CPI Talk - Subversion – From Spies to Hackers
Monday, December 5, from 12pm - 1:30pm EST
Speaker: Lennart Maschmeyer
YouTube Link to this video here.
CPI Talks are free and open to everyone regardless of affiliation! High school students and non-Waterloo students/staff are welcome to join.
No prior knowledge will be expected from the audience.
In our next CPI Talk, Lennart Maschmeyer will discuss:
Although cyber conflict has existed for thirty years, the strategic utility of cyber operations remains unclear. Current expectations hold cyber operations to be a novel instrument of power that provides independent utility in both warfare and low-intensity competition. Underlying these expectations are broadly shared assumptions that information technology increases operational effectiveness through high speed, massive scale and secrecy. But a growing body of research shows how cyber operations tend to fall short of their promise. The reason for this shortfall is their subversive mechanism of action. Rather than new instruments of power, this talk shows why cyber operations are instruments of subversion that share both its promise and pitfalls. In theory, subversion provides a way to exert influence at lower risks than force because it is secret and indirect, exploiting systems to use them against adversaries. The mismatch between promise and practice is the consequence of a distinct set of operational constraints. I identify a “subversive trilemma” of cyber operations, whereby speed, intensity, and control are negatively correlated. These constraints pose a trilemma for actors because a gain in one variable tends to produce losses across the other two variables. Evidence from a case study of the Russo-Ukrainian conflict provides empirical support for the argument. I present original data from field interviews, leaked documents, forensic evidence, and local media. Findings show that the subversive trilemma limited the strategic utility of all five major disruptive cyber operations in this conflict.
Lennart Maschmeyer is a Senior Researcher at the Center for Security Studies at ETH Zurich. He holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of Toronto and an MPhil in International Relations from the University of Oxford. Lennart’s research examines the subversive nature of cyber power, focusing on its operational challenges and strategic limitations. In particular, he has studied the use of cyber operations in the Russo-Ukrainian conflict since 2014. Apart from his research, Lennart is also engaged in two community initiatives. He is the founder co-chair of the FIRST Threat Intel Coalition SIG, an initiative to assist vulnerable civil society organizations in preventing, detecting and mitigating cyber attacks. He is also the founder and co-chair of the European Cybersecurity Seminar, which brings together academics and practitioners in cybersecurity and provides them a platform to present research projects and receive feedback.