Cyber Operations

10Strategic Cyber Effects

10.1 Strategic Cyber Effects

A strategic effect occurs if and only if an action disrupts an adversary’s strategy.

(Thomas Tighe)

Strategic effects include actions that change national‐level decision making. In Figure 1.3, “The Line” is a demarcation of actions that span from diplomatic to kinetic options that might be used to change an adversary’s mind. Cyber is sometimes called the “in‐between” option that lives in a gray space between policy pronouncements and military action. STUXNET was one of the more famous strategic cyber effects, delaying Iran’s nuclear program and providing a significant cost saving over the use of conventional air strikes to accomplish the same goal.

10.1.1 STUXNET (2010) – Delaying a Nation‐State’s Nuclear Program

The STUXNET campaign sought to slow Iran’s nuclear enrichment program in order to delay Iran’s acquisition of a nuclear weapon. General Hayden estimated that STUXNET did delay Iran’s nuclear program by two to three years (Hayden, 2016). Using a variety of intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) (e.g., Duqu, Flame, and Gauss) and code modification tools, the STUXNET campaign was a botnet focused specifically on destroying the Siemens industrial controllers powering the Uranium separation centrifuges at Iran’s Natanz nuclear enrichment facility (Zetter, 2015).

The international community wanted to delay Iraq’s nuclear enrichment program in the 1990s. Policymakers chose to use air strikes in order ...