Information Warfare: Case Studies from the 21st Century - University of Colorado Boulder

1

       Information Warfare: Case Studies from the 21st Century

                               Thesis by Jacob Andrew Clark

                                       Spring 2020

                              University of Colorado Boulder

                              Department of Political Science

                          2:00 PM March 10, 2020 in Ketchum 371

Committee: Dr. David Bearce (PSCI, Advisor), Dr. Janet Donavan (PSCI), Professor Orly Hersh

                                         (WRTG)

2

    I.   Introduction

         Over the past two decades the expansion of cyberspace as a concern of national security and

the varying tactics of information warfare that states have developed are increasingly elevating the

significance of the question: What factors explain the variability of the use of strategic psychological

cyberwarfare in the international system? The relevancy of this question is constantly increasing due

to the rapid progression of both the Internet’s technological complexity and its capacity to exercise

great influence over societies. The Arab Spring, which saw the overthrow of the brutal thirty-year

Mubarak regime in Egypt, was greatly influenced by the Egyptian protestor’s ability to share

information and organize themselves over Facebook1. The integrity of democratic elections have

been thrown into question after Russia demonstrated the ability to engineer fake online communities

to influence and enflame the public debate of the 2016 US Presidential Election. As society becomes

increasingly reliant upon the Internet and other technology, the magnitude of information warfare

and how the Internet can be used by state actors to manipulate and deceive is only going to become

more pronounced.

         Despite the relevance of such an inquiry, there is a lack of scholarly attention within the

national security space devoted to assessing the factors that could explain the varying strategies of

information warfare utilized on the international scene. The only study that even remotely addresses

this issue is a 2018 RAND study2 that instead focuses more broadly on the current and historical

practices of political warfare in the United States, Russia, Iran, and ISIS. The lack of scholarly focus

on information warfare is likely a product of an overall dearth of studies devoted to the cyber threat

1
  Rebbeca Rosen of The Atlantic has an interesting piece in 2011 that discusses Facebook’s effect on the Arab Spring:
Rosen, Rebecca J. 2011. “So, Was Facebook Responsible for the Arab Spring After All?” The Atlantic.
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/09/so-was-facebook-responsible-for-the-arab-spring-after-
all/244314/ (February 29, 2020).
2Robinson, Linda et al. 2018. “Modern Political Warfare: Current Practices and Possible Responses.”
https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR1772.html (January 13, 2020).

3

(Kello 2013). Most of the already-limited scholarship on cyberspace has focused on the CNA

(computer network attack) aspects of cyberwarfare rather than the less-exciting and more complex

considerations of how information in cyberspace can be manipulated for psychological effects that

translate into action outside of the cyber realm.

        In the following paper I will examine two independent variables – regime type and relative

military power – in a comparative case study on Russia, the People’s Republic of China, India, and the

United States that provides an explanation to this under-studied topic. I propose that the variability

in the use of strategic psychological cyberwarfare among the international system is explained by a

state’s regime type and its military power relative to its primary geopolitical rival. A state’s regime

type influences how foreign policy is developed and whether or not the opinions of public

constituencies are influential over its development. The assessment of military power relative to a

primary rival guides strategic security planning and the tools of national power that a state chooses

to exercise. Ultimately, I argue that nondemocratic states who are militarily weaker relative to their

primary geopolitical rival are more likely to utilize high degrees of strategic psychological

cyberwarfare.

        In the first section of this paper, ‘Argument,’ I elaborate on the tenants of my argument and

hypotheses within the context of both independent variables in my proposed model. In the ‘Testing’

section I will clarify how variables in the model are coded, establish case selection criteria, and layout

the predictions of my argument in Table 1.1. After Table 1.1 and before the case analysis sections I

clarify the conceptualization and operationalization of the dependent variable within the model in

the section ‘Degrees of Strategic Psychological Cyberwarfare.’ After the design of this study and my

proposed argument has been established, I will substantiate all assigned variable scores in Table 1.1

on a case-by-case basis beginning with Russia. Lastly, in the ‘Conclusion’ section I will examine the

validity of my argument based on the results from case analyses, discuss the original value provided

4

by this inquiry, and attempt to stimulate further research on this topic by discussing questions that

remain unanswered.

