acura NSX: e Slowest Supercar
in the World?”
51. Cammisa, “2017 Acura NSX.”
52. Maya Koso, “Elon Musk Wants You to Know His Rocket Will Probably Crash,”
Vanity Fair, 23 February 2016, http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/02/elon-musk-wants
-you-to-know-his-rocket-will-probably-crash.
53. Ali Sundermier, “Here’s Why SpaceX Crash Landed its Most Recent Rocket,” Business
Insider, 17 June 2016, http://www.businessinsider.com/why-spacex-crash-landed-falcon-9-rocket.
54. Jeanne Sahadi, “U.S. Decit Now Lowest since 2007,” CNN Money, 15 October
2015, http://money.cnn.com/2015/10/15/news/economy/budget-decit/.
55. Ryan Browne, “John McCain: F-35 Is ‘A Scandal and A Tragedy,’ ” CNN Politics, 27
April 2016, http://www.cnn.com/2016/04/26/politics/f-35-delay-air-force/.
56. Given the re-emergence of sophisticated Russian and Chinese weaponry, the rational
cost of remaining competitive is continued weapons experimentation and development, an
expensive proposition. Congressional anxiety based on cost overruns and schedule slippage
not only reects neoliberal ideals, but it also qualies as a nonrational response because com-
plex military technology like the JSF program is inherently risk oriented. Congress wants
primacy but does not always accept the trade-os necessary to at least remain competitive.
57. Rob Huebert, “e Future of Canadian Airpower and the F-35,” Canadian Foreign
Policy Journal 17, no. 3 (September 2011): 229, http://doi.org/cdb8.
58. Ben-Shalom, “Cultural Prism.” It is predicted bi-static radar and infrared will impair
stealth aircraft success more than in the past.
59. Reuters, “Russia Restores Bomber Patrols,” CNN, 17 August 2007, http://www.cnn
.com/2007/WORLD/europe/08/17/russia.airforce.reut/index.html?iref=newssearch.
60. Dave Majumdar, “Russia to Build Lethal PAK-DA Stealth Bomber—with Hypersonic
Weapons?,” e National Interest, 18 April 2016, http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz
/russia-build-lethal-pak-da-stealth-bomber%E2%80%94-hypersonic-15821.
61. Huebert, “Future of Canadian Airpower and the F-35,” 232–4.
62. e term “revolutionary” is used here to describe something that irreversibly changes
the nature of its respective eld. For instance, a revolutionary piece of military technology ir-
reversibly changes the nature of warfare. Also see Lorell, et al., Do Joint Fighter Programs Save
Money? e TFX program had a similar problem providing maximum system commonality
while meeting important individual service requirements. What began in June 1961 as a joint
ghter program between the Air Force and Navy eventually led to a split in which the Air
Force procured the F-111A and the Navy procured the F-14A Tomcat, a ghter with 20 per
cent commonality to the F-111A. In spite of the split, the program led to two success stories.
Given time, something good will come of the Joint Strike Fighter program.
63. Ben-Shalom, “Cultural Prism”; and Marcus Weisgerber, “e Price of an F-35 Was
Already Falling. Can Trump Drive it Lower?,” Defense One, 27 January 2017, http://www
.defenseone.com/business/2017/01/f-35s-price-has-been-falling-can-trump-lower-it-even
-more/134919/.
64. Newt Gingrich and Ronald E. Weisbrook, “Adapt or Die: e US Military’s Responsi-
bility to Protect America by Leading the Transformations in Science and Technology,” Strategic
Studies Quarterly 1, no. 2 (Winter 2007): 25, http://www.airuniversity.af.mil/Portals/10/SSQ
/documents/Volume-01_Issue-2/Winter07.pdf.
65. Stephen Walt, “American Primacy: Its Prospects and Pitfalls,” Naval War College Review
55, no. 2 (Spring 2002): 9–28, https://usnwc2.usnwc.edu/Publications/Naval-War-College-
Review/2002---Spring.aspx; Robert Farley, “Yes, America’s Military Supremacy Is Fading (And
Fighter Jets, Supercars, and Complex Technology
S S Q ♦ W 2017 133
We Should Not Panic),” e National Interest, 21 September 2015, http://nationalinterest.org
/feature/yes-americas-military-supremacy-fading-not-its-superiority-13885?page=3; and Kenneth
Waltz, “Why Iran Should Get the Bomb,” Foreign Aairs 91, no. 4 (July/August 2012): 2–5,
https://www.foreignaairs.com/articles/iran/2012-06-15/why-iran-should-get-bomb. Others
have argued perpetual US military primacy is not necessary. For instance, neorealist Stephen
Walt questions whether “increasing the US lead” is worth the eort. He acknowledges the
value of maintaining US strength in both relative and absolute terms but is hesitant to argue
primacy is a long-term necessity.
Robert Farley argues the advantages of unipolarity and military supremacy the US enjoyed
in the 1990s were ephemeral and an anomaly in the broader history of global politics. e
shrinking gap between the United States, China, and Russia indicates a return to a more
normal balance of power. Farley makes the distinction that while “superiority” is possible,
“supremacy” is not a practical nor even a necessary goal.
Kenneth Waltz applies a similar logic to concerns over Iranian nuclear ambitions. Flow-
ing primarily from the United States and Israel, concerns are partly based on the notion the
Middle East and the world would be safer without a nuclearized Iran. Waltz argues this is
simply not true. Israel would not be destroyed by an irrational Iranian rst strike attack, and
the world would not descend into chaos as an emboldened Iran supplied Shia terrorist groups
with nuclear materials, and every state with a reasonable chance of building nuclear weapons
would proliferate and attack one another.
As the twenty-rst century continues to reveal a slightly more proportional balance of
power, neither Israel nor the United States should expect continued supremacy. However,
while superiority is possible, competitiveness is essential. e United States is in no way entitled
to rely solely on complex interdependence. It must buttress its use of international institutions
and trade relations with investments in key strategic assets such as the JSF.
66. Alfred ayer Mahan, e Inuence of Sea Power upon History, 1660-1805 (Boston:
Little, Brown, & Co., 1890; reprinted together with extracts from e Inuence of Sea Power
upon the French Revolution and Empire, 1793–1812 [London: Hamlyn Publishing Group; A
Bison Book, 1980]), 57. Greatly concerned the United States was squandering its opportunity
to secure a piece of global economic dominance, nineteenth-century naval historian Alfred
ayer Mahan argued the undeniable relationship between commercial success and naval
power required protection of America’s coastal approaches, harbors, and inlets; Mahan also
emphasized home industrial production, shipping of industrial goods with naval protection
and foreign bases, and colonies to provide material resources and marketplaces.
