At American University, there are three options for a master’s capstone. You can either do a practicum, write a substantial research paper, or a master’s thesis. A practicum is where a group works for a client to create a deliverable on the topic provided by the client. A substantial research paper (SRP) is a research paper of at least 50 pages that an individual writes with an advising professor. The thesis is an extended SRP at 100 pages. I chose to write an SRP on the topic of “Why Don’t Offensive Cyber Operations Trigger Kinetic Military Responses?”. I am proud of the work that has gone into this paper, the presentation I gave defending my research, and the conclusions that I came to. If you would like to read the full text, please click the button below. For a brief explanation of the claims and some thank you’s, please see below.

This paper is split into three distinct categories: Literature Review, Analysis, and Case Studies. In the literature review, I examine nuclear and cyber deterrence theories. These have been presented as potential solutions to this question in the past. I move onto my analysis where I provide three answers – that offensive cyber operations (OCOs) are qualitatively different than kinetic military action, that networks are durable and thus difficult to do permanent damage to, and that OCOs are not a monolith. I identify 5 forms of OCOs – cybercrime, disinformation campaigns, espionage, sabotage, and cyberwarfare – and examine the differences between these forms. Finally, I move onto my four case studies, each associated with one form of OCO. In the previous section, I claim that cyberwarfare has not occurred and thus does not get a case study. The four cases are sabotage for Ukraine from 2014-2016 and NotPetya, disinformation for Russian interference in the 2016 US election, cybercrime for APT-1, and espionage for the OPM hack. None of these cases escalated to a kinetic military response despite the massive damages that came from each.

This paper would not have been completed without the help of many people. First, I would like to thank my friends and family who supported me over the course of almost a year of writing. Next, I would like to thank my advisor, Dr. Joshua Rovner, who provided invaluable feedback and helped me set a strong foundation. Finally, I would like to thank the scholars and reporters whose work was instrumental in this paper. These individuals include Jacquelyn Schneider, Erica Borghard, the late Robert Jervis, Martin Libicki, Sarah Kreps, Ellen Nakashima, Max Smeets, Nicole Pelroth, Patrick Morgan, and Austin Long. A special final thank you to the individuals who reviewed my paper and helped me to make it better than it would’ve been on my own. Plenty of errors remain, but any issues left have been made by me. If you have questions, comments, or suggestions please reach out! I would love to talk about it in more depth.