    II.   Argument

          In the following section I will elaborate on the central argument of this inquiry:

Nondemocratic states that are militarily weaker vis-à-vis their primary geopolitical rival are more

likely to use higher degrees of strategic psychological warfare tactics in cyberspace, or strategic

psychological cyberwarfare.

              a. Regime Type

          Simply put, regime type conceptually refers to how “democratic” as a state is. There are a

number of disagreements among scholars as to how to “democratic-ness” is empirically evaluated,

but there is general agreement on several simple metrics:

              •   Regular and free elections in which more than one party participates

              •   A popularly elected legislature

              •   Consistently-applied rules regarding the alternation of power

          There are specific intricacies of regime classification that are the subject of contemporary

debate, but for the purposes of this argument states are only democratic if they meet Cheibub,

Gandhi, and Vreeland’s3 minimalist criteria, as noted above.

          Regime type is a significant variable in this argument because classifications of regime type

determines the formulation of foreign policy and the development of statecraft. Democratic states

must engage with the concerns of their citizens in order to formulate and implement policy in both

3
 Cheibub, José Antonio, Jennifer Gandhi, and James Raymond Vreeland. 2010. “Democracy and
Dictatorship Revisited.” Public Choice 143(1/2): 67–101.

5

the domestic and foreign realms. For example, when it became public that the CIA was using

“enhanced interrogation techniques” to compel enemy combatants in the Middle East to give up

intelligence, a fierce American public backlash was a significant catalyst for ceasing the use of such a

tactic. Nondemocratic states do not have the same obstacle when it comes to policy creation, as they

can and do disregard their citizenry by implementing policies that are often antithetical to the

national will.

        Given that classifications of regime type contain implications as to how policy is formulated,

I propose that nondemocratic states are more likely to engage in higher degrees of strategic

psychological cyberwarfare. I predict that they do so for the purposes of favorable foreign policy

outcomes without the use of military force. Democratic states are unable to pursue the use of

strategic psychological cyberwarfare because citizens of democracies are not supportive of such a

policy out of fear that these capabilities will be used internally.

            b. Relative Military vis-à-vis Primary Rival

        Relative military power refers to the military power of a given state compared to that of another.

There is an emphasis on comparison because most scholars agree that absolute measures do not

provide a logical basis to make judgements about a state’s military power (Friedberg 1987). In

addition, there is significant disagreement among scholars as to which quantitative and qualitative

metrics should be included in a comparative military power analysis or if military power is capable of

being measured at all. Regardless, one school of thought believes that a nation’s power derives from

the resources at its disposal (both military and civilian), and the efficiency by which the state utilizes

those resources. This premise relies primarily on quantitative metrics like the Composite Index of

National Capability, or CINC (Correlates of War 2017), GDP per capita (Beckley 2018), and force

structure (Carafano 2014). Another school of thought believes that a nation’s power is derived from

6

historical outcomes. This theory relies primarily on qualitative measures such as strategy, the

observation of how international events play out, and other interpretive observations on a state’s

hard and soft power (Beckley 2018). Both schools of thought present valid reasoning as to why

resources or outcomes are the best measures of military power, but the qualitative judgement of

international events is outside the scope of this inquiry. Therefore, relative military power will be

recognized in terms of material resource power: CINC and GDP per capita.

        Relative military power is a significant independent variable in this theory because the results

of a relative military power analysis will guide a state’s strategic military planning. States that observe

their military power to be less than that of their primary geopolitical rival are inclined to develop

strategic and tactical asymmetric advantages over its militarily-superior rival. Vehicles of asymmetric

warfare have taken various forms throughout history, but the advent of cyberspace as a domain of

military conflict has provided an entirely new opportunity for states to devise asymmetric capabilities

(Clarke & Knake 2019). At the modern-day strategic level, some states with the necessary resources

have opted for the asymmetric strategy of incorporating concepts of psychological warfare through

cyberspace. The purpose of this strategy is primarily to destabilize an adversary’s domestic politics to

achieve foreign policy victories against a superior military without the use of force (Pashentev 2019).