67. Seyth Miersma, “After an Interminable Wait, Acura’s Second NSX Is Here, and It’s
Brought the Future with It,” Motor1.com, 23 May 2016, http://www.motor1.com/reviews/62927
/rst-drive-2017-acura-nsx/.
68. “Last Public Address, April 11, 1865,” Abraham Lincoln Online, accessed 11 January
2017, http://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/last.htm.
134 S S Q ♦ W 2017
Rethinking the US Nuclear Triad
Darius E. Watson
Abstract
For over 50 years, the structure of the US nuclear triad has remained
the same. Relying on strategic bombers, intercontinental ballistic mis-
siles (ICBM), and submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBM), the
United States has sought to deter strategic threats from a variety of
sources. e current threat environment, however, is radically dierent
from what was being considered when the triad was created. From the
continued evolution of terrorism to the increasing threat of cyberattacks,
both the nature of the threats facing the United States and the deter-
rence frameworks necessary to counter them have changed. e United
States needs to critically reassess the current triad with an eye toward
eliminating redundant or potentially ineective delivery systems such as
the strategic nuclear bomber.
✵ ✵ ✵ ✵ ✵
e US nuclear triad has been the foundation of the country’s strategic
deterrence framework since the mid-1960s. Comprising strategic bombers,
intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM), and submarine launched bal-
listic missiles (SLBM), the triad has been the backbone of US eorts to
deter threats from other states. From an analytical perspective, proving
the eectiveness of deterrence is highly problematic. “After all,” wrote
noted strategy scholar Colin Gray, “episodes of successful deterrence
are recorded as blanks in the pages of history books.”
1
However, from
the policy perspective, the US “victory” in the Cold War has come, for
many, to represent clear evidence that the nuclear triad, and US strategic
deterrence in general, have been successful. As a result, the United States
continues to maintain the same general framework developed over 60
Darius Watson is a professor of political science and security studies as well as a senior consultant at
Watson Consulting & Analysis, LLC. He earned a doctorate in international relations from the State
University of New York–Albany.
Rethinking the US Nuclear Triad
S S Q ♦ W 2017 135
years ago to combat an aggressive Soviet Union that no longer exists.
ere are undoubtedly still traditional state-level nuclear threats that
require a robust and dynamic nuclear component to US strategic deter-
rence. But changes in the international threat environment since the
end of the Cold War now require the United States to reevaluate that
framework critically. From the evolution of terrorism to the rapid rise of
cyber and space threats, traditional state-level nuclear attack no longer
represents the primary threat to be deterred by the United States. us,
it is time the US strategic deterrent reect this new reality.
To begin the debate, this analysis specically considers the continuing
utility of the strategic bomber leg of the nuclear triad. As the rst com-
ponent of the US nuclear triad, the strategic bomber eet represents
both the historical and practical foundations of US strategic deterrence.
For the entirety of the Cold War, strategic bomber forces were the
primary component of the triad due to the wide variety of basing options
oered vis-à-vis both strategic and extended deterrence policies.
2
As
a result, bombers also became the central method through which the
United States conducted “signaling” as a component of the threat-
response framework associated with strategic deterrence. For many, their
greatest asset was their exibility relative to doctrine and planning due
to their ability to be recalled.
3
Finally, they represent the long-standing
central importance of the Air Force in the development of US strategic
deterrence policy. It is the strategic bomber that created historical and
contemporary perceptions of the “vital” role of airpower for US nuclear
deterrence and stood as a symbol of US power in general.
e decline in the potential applicability and relative eectiveness of
the strategic bomber is at the core of the current debate.
4
e argument
oered here is that these underlying rationales for continuing investment
and development of strategic nuclear bomber forces are either outdated re-
garding the threat environment, ineective due to technological advance-
ments, or increasingly inecient because of the relative unit cost for
nuclear deterrence attained through ICBMs and SLBMs. e United
States must begin to consider eliminating the strategic bomber leg of
the nuclear triad to both streamline the nuclear deterrent and permit
strengthening deterrence within the cyber and space domains.
Darius E. Watson
136 S S Q ♦ W 2017
Why the Triad?
One of the most important things to consider regarding the current
structure of the US nuclear triad is that it was never planned. e current
reliance on strategic bombers, ICBMs, and SLBMs is the direct result of
an intertwined evolution of nuclear weapon and delivery system technologies,
changes within the global strategic environment, and “because each of
the military services wanted to play a role in the US nuclear arsenal.”
5
us, the rationale for the nuclear triad was never based on a clear and
consistent understanding of US strategic threats, interests, and needed
capabilities. Instead, it is the result of sometimes ad hoc responses to a
wide variety of often disconnected technological, political, military, and
bureaucratic considerations. is in turn has led to an enormous com-
mitment to maintain the triad despite long-standing questions regarding
both its eectiveness and eciency.
In examining the continued utility of the strategic bomber as a leg
of the nuclear triad, it is important to examine two specic arguments
behind its perceived importance to US strategic deterrence: its historical
position as a nuclear delivery system and the symbol of US global power
and its exibility relative to nuclear doctrines and geostrategy. ese two
considerations have created a commitment to the strategic bomber leg of
the nuclear triad that hinders further development and improvement of
other US strategic deterrence capabilities in general. e doctrinal focus
on a “exible nuclear response” that was created under the Kennedy admin-
istration in early 1960s would become the foundation of the belief in the
need for a nuclear triad—and strategic bombers specically.
6
However,
the continued use of World War II–era perspectives on strategic bomb-
ing in conjunction with conventional conicts such as the Vietnam War
obscured necessary questions regarding its utility as a nuclear delivery
system. Over time, this leg of the nuclear triad also came to represent the
primary signaling mechanism toward the Soviet Union, as it was considered
“the only portion of the triad that provides the ability for signaling of
alert readiness changes (signs of escalation).”
7
Both considerations in
turn served to reinforce the long-standing historical perception of air-
power as the primary illustration of strategic power and thus the logical
foundation of US strategic deterrence. e result has been a commit-
ment to the strategic bomber leg of the nuclear triad driven by outdated
arguments and perspectives, rather than a comprehensive understanding
of its value to contemporary US strategic deterrence eorts.
