Publications

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Through cyberattacks on information technology and digital communications systems, antagonists have increasingly been able to alter the strategic balance in their favor without provoking serious consequences. Conflict within and through the cyber domain is inherently different from conflict in other domains that house our critical systems. These differences result in new challenges for defending and creating resilient systems, and for deterring those who would wish to disrupt or destroy them. The purpose of this paper is to further examine the question of whether or not deterrence can be an effective strategy in cyber conflict, given our broad and varied interests in cyberspace. We define deterrence broadly as the creation of conditions that dissuade antagonists from taking unwanted actions because they believe that they will incur unacceptably high costs and/or receive insufficient benefits from taking that action. Deterrence may or may not be the most credible or effective strategy for achieving our desired end states in cybersecurity. Regardless of the answer here, however, it is important to consider why deterrence strategies might succeed under certain conditions, and to understand why deterrence is not effective within the myriad contexts that it appears fail. Deterrence remains a key component of U.S. cyber strategy, but there is little detail on how to operationalize or implement this policy, how to bring a whole-of-government and whole-of- private-sector approach to cyber deterrence, which types of antagonists can or should be deterred, and in which contexts. Moreover, discussion about how nations can and should respond to significant cyber incidents largely centers around whether or not the incident constitutes a "use of force," which would justify certain types of responses according to international law. However, we believe the "use of force" threshold is inadequate to describe the myriad interests and objectives of actors in cyberspace, both attackers and defenders. In this paper, we propose an approach to further examine if deterrence is an effective strategy and under which conditions. Our approach includes systematic analysis of cyber incident scenarios using a framework to evaluate the effectiveness of various activities in influencing antagonist behavior. While we only examine a single scenario for this paper, we propose that additional work is needed to more fully understand how various alternative thresholds constrain or unleash options for actors to influence one another's behavior in the cyber domain.

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National security decisions are driven by complex, interconnected contextual, individual, and strategic variables. Modeling and simulation tools are often used to identify relevant patterns, which can then be shaped through policy remedies. In the paper to follow, however, we argue that models of these scenarios may be prone to the complexity-scarcity gap, in which relevant scenarios are too complex to model from first principles and data from historical scenarios are too sparse-making it difficult to draw representative conclusions. The result are models that are either too simple or are unduly biased by the assumptions of the analyst. We outline a new method of quantitative inquiry-experimental wargaming-as a means to bridge the complexity-scarcity gap that offers human-generated, empirical data to inform a variety of model and simulation tasks (model building, calibration, testing, and validation). Below, we briefly describe SIGNAL-our first-of-a-kind experimental wargame designed to study strategic stability in conflict settings with nuclear weapons. We then highlight the potential utility of this data for modeling and simulation efforts in the future using this data.

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Much has been written on the potential for games to enhance our ability to study complex systems. In this chapter we focus on how we can use games to study national security issues. We reflect on the benefits of using games and the inherent difficulties that we must address. As a means of grounding the discussion, we will present a case study of a retrospective analysis of gaming data.

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In order to understand the effect of economic interdependence on conflict and on deterrents to conflict, and to assess the viability of online games as experiments to perform research, an online serious game was used to gather data on economic, political, and military factors in the game setting. These data were operationalized in forms analogous to variables from the real-world Militarized Interstate Disputes (MIDs) dataset. A set of economic predictor variables was analyzed using linear mixed effects regression models in an attempt to discover relationships between the predictor variables and conflict outcomes. Differences between the online game results and results from the real world are discussed.

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Suppose Tom is working to develop a rocket. Susan is very interested in knowing what Tom is doing but cannot directly observe his testing of the rocket propulsion system. Specifically, she would like to know if Tom has the ability to launch a heavy rocket or a light rocket. She thinks she can learn about Tom’s capability by learning about what type of rocket engine Tom is using, and the number of rockets in the design. She is considering buying a special sensor that can observe flashes from the rocket firing up during the tests and indicate if the rockets fire in a sufficiently narrow window of time such that they would successfully lift a heavy rocket.

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The doctrine of nuclear deterrence and a belief in its importance underpins many aspects of United States policy; it informs strategic force structures within the military, incentivizes multi-billion-dollar weapon-modernization programs within the Department of Energy, and impacts international alliances with the 29 member states of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The doctrine originally evolved under the stewardship of some of the most impressive minds of the twentieth century, including the physicist and H-bomb designer Herman Kahn, the Nobel Prize-winning economist Thomas Schelling, and the preeminent political scientist and diplomat Henry Kissinger.

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Safety-focused risk analysis and assessment approaches struggle to adequately include malicious, deliberate acts against the nuclear power industry's fissile and waste material, infrastructure, and facilities. Further, existing methods do not adequately address non- proliferation issues. Treating safety, security, and safeguards concerns independently is inefficient because, at best, it may not take explicit advantage of measures that provide benefits against multiple risk domains, and, at worst, it may lead to implementations that increase overall risk due to incompatibilities. What is needed is an integrated safety, security and safeguards risk (or "3SR") framework for describing and assessing nuclear power risks that can enable direct trade-offs and interactions in order to inform risk management processes -- a potential paradigm shift in risk analysis and management. These proceedings of the Sandia ePRA Workshop (held August 22-23, 2017) are an attempt to begin the discussions and deliberations to extend and augment safety focused risk assessment approaches to include security concerns and begin moving towards a 3S Risk approach. Safeguards concerns were not included in this initial workshop and are left to future efforts. This workshop focused on four themes in order to begin building out a the safety and security portions of the 3S Risk toolkit: 1. Historical Approaches and Tools 2. Current Challenges 3. Modern Approaches 4. Paths Forward and Next Steps This report is organized along the four areas described above, and concludes with a summary of key points. 2 Contact: rforres@sandia.gov; +1 (925) 294-2728

The Stanford Center for International Security and Cooperation engaged several Chinese nuclear organizations in cooperative research that focused on responses to radiological and nuclear terrorism. The objective was to identify joint research initiatives to reduce the global dangers of such threats and to pursue initial technical collaborations in several high priority areas. Initiatives were identified in three primary research areas: 1) detection and interdiction of smuggled nuclear materials; 2) nuclear forensics; and 3) radiological (“dirty bomb”) threats and countermeasures. Initial work emphasized the application of systems and risk analysis tools, which proved effective in structuring the collaborations. The extensive engagements between national security nuclear experts in China and the U.S. during the research strengthened professional relationships between these important communities.

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