        Given the fact that relative military power has implications for strategic planning, I propose

that militarily weaker states (vis-à-vis their primary rival) are more likely to incorporate strategic

psychological cyberwarfare in their asymmetric arsenal. Moreover, states that are militarily stronger

than their primary rival do not see strategic psychological cyberwarfare as a worthwhile investment

and practice. Instead, militarily stronger states focus on hardening tactical advantages and keeping

existing conventional and nuclear deterrence intact.

7

            c. Hypotheses

        Given the two separate arguments that have been provided in this section, the following

hypotheses are proposed:

        H1 – Nondemocratic states are associated with a higher degree of use of strategic

psychological cyberwarfare capabilities.

        H2 – States that are militarily weaker to their primary rival are associated with a

higher degree of use of strategic psychological cyberwarfare capabilities.

III.    Testing

        To evaluate the proposed hypotheses and argument, I will conduct a comparative case study

on the following four states: the Russian Federation, People’s Republic of China, India, and the

United States of America. A comparative case study is the ideal method of analysis for this inquiry

because the variance in strategic psychological cyberwarfare use must be evaluated empirically, and a

case study approach provides the most logical and comprehensive way to assess the questioned

variance on the international stage.

        I chose the four presented cases based on two main criteria. First, in order for states to be

eligible for selection in this study the state must have an existing infrastructure and technological

modernization requirement. Psychological cyberwarfare operations require a significant amount of

funding, existing defense infrastructure and modernized technological assets and capabilitie. Hence,

states eligible for selection in this inquiry must already have modernized technological sectors of the

economy capable of producing the cyber capabilities and existing defense infrastructure needed to

perpetuate vast schemes of psychological cyber warfare. Somalia, for example, would not be a

country worthy of analysis in this research because Somalia does not have the technological or

military capability necessary to deploy and facilitate strategic psychological cyberwarfare. Given such

8

considerations, the potential sample size of states that meet this requirement and are worthy of

analysis is rather small.

    The second requirement imposed on case selection is based on the need for variation

amongcases within each independent variable. For regime type, both a democratic and nondemocratic

case are needed. Further, different gradients and iterations of democracies and nondemocracies

should also be considered. As a result, India and the United States were selected as democracies,

while China and Russia were chosen as nondemocracies. For relative military rival, both a state that is

militarily superior and a state that is militarily weaker vis-à-vis its primary rival are required.

Additionally, states that are under different national security considerations as militarily stronger or

weaker powers should be considered. Hence, India is included as a militarily superior state because

its national security concerns are starkly different than the United States’ as a global military

superpower. Similarly, China was included as a military weaker state because its national security

concerns are much different as a rising power than Russia’s as a relatively declining power.

        As evidenced by Table 1.1, both independent variables are collinearly associated in that both

nondemocratic cases are militarily weaker powers and both democratic cases are militarily superior

powers vis-à-vis their primary geopolitical rival. I predict that collinearity exists for two reasons.

First, the existing infrastructure and technological modernization requirement imposed on case

selection relegates potential analysis to a small sample of powerful states on the international scene.

Second, that within this small sample size of powerful states, there is overlap in primary geopolitical

rivals among cases. Specifically, the People’s Republic of China and Russia identify the United States

as their primary geopolitical rival. Consequentially, both states are individually weaker militarily to

their shared primary geopolitical rival.

9

            a. Table 1.1

                                      IV1                       IV2                   DV
               Case              ‘Regime Type’         ‘Relative Military        ‘Psychological
                                                            Power’               Cyberwarfare’
              Russia             Nondemocracy           Less than Primary        High Degree of
                                                          Rival (USA)                 Use

      People’s Republic of       Nondemocracy           Less than Primary        Medium-High
             China                                        Rival (USA)            Degree of Use

               India               Democracy              Greater than           Low Degree of
                                                          Primary Rival              Use
                                                             (PAK)
         United States of          Democracy              Greater than           Medium-Low
            America                                       Primary Rival          Degree of Use
                                                             (PRC)

            b. Degrees of Strategic Psychological Cyberwarfare

        The dependent variable in this research represents the variability in the degrees of strategic

psychological cyberwarfare use within the international system. Specifically, the dependent variable is

a 4-tier categorical variable (High, Medium-High, Medium-Low, Low) that measures the degree to

which a case uses strategic psychological cyberwarfare capabilities. In addition to translating the

implications of scores on independent variables, degrees of psychological cyberwarfare use will be

predicted based on two observations that will be discussed in the following section. Before the

criteria can be established for evaluation on the dependent variable, I will clarify the term ‘strategic

psychological cyberwarfare’.

