Conclusions: A Pathway through the Forest

Abstract

The conclusion reprises a three-tier categorisation of cyber warfare threats developed throughout the book. In the first tier are modern, cyber-enabled examples of traditional information operations which can happen both during conflict and in peacetime scenarios. In the second tier are cyber attack activities which enable and shape the prosecution of conflict in the physical realm. The third tier comprises those activities over which, it is argued, there is most scepticism at present: namely cyber attacks which cause real physical death and destruction. Predicting the future, however, is a risky business. For this reason, policymakers need to continue to model and plan for such contingencies, while not allowing them to pervert the overall assessment of cyber security priorities.