Rethinking the US Nuclear Triad
S S Q ♦ W 2017 137
Nuclear Deterrence and Nuclear Bombers
e strategic bomber has enjoyed a unique position within the nuclear
triad and US deterrence eorts precisely because it was the rst (and
still the only) delivery method that has been used. is position has
assured that regardless of the rhetoric and reality associated with the
various developments of US nuclear doctrine, the bomber has always as-
sumed an unquestioned role in the nuclear triad. Prior to development
of the ICBM (and later the SLBM), “concepts of strategic bombing that
had emerged before and during the Second World War [continued]
to provide an adequate framework for thinking about how atomic
war would be fought.”
8
is meant that the highly quantied and
sterile examinations of strategic bombing during World War II then
became the foundation of US nuclear doctrine well into the 1960s. is
is typied by the widely held belief during much of the Cold War that
the problem of creating a nuclear doctrine that satised deterrence and
war-making requirements in the thermonuclear age “was in essence an
economic problem—and thus the kind of problem that professional
economists were best equipped to deal with.”
9
While there was recogni-
tion of an increase in the level of destructiveness associated with the new
weapon, there was a more general assumption that the nature of war had
not really changed. But the development of the hydrogen bomb in 1952
was the rst of many technological advancements that would challenge
this assumption and as a result aect US nuclear policy. It certainly
played a role in the development of the policy of massive retaliation
under the Eisenhower administration, as well as in the growing concerns
and resistance to it as US nuclear policy.
10
e exponential increase in
the destructive capability of thermonuclear weapons for many threat-
ened to undermine traditional relationships between political goals and
war. is in turn would lead to deeper questions regarding the very
morality of nuclear weapons and the use of various deterrence strategies.
Regardless of the problems associated with exactly how and when ther-
monuclear weapons would be used, there was little question during the
majority of the 1950s that the strategic bomber would be the primary
weapon of the next war.
During the early 1960s the strategic bomber was still the unquestioned
central pillar of US deterrence strategies. Although ICBM technologies
were rapidly improving the viability of US second-strike capabilities, it
was commonly understood that US bomber forces still represented the
Darius E. Watson
138 S S Q ♦ W 2017
primary strategic deterrent for the United States. A signicant part of
this psychology was directly related to the US experience with strategic
airpower during World War II and the clear belief that it had played a
decisive role in the defeat of Germany and Japan.
11
With the advent
of nuclear weapons, this perception of strategic airpower as the central
component of US global power was strengthened. e combination of
US victory in World War II and its nuclear dominance in the immediate
postwar period created a psychology in which critical evaluation of the
role of bombers in nuclear deterrence seemed unnecessary. According to
airpower historian Richard R. Muller, “the advent of nuclear weapons
was seen initially as a quantitative, though not necessarily qualitative,
change in the means of conducting aerial warfare.”
12
Not only did this
serve to ensure the role of bombers in the nuclear triad would not be
questioned later, but it also cemented the Air Force and the doctrine of
massive retaliation as the cornerstones of US deterrence policy.
In the early 1950s, Air Force bombers were the nation’s primary means
for delivering strategic nuclear weapons, and the Air Force also had the
lead in developing missile technology. Its budget authority went from
$11.5 billion in 1954, in the wake of the Korean War, to $18.6 billion
in 1960—about a 25 percent increase adjusting for ination.
13
e result was the unquestioned commitment to strategic bombers as
part of the US nuclear triad, despite growing evidence that both ICBM
and SLBM technologies were potentially more eective vis-à-vis US de-
terrence and strike strategies.
14
e advances in both delivery systems
were, however, overshadowed by improvements in the design of strategic
bombers and the lethality of thermonuclear weapons. With the develop-
ment of both the B-52 and the rst USAF supersonic bomber, the B-58,
the arguments regarding the potential advantages for US deterrence
stemming from ICBM and SLBM technologies were defeated relatively
easily by the continued perception of the dominance of the strategic
bomber eet. is was reinforced by resistance from the Air Force to
any signicant changes in its dominance of the US nuclear arsenal and
deterrence policy, noted as far back as this history from 1967: “e Air
Force’s hesitation resulted from its devotion to the concept of strategic
bombing, its belief in the application of maximum military power to
important targets, and its desire to retain a monopoly of nuclear weapons.”
15
By the time the US policy of exible response was in place in the late
1960s, the Air Force had established rm control of US nuclear deterrence
Rethinking the US Nuclear Triad
S S Q ♦ W 2017 139
policy. In turn, this guaranteed that the role of strategic bomber as part of
the nuclear triad would remain generally unquestioned.
e 1960s represented the development of several potential threats to
the role of the bomber within the US strategic deterrence framework.
After a decade of development, the rst nuclear ICBMs became opera-
tional in 1959. When combined with the hydrogen bomb, the ICBM’s
advantages in both range and delivery immediately led to questions re-
garding the future structure of the US nuclear deterrent. ese ques-
tions manifested most directly in doctrinal, and subsequently policy,
disagreements between the Air Force and the Army and Navy. Against
the Air Force’s continued promotion of the strategic air oensive as
the foundation of US strategic doctrine and nuclear policy, “the other
services atly denied that strategic airpower alone could insure victory.
While they generally agreed that Soviet aggression presented the greatest
threat to US security . . . they argued that the conict would be much
more complex than the Air Force expected and that no single kind of
military force could decide the issue.”
16
e result was a disagreement
between the branches that focused on what a future war would look like
and what role nuclear weapons would most likely play in that war. e
impact on policy showed in debates throughout the 1960s at places like
RAND between those who supported the “stability doctrine” or mutually
assured destruction (MAD), versus those who believed US deterrence
structures could be formed around the concept of limited war.
17
By the early 1970s, the US Army had relented in its attempts to develop
its own nuclear capability. e Navy, however, increasingly began to
challenge both the Air Force and its doctrinal assumptions relative to
the continued evolution of the nuclear triad. rough successful devel-
opment of the Polaris program, the Navy could now substantively add
to the US nuclear deterrent framework. More importantly, the debates
that surrounded the program throughout the 1950s and early 1960s
were portents for the same discussions had today. First, they exposed
“the nuclear weapon dominance that the newly created Air Force had
in the early years the Cold War.”
18
By the end of the Eisenhower ad-
ministration, the Air Force was in control of three of the four primary
ballistic missile projects, with the lone Jupiter missile project controlled
by the Army. Without development of its own delivery system, the Navy
was relegated to secondary status to the development of the country’s
nuclear posture. It had focused initially on development of so-called
Darius E. Watson
140 S S Q ♦ W 2017
super carriers able to service nuclear capable long-range bombers. But
Truman, “citing budget constraints, canceled the program in favor of
increased investment in the Air Force’s B-36 strategic bomber.”