        Strategic psychological cyberwarfare is a term that is fused together from several disciplines

within the study of military conflict. The first component is the concept of psychological warfare,

which has a long history within military strategy, including writings by such famous authors as Sun

10

Tzu4. Psychological warfare is the process of using communications designed to manipulate the

minds and actions of specific entities for the purpose of winning military victories without the use of

force (Linebarger 2015). At the strategic level, psychological operations target a specific country or

the international system as a whole to influence poor decision making and promote action to the

attacker’s benefit (Pashentev 2019). The second component is the concept of cyberwarfare.

Cyberwarfare, as an academic study within the context of national security, is in its infancy and there

are no broadly recognized definitions. Regardless, Clarke and Knake describe it as follows: “Actions

by a nation state to penetrate another nation’s computers or networks for the purposes of causing

damage or disruption” (Clarke & Knake 2010). Fundamentally, the elements of strategic

psychological cyberwarfare are subcomponents in the larger concept of information warfare. Former

US DARPA Program Manager Rand Waltzman defines information warfare as the following:

“Information operations and warfare, also known as influence operations, includes the collection of

tactical information about an adversary as well as the dissemination of propaganda in pursuit of a

competitive advantage over an opponent” (Waltzman 2017: 1). Considered as a whole, the term

strategic psychological cyberwarfare refers to the use of manipulative communications through

cyberspace targeted at a specific country for the purpose of stimulating poor decision making and

internal discord on behalf of the attacked that is beneficial to the attacker.

         Now that the conceptualization of the dependent variable has been clarified, the criteria for

evaluation on the dependent variable must be established. The first criteria, and most obvious, is to

assess if a case has used or is currently using strategic psychological cyberwarfare capabilities. Are

there examples today, or in the recent past, of a case using strategic psychological cyberwarfare? If

so, the facts of the example will be considered for implications on the degree of strategic

4
 In the first chapter of Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, Tzu describes “All warfare is based on deception” (18). See MIT’s
Online Classics Archive for a translation of The Art of War: http://classics.mit.edu/Tzu/artwar.html

11

psychological cyberwarfare use. Cases with high degrees of use should contain examples where it is

abundantly clear that strategic psychological manipulation was the goal of a specific action and

cyberspace was the primary vehicle of delivery. If the goal of an example attributed to a case is

unclear or cyberspace wasn’t the primary vehicle of the example, then a case would receive a lower

degree of use that is consistent with the facts of the attributed example.

        The second criteria for evaluation on the dependent variable is to assess if any implications

from military doctrine can be drawn as to a case’s use of strategic psychological cyberwarfare.

Technological advancements in conventional, unconventional, and nuclear forces over the last 50

years have forced the majority of powerful states on the international scene to revise their military

doctrine to incorporate emerging technologies and plan for conflict of the future. Hence, an

interpretative analysis of modern military doctrine can provide a basis to draw conclusions about a

case’s use of strategic psychological cyberwarfare capabilities. Within this criterion, high degrees of

use would be attributed to a case whose military doctrine displays an embrace of strategic

psychological cyberwarfare capability because of its asymmetric potential. If implications from a

case’s military doctrine are insufficient, then a case will receive a lower designation of use that is

consistent with the implications that can be sufficiently drawn from its military doctrine.

                     i. Russia

        As clearly depicted in Table 1.1, Russia is both a nondemocratic state and a weaker military

power relative to its primary geopolitical rival in the United States. Since the beginning of the 21st

century, Russia has developed and utilized considerable cyber capability