Nuclear Deterrence : Cyber as a Counterforce Instrument
While it has already conducted cyber operations in order to fight nuclear and ballistic proliferation, the United States now intends to go further and has officially endorsed the use of cyber tools to sabotage parts of other states’ deployed nuclear arsenal. The integration of cyber within the array of counterforce instruments stems from a new strategy designed to protect the territory of the United States from a nuclear attack. This strategy relies, in addition to the in-flight interception of missiles, on offensive operations, called “left of launch”, aimed at neutralizing missiles on the ground prior to their launch. This article acknowledges as a starting point that being willing to threaten the survivability of other states’ nuclear arsenal is by itself destabilizing, but intends to show that cyber operations, due to their distinctive features, risk increasing even further this destabilizing effect.