19
is
defeat led to a shift from the super carrier to the eet ballistic missile as
the primary nuclear delivery system for the Navy.
A second connection between nuclear force structure debates during
the Cold War and today is the importance of technology for under-
standing capability—and thus policy and strategy. Combined with sig-
nicant advances in submarine technology, shifting from an air-based
to a missile-based focus in the late 1950s was an obvious and ultimately
eective change in strategy for the Navy. But it also served to insulate
strategic bombers from broader considerations of how to develop (and
fund) the evolving nuclear triad. is is because the focus on missile
technologies tended to make ICBMs the natural comparative weapon
system for the new SLBMs, and neither seemed capable of fully sup-
planting the perceived advantages of the strategic bomber at the time.
Potential advancements in missile defense systems (such as “Star Wars”)
and a growing faith in stealth technology to enhance the eectiveness
of strategic bombers created a short debate.
20
e practical aspects of
questions regarding the future of strategic nuclear bombers were symbolized
by the development, cancellation, and subsequent reinvigoration of the
B-1 bomber program in 1985. In the end, development of the B-1 and
subsequent B-2 strategic bomber programs seemed to close the door
on lingering questions. Indeed, the future role of the nuclear bomber
seemed secure with deployment of the stealth-capable B-2 bomber in
1997. e Cold War was won, US strategic power was unchallenged,
and both seem to be directly related to the development and mainte-
nance of the nuclear triad as the foundation of the nation’s deterrence
framework. What was less considered was how the new global threat
environment would once again raise questions regarding the most ap-
propriate framework for US nuclear deterrence.
Signaling the Soviets
Aside from their role in the delivery of nuclear weapons, strategic
bombers’ most important use has been as a tool for signaling within
the US deterrence framework. Few questioned the capability of the
United States to follow through on the various threats associated with
its deterrence policies. Instead, most of the academic- and policy-driven
Rethinking the US Nuclear Triad
S S Q ♦ W 2017 141
examinations of US deterrence policy have focused on the ability to
communicate intentions to use that capability in a credible manner. e
primary means of signaling during the Cold War involved stationing
nuclear weapons on an ally’s territory or within potential striking dis-
tance of an adversary. With the development and expansion of extended
deterrence, the United States found itself in an increasing number of
situations where it had to send nuclear signals to potential adversaries
for both its own and its allies’ interests.
21
e use of signaling was not
aimed solely at adversaries like the Soviet Union or China, “it aimed also
to discourage allies from seeking nuclear arms of their own.”
22
As the
role of signaling evolved relative to changes in the US nuclear doctrine,
there was an ever-increasing need for exibility and graduation within
US response options. Because bombers oered more exibility than the
stationing of ICBMs, they increasingly became the preferred method for
signaling US deterrence policy. e B-52 in particular became the symbol
of US nuclear strength and deterrence policy, a role that it continues to
play to this day.
23
e use of bombers as the primary signaling method was an essential
component of the US-Soviet deterrence framework during the Cold
War. Interestingly, they played less of a role in Europe than they did in
Asia for a variety of reasons. From a general perspective, ICBMs are the
most static component of the nuclear triad and thus oer few options as
a method of signaling intentions in individual crises. ere are no spare
missiles or extra silos, the missiles cannot be moved, and they remain
constantly ready. ICBMs were useful for more general and long-term
signaling in the European context precisely because US deterrence was
intertwined with the regional security framework (i.e., NATO).
24
is
aside, bombers oered exibility in terms of deployment and control.
Even the possibility of using low yield or tactical nuclear weapons was
part of an escalation ladder. is is most clearly summarized by one sup-
porter’s claims that “nothing demonstrates American resolve better than
putting fully loaded strategic bombers on alert or deploying them to a
forward base as the spy satellites of a target nation pass overhead. e
ability to signal in a nuclear crisis is a characteristic found only in the
bomber force.”
25
is exibility was evident not only against the Soviets
but also following the successful development of nuclear weapons by
China in 1964. In both instances, however, this was at least partially
Darius E. Watson
142 S S Q ♦ W 2017
due to the diering structures of deterrence that developed within Asia
relative to Europe.
e reality is that most of the direct conict associated with the US-
Soviet rivalry during the Cold War took place in Asia. If the US-Chinese
rivalry is added to the equation, nuclear doctrine and strategy were tested
far more often in the Asian theater than they were in Europe. In addi-
tion to (or perhaps because of) the almost constant existence of conict
in Asia, the United States also had the problem of potentially unstable
or ill-equipped allies who were considering development of their own
nuclear arsenals. At one point or another, the United States engaged
Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, and Australia in quiet but rm eorts to
convince them that pursuit of nuclear weapons was unnecessary due
to US extended deterrence.
26
Due to a variety of factors, including the
Japanese adoption of its antinuclear principles and questions regarding
the stability of some allies, the United States had no real opportunities
to use missile deployments as a signaling method in the same way the
strategy developed in Europe from the 1960s onward. e need for sig-
naling within the Asian context, however, increased dramatically with
the nuclearization of China. e dierence between the two contexts
involved more than just the signaling utility of missile basing, however.
e US nuclear deterrent in Europe is embedded in the American
commitment to the NATO alliance, particularly Article V of the Wash-
ington Treaty. By contrast, the United States has no parallel multilateral
alliance structure in East Asia. e US extended deterrent there is based
on bilateral relationships and agreements, so any nuclear debate there
would be viewed mainly through a bilateral lens.
27
rough its membership in NATO, the United States used a single
signal (the basing of theater and intermediate range nuclear weapons
throughout Western Europe) to illustrate extended deterrence to all of
its allies in the region at the same time.
28
e need to rely on bilateral
relationships in the Asian context meant that the United States often
found itself demonstrating its commitments more frequently, and in a
much more specic manner. Rather than potentially defending Europe
from a general Soviet threat, the United States had to engage its bilateral
deterrent relationships within individual, often crisis-laden contexts.
is only further limited the utility of missile deployments as a method
of signaling, a reality that was nalized when the George H. W. Bush
administration removed all tactical nuclear weapons from the region in
Rethinking the US Nuclear Triad
S S Q ♦ W 2017 143
the early 1990s. e more critical takeaway, however, was that the sig-
naling role of the strategic bomber was being armed in the post–Cold
War era, if only because it was the only option.
It could be argued that the stationing of nuclear-capable submarines
represented a potential form of signaling for US deterrence policy
similar to the basing of missiles, especially as it related to extended de-
terrence.
29
One of the reasons for this was the development of multiple
independently targetable reentry vehicle (MIRV) technology and its
impact on the deterrence value of SLBMs. e ability to mount three
warheads on each individual SLBM, and survivability aspects of the sub-
marine platform, quickly increased its importance in the nuclear triad
and thus as a potential source of signaling. Combined with the Soviet
rejection of the US proposed ban on MIRV technologies in 1970, “the
Navy’s deterrent and retaliatory capabilities increased multifold.”
30
e
stationing of nuclear submarines could represent a signicant message
to both allies and adversaries of the US commitment to extended deter-
rence in a region. In recent attempts to deter North Korea from further
developing its nuclear capabilities, nuclear submarine forces have played
a prominent role in US signaling.
31
Despite the limited use of both ICBMs and SLBMs to signal US inten-
tions and deterrence capabilities, the strategic bomber has remained the
dominant method of nuclear signaling into the post–Cold War period.
ere is little to suggest that the relationship between the three legs of
the nuclear triad will ever change the relative utility of strategic bombers
for signaling. What should be considered, however, is the contemporary
need for nuclear signaling within the US framework of deterrence. Like
other aspects of US nuclear doctrine and strategy, it may be the case
that the need for nuclear signaling has diminished in combination with
the decline of state-level nuclear crises. With changes in the inter-
national threat environment have come changes to the application of
US deterrence strategies. In those instances where there have been state-
level nuclear threats to US security, the threats have come from rogue
states like Iran and North Korea. As will be discussed, traditional frame-
works of deterrence are less useful in these instances precisely because
rogue states already indicate their willingness to ignore attempts to deter
their nuclear ambitions or policies. is means that while the strategic
bomber continues to be the primary signal, both the instances for and
eectiveness of its use have declined in the post–Cold War era.
Darius E. Watson
144 S S Q ♦ W 2017
e Declining Utility of Nuclear Bombers
To this point, this analysis has sought to clearly explain the founda-
tions of the US reliance on strategic bombers as an essential component
of the country’s deterrence policy and nuclear doctrine. e underlying
reason for this discussion has been the desire to assess the continuing
value of strategic bombers as part of the nuclear triad. e current position
is rmly grounded in the historical value of strategic airpower for US
hegemony, the practical need to have both a exible response and dynamic
signaling options, and in the general dominance of the Air Force within
the area of US nuclear policy. e argument oered here is that these
points no longer justify the continuing maintenance of the US strategic
nuclear bombing option. First, whatever the historical value of strategic
airpower for US geostrategy, technology has steadily eroded and perhaps
eliminated that advantage. Although the Air Force argues that stealth
technology represents a path to overcoming problems in this area, it is
precisely the costs of producing an entirely new line of stealth-capable
strategic bombers that has reduced the relative value of the strategic
bomber leg of the triad. A second point to consider is the sea change that
has taken place in the international threat environment since the end of
the Cold War and since 9/11 in particular. Because of the general transi-
tion from states to nonstate actors as the primary threat and the associ-
ated transition in focus from nuclear conict to terrorism and cyberwar,
the utility of the US nuclear deterrent has diminished. ere is no doubt
that the global war on terrorism has illustrated the continued essential
need of strategic bombing capabilities within conventional theaters. It is
when one considers their decreasing eectiveness as a delivery platform,
in conjunction with increasing costs relative to the other platforms, that
the overall viability of the strategic bomber must be questioned.
Too Much “Buck”
e strategic bomber leg of the nuclear triad has consistently rep-
resented the most expensive component of the US nuclear arsenal.
According to one study, “e annual cost of maintaining this eet of
aircraft ranges from $3.1 to $3.5 billion across the FYDP [Future Years
Defense Program] (2014–18) for a total of $16.5 billion.”
32
ere were
several years when this cost was double that associated with the deploy-
ment of ICBMs, and even with the associated cost of the development
and support of submarine forces it still outpaced those expenses as well.
Rethinking the US Nuclear Triad
S S Q ♦ W 2017 145
During that same period, for instance, the cost of ICBM maintenance
ranged from $1.7 to $1.9 billion per year, with the cost of maintaining
the nuclear submarine eet resting at around $2.9 billion a year.
33
e
key is understanding the costs associated with delivery platforms, that
is, the bombers themselves. Other examinations, such as the Harrison-
Montgomery study conducted for the Center for Strategic and Budgetary
Assessments, project much lower costs for maintaining the airborne
components of the nuclear triad precisely because they do not include
the full costs of the B-2 or the proposed B-21. e previously men-
tioned success of strategic bombers in the conventional context allows
for rationalizing part of the cost as a “dual-use system.”
34
ere is, how-
ever, some mathematical judo taking place as the cost of development,
deployment, and support of strategic bomber forces is extremely high
for anyone solely considering the need to maintain nuclear capabilities.
“In the minds of detractors, bombers are overkill and the costs associated
with maintaining nuclear capable bombers are no longer justiable.”
35
This has not deterred supporters from continuing to promote the
strategic bombing leg as untouchable during budget negotiations or
reviews of US nuclear doctrine.
e primary responses oered rest on the belief that the bombers
oer signicant levels of exibility for US deterrence eorts, exibility
that more than makes up for its expense relative to other legs of the
triad. One aspect of this perspective rests on the nature of the weapon
system itself. Incorporation of the human element into the bomber leg
as represented by the crews of the bombers oered this component of
the nuclear triad a higher level of responsiveness to changing conditions
and contexts. is was most directly represented by the argument that
bombers and their crews represented the only nuclear weapon system
that could be both scrambled and recalled. is made them much
more useful than the other two legs of the triad relative to “escalation/
de-escalation during a conict”—that is, signaling.
36
In the post–Cold
War context, it has been their exibility relative to the sudden increase
in the conventional role for long-range bombers that oers evidence of
their continued importance to the nuclear triad. What has been interesting
is that the overall justication for the contemporary costs of maintain-
ing a strategic bomber eet often has been justied more by “the need
for long-range strike capabilities . . . than an interest in maintaining the
nuclear role for bombers.”
37
is recognition has been reinforced by
Darius E. Watson
146 S S Q ♦ W 2017
US combat experiences in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere. e role
and utility of long-range bomber forces continue to be fully justied by
the wide variety of combat requirements facing conventional US forces
today. But the dominance of nonstate actors and the threat of terrorism
within that framework require a separation of the role of bombers in
the conventional sense versus their position and usefulness as part of the
nuclear triad. On their own, long-range bombers represent an enormous
investment of state resources and capabilities. e additional require-
ment of making the weapon system dual capable relative to the delivery
of nuclear weapons adds a signicant level of cost. It is for this reason
that some cost projections have development and maintenance of the
new long-range strategic bomber reaching $8 billion a year by 2030.
38
In the end, acceptance of the signicant and steadily increasing costs as-
sociated with maintaining strategic nuclear bombers is not justied by
its diminishing role within the nation’s deterrence framework.
Too Little Bang
e primary argument oered here against the continuation of the
strategic bomber leg of the nuclear triad is its vulnerability and relative
weaknesses when compared to ICBMs and SLBMs. ese are not new
concerns as they represent consistent themes in the recurring debates
regarding the structure of the triad. Ever since the establishment of the
strategic bomber, a primary consideration for its eectiveness has been
its ability to penetrate enemy airspace. is practical issue dominated
analyses of strategic bombing during World War II, and its importance
did not diminish with the advent of nuclear weapons. One of the more
signicant rationales behind the development of the Polaris SLBM
system in the early 1960s was the recognition that the eectiveness of
strategic bombers depended almost totally upon the degradation of Soviet
air defenses.
39
For this reason the emphasis on the exibility and respon-
siveness of strategic bombers is much more applicable with regard to
signaling than it is to the practical planning of a nuclear strike.
e potential weaknesses of strategic bombers as nuclear delivery systems
are well documented and have been scrutinized since World War II.
ey are slow and vulnerable to air defenses as well as to surprise attacks
on their bases, and they “provide only minimal second-strike capabil-
ity.”
40
When combined with the increasing ability to utilize ICBM and
SLBM forces to satisfy both extended deterrence and counterforce
Rethinking the US Nuclear Triad
S S Q ♦ W 2017 147
requirements, there is (for some) a steadily decreasing role in deterrence
to be played by strategic bombers. One way in which the Air Force
has attempted to address these criticisms is through the development
of stealth technology. Unfortunately, experiences with the B-2 bomber
indicates problems that call into question its overall eectiveness, espe-
cially as air defense technologies continue to improve.
41
Even though
current plans for the development of the new stealth B-21 bomber are
in the works, there is no indication that their potential to defeat or evade
enemy air defenses has improved relative to the problems that existed in
the immediate post–Cold War era. What is important to understand is
that the costs of developing and maintaining new replacement bombers
in conjunction with upgrading existing B-52 and B-2 weapon systems
is estimated to drive the overall cost of the strategic bombing leg of the
triad to more than $8 billion a year by 2019.
42
is expense could be
justied if strategic bombers represented the most eective and ecient
method by which to deliver nuclear weapons. But when the cost is con-
sidered relative to evidence that strategic bombers might in fact end up
with the lowest success rate among other nuclear delivery platforms,
the overall investment in maintaining and further developing them be-
comes increasingly questionable.
Conclusion
ere has been a long-standing acceptance of strategic bombers as an
essential component of the US nuclear triad. Its dominance has been
based upon historical understandings of the importance of strategic
airpower to US hegemony, as well as their practical use in signaling
US deterrence strategies. e role of the strategic bomber has been sup-
ported further by the long-term dominance of US nuclear doctrine by
the Air Force. ere have been various instances in which the role of
ICBMs was critically reviewed in terms of their continuing importance
to US deterrence eorts. Similarly, the Navy encountered an uphill struggle
in its attempts to develop the SLBM as the last leg of the nuclear triad.
But it is in fact the strategic bomber leg of the triad that has most consis-
tently been a source of concern when the US nuclear posture was under
review. During the transition from mutually assured destruction to exible
response, and within the regular reviews of US nuclear doctrine, the
role of the strategic bomber has continually been questioned, mostly by
those outside the Air Force and beyond the culture of strategic airpower.
Darius E. Watson
148 S S Q ♦ W 2017
It is now time to engage more fully the questions and doubts surrounding
the role of the strategic bomber as part of the nuclear triad, especially
given the potential doubling of maintenance and support costs over the
next decade.
While both the cost and eciency arguments have value, the history
of the debate surrounding the nuclear triad clearly demonstrates that it
is the perceptions and inuence of the Air Force that will most directly
determine the future of strategic bombers. Some indications show their
position on the nuclear triad is changing by the steady realization that
the threat environment that the nuclear triad was designed to respond
to no longer exists. While there is certainly a need to maintain tradi-
tional strategic deterrence vis-à-vis states such as Russia and China, the
threat of terrorism and irregular warfare, as represented by increasing
conict with weak states and nonstate actors, has changed the dynamic
within which the United States promotes its current deterrence policy.
is perspective is highlighted further by the rise of both the cyber and
space domains as areas in need of signicant investments in deterrence
capabilities. e United States must begin to recognize that despite its
enormous economic strength, the ability to invest in a truly dynamic
deterrence framework remains limited. It must begin to recognize that
US deterrence eorts need to address new and more dynamic types of
threats and attacks. is will mean that during the next nuclear posture
review the Department of Defense will need to make hard choices
regarding investing in increased cyber and space capabilities versus re-
investing in the increasingly narrow and potentially ineective strategic
bomber leg of the nuclear triad. ese choices will require sacrices in
other areas as well, but the suggestion oered here is that the strategic
bomber leg of the nuclear triad represents a potential area to start
with.
Notes
1. Colin Gray, Maintaining Eective Deterrence (Carlisle Barracks, PA: Army War College
Strategic Studies Institute, August 2003), 1, http://www.dtic.mil/get-tr-doc/pdf?AD=ADA417180.
2. Alex Wellerstein, “A Brief History of the Nuclear Triad,” Restricted Data: e Nuclear
Secrecy Blog, 15 July 2016, http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2016/07/15/brief-history-nuclear
-triad/.
3. omas C. Kirkham, “Modernizing the Nuclear Bomber Force: A National Security
Imperative,” in e Strategic Challenge of the US Nuclear Arsenal: AY14 Nuclear Issues Research
Rethinking the US Nuclear Triad
S S Q ♦ W 2017 149
Group, ed. Albert J. Mauroni (Maxwell AFB, AL: US Air Force Center for Unconventional
Weapons Studies, 2014), 45–46, http://cpc.au.af.mil/assets/strategicchallenge.pdf.
4. Amy Woolf, U.S. Strategic Nuclear Forces: Background, Developments, and Issues,
RL33640, Congressional Research Service, 8 August 2017, 37, https://fas.org/sgp/crs/nuke
/RL33640.pdf.
5. Ibid., 2.
6. Francis J. Gavin, “e Myth of Flexible Response: United States Strategy in Europe
during the 1960s,” International History Review 23, no. 4 (2001): 847–75, http://doi.org
/cx5763.
7. Maj Kenneth Fetters, “e Role of the Long-Range Strategic Bomber,” Center for Un-
conventional Weapons Studies, Trinity Site Papers, March 2014, 4, http://cpc.au.af.mil/assets
/trinity_site_paper3.pdf.
8. Marc Trachtenberg, History and Strategy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991), 4.
9. Ibid., 12.
10. Lt Col Keith A. Barlow, Massive Retaliation, Research Paper no. AD-764 412 (Carlisle
Barracks, PA: US Army War College, 8 March 1972), 12, http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext
/u2/764412.pdf; and Trachtenberg, History and Strategy, 6–12.
11. Richard R. Muller, “e Origins of MAD: A Short History of City Busting,” in Getting
MAD: Nuclear Mutual Assured Destruction, Its Origins and Practice, ed. Henry D. Sokolski
(Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, 2004), 45.
12. Ibid., 6.
13. Benjamin Friedman, Christopher Preble, and Matt Fay, e End of Overkill? Reassessing
US Nuclear Weapons Policy (Washington, DC: Cato Institute, 2013), 2.
14. om W. Ford, Ballistic Missile Submarines of the United States and the Soviet Union:
A Comparison of Systems and Doctrine (Monterey, CA: Naval Postgraduate School, 1972), 8.
15. George F. Lemmer, “e Air Force and Strategic Deterrence, 1951–1960,” USAF
Historical Division Liaison Oce, December 1967, 14, http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/nukevault
/ebb249/doc09.pdf.
16. Ibid., 24.
17. Trachtenberg, History and Strategy, 31–32.
18. Harvey M. Sapolsky, “e US Navy’s Fleet Ballistic Missile Program and Finite Deter-
rence,” in Getting MAD, 124.
19. Ibid., 125.
20. Donald M. Hale Jr., “US Nuclear Triad: Is It Sustaining the Cold War or 21st Century
Framework?” (master’s thesis, Johns Hopkins University, December 2013), https://jscholarship
.library.jhu.edu/bitstream/handle/1774.2/37599/HALE-THESIS-2014.pdf.
21. See Matthew Fuhrmann and Todd S. Sechser, “Signaling Alliance Commitments: Hand
Tying and Sunk Costs and Extended Nuclear Deterrence,” American Journal of Applied Science
58, no. 4 (2014): 919–35, http://doi.org/f6m34m; and Steven Pifer, Richard C. Bush, Vanda
Felbab-Brown, Martin S. Indyk, Michael O’Hanlon, and Kenneth M. Pollack, “US Nuclear
and Extended Deterrence: Considerations and Challenges,” Arms Control Series, Paper 3,
Brookings Institute (May 2010), https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/06
_nuclear_deterrence.pdf.
22. Pifer et al., Nuclear and Extended Deterrence, 7.
23. Mike Benitez, “e Nuclear Bomber: Fighting Conated Deterrence in the 21st Century,”
Breaking Defense, 2016, http://breakingdefense.com/2016/03/the-nuclear-bomber-ghting
-conated-deterrence-in-the-21st-century/.
24. Pifer et al., Nuclear and Extended Deterrence, 18–19.
Darius E. Watson
150 S S Q ♦ W 2017
25. Kirkham, Modernizing, 46.
26. See Pifer et al., Nuclear and Extended Deterrence; and Richard C. Bush, “e US Policy
of Extended Deterrence in East Asia: History, Current Views and Implications,” Brookings
Institute, Arms Control Series, Paper 5, 24 February 2011, https://www.brookings.edu/research
/the-u-s-policy-of-extended-deterrence-in-east-asia-history-current-views-and-implications/.
27. Bush, “US Policy,” 5.
28. Michaela Dodge, “US Nuclear Weapons in Europe: Critical for Transatlantic Security,”
Backgrounder Report no. 2875, e Heritage Foundation, 18 February 2014, http://www
.heritage.org/defense/report/us-nuclear-weapons-europe-critical-transatlantic-security.
29. David J. Trachtenberg, “US Extended Deterrence: How Much Strategic Force Is too
Little?,” Strategic Studies Quarterly 6, no. 2 (Summer 2012): 84, http://www.airuniversity
.af.mil/Portals/10/SSQ/documents/Volume-06_Issue-2/summer12.pdf.
30. Ford, Ballistic Missile Submarines, 68.
31. Franz-Stefan Gady, “Trump: Two Nuclear Subs Operating in Korean Waters,” e
Diplomat, 25 May 2017, http://thediplomat.com/2017/05/trump-2-nuclear-subs-operating
-in-korean-waters/.
32. Jon B. Wolfsthal, Jerey Lewis, and Marc Quint, e Trillion Dollar Nuclear Triad
(Monterey, CA: e James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, 2014), 18.
33. Ibid., 13.
34. Todd Harrison and Evan Braden Montgomery, e Cost of New US Nuclear Forces:
From BCA to Bow Wave and Beyond (Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and Budgetary
Assessments, 2015), 32–33, http://csbaonline.org/research/publications/the-cost-of-u-s-nuclear
-forces-from-bca-to-bow-wave-and-beyond/publication.
35. Kirkham, Modernizing, 46–47.
36. Ibid., 51.
37. Woolf, US Strategic Nuclear Forces 2016, 32.
38. See Congressional Budget Oce, Projected Costs of U.S. Nuclear Forces, 2014 to 2023,
Pub. No. 4618, December 2013, https://www.cbo.gov/publication/44968; and Wolfsthal,
Lewis, and Quint, Trillion Dollar Nuclear Triad.
39. Friedman, Preble, and Fay, End of Overkill?, 10.
40. Kirkham, Modernizing, 49.
41. e U.S. Nuclear Triad: GAO’s Evaluation of the Strategic Modernization Program: Testi-
mony before the Committee on Governmental Aairs, 103rd Cong. (1993) (Statement of Eleanor
Chelimsky, assistant comptroller general, Program Evaluation and Methodology Division, US
Government Accountability Oce).
42. Wolfsthal, Lewis, and Quint, Trillion Dollar Nuclear Triad, 20.
S S Q ♦ W 2017 151
Book Review
China’s Military Transformation by You Ji. Polity Press, 2016, 284 pp.
e United States has a growing and stronger rival in the area of military aairs. It is the
People’s Liberation Army of China (PLA), and it is changing in many ways, becoming more
powerful and inuential—and also more autonomous as a leading institution in China. Its
connection to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) also is evolving. In the past, the relation-
ship between the PLA and the CCP was harmonious, but today changes in the military seem
to have driven a wedge between these two entities. is seems to be the view of You Ji, a prolic
writer and author of a number of works concerning the Chinese military.
e author cites a number of changes in the Chinese military that should be of interest to
us. For example, there is no reluctance to spend billions of dollars on improving the capability
of the military. e military itself seems to have also changed its posture from one of defense
of the homeland to one of preparation for oensive actions. e navy, for example, is now
concerned not only with protecting the coastline but also extending its inuence into regional
waters, which may be of more concern to the United States. In addition, the types of weapons
the Chinese are interested in developing are more sophisticated and lethal than in the past,
especially those which can reach faraway places. ere is also a major US concern with the
Chinese military and space warfare development. One eect of this development will be more
American monitoring of Chinese military activities so as to prevent a security vulnerability in
this country.
It is interesting to discover the motives for such a transformation in the Chinese military.
Obviously, perceived threats from other countries in terms of invading Chinese areas of inu-
ence seem to be paramount. e United States and Japan may be viewed as the cause of these
perceptions in one way or another. For example, American military ships patrolling close to
China could result in that country reacting in a more protective manner by building up its
military capacity. ere may be other factors, such as China’s desire to expand its sphere of
inuence and to create an impression of more power in the world based on military capability.
ere is no doubt that China is growing in prominence in the world today, and it certainly
helps to have a military that can be inuential in foreign aairs. Yet the Chinese military has
another function noted in the book: quelling dissent. Even though this function could be
interpreted as antidemocratic, it could be useful to a government more concerned about unity,
progress, international inuence, and some type of stability. Hence the role of the Chinese
military will still be of great importance in China in the future considering that it has a strong
eect on foreign and domestic aairs in many ways.
is book has focused on three major transformations of the PLA. One transformation is
the relationship of the military to the Communist Party. It seems as if the military is becom-
ing more of a separate entity with its connection to the party. For example, the author notes,
“Today there is no politician in uniform and the minimized PLA representation at the apex of
power has become largely functional” (p. 27). is change suggests a dierence with previous
civil-military personnel situations.
Another transformation is the role of the PLA in domestic politics. Basically, the author
suggests that the PLA has less of an eect on who will be the future Chinese political leaders.
He notes that the generals are no longer the “kingmakers” who could determine leadership
succession (p. 27–28). It seems that the military is moving from unconditional support of the
Book Reviews
152 S S Q ♦ W 2017
party to nominal loyalty. Nevertheless, it is evident that cooperation between the two entities is
still present and probably will continue for some time.
A third transformation is the modernization of military force. With the huge sums of money
being invested in the military, there is an obvious attempt to rival the United States in develop-
ing certain types of sophisticated weapons. For example, the Chinese military’s attitude toward
aerospace power seems to be of paramount concern. e Chinese military does dierentiate
between airpower and space power but believes that there should be a combination of both to
become successful in air warfare. Hence, nancial investments in both of these types of powers
are recognized as very important to the security of China considering the fact that the United
States has developed eective and sophisticated weapon systems in both areas.
It is obvious upon reading this book that there is a growing separation between the CCP
and the PLA even though the fact is that the party is the key entity in Chinese foreign policy.
Yet the separateness could have important repercussions recognized by many—especially the
Chinese. For example, the separateness between these two entities is important to note because
it could have serious consequences, such as a decline of inuence of China in world aairs, and
other countries could take advantage of this change. However, the Chinese will work hard to
keep these dierences from restricting their rapid growth in power and inuence in the world-
wide environment.
It is projected by many that China will be a fast rising power in the twenty-rst century.
Although many factors, including economic growth, will foster this power, certainly the role
of its military will be another important reason. One must remember that for China to feel
more secure domestically and internationally and to expand its inuence further in the world,
it needs to have a strong military. Hence, this book becomes a valuable tool in helping us under-
stand this new position of China and the role of its military.
William E. Kelly, PhD
Auburn University Political Science Department
Chief of Sta, US Air Force
Gen David L. Goldfein, USAF
Commander, Air Education and Training Command
Lt Gen Darryl L. Roberson, USAF
Commander and President, Air University
Lt Gen Steven L. Kwast, USAF
Commander, LeMay Center for Doctrine Development and Education
Maj Gen Michael D. Rothstein, USAF
Director, Air University Press
Dr. Ernest Allan Rockwell
Editorial Sta
Col W. Michael Guillot, USAF, Retired, Editor
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Nedra O. Looney, Prepress Production Manager
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Kevin V. Frey, Webmaster
Advisors
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Benjamin S. Lambeth, PhD
Martin C. Libicki, PhD
Allan R. Millett, PhD
Contributing Editors
Stephen D. Chiabotti, PhD, School of Advanced Air and Space Studies
Mark J. Conversino, PhD, School of Advanced Air and Space Studies
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Kelly A. Grieco, PhD, Air Command and Sta College
Michael R. Kraig, PhD, Air Command and Sta College
Dawn C. Murphy, PhD, Air War College
David D. Palkki, PhD, Air War College
Nicholas M. Sambaluk, PhD, Air Command and Sta College
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Strategic
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SSQ
00b-Inside Cover 2017-04.indd 1 10/27/2017 2:50:15 PM
WINTER 2017
Vol 11, No. 4
Strategic Studies Quarterly
WINTER 2017
On US Nuclear Deterrence
Gen Kevin P. Chilton, USAF, Retired
Highlighting Articial Intelligence:
An Interview with Paul Scharre
Director, Technology and National Security Program
Center for a New American Security
Fe atu r e articl e
China’s Institutional Challenges to the
International Order
Huiyun Feng
Kai He
Commanding the Trend: Social Media as
Information Warfare
Lt Col Jarred Prier, USAF
Overcoming the Cyber Weapons Paradox
Maj Timothy M. Goines, USAF
Fighter Jets, Supercars, and Complex Technology
Ian MacMillan
Rethinking the US Nuclear Triad
Darius E. Watson
00a-Outside Cover 2017-04.indd 1 10/27/2017 2:49:40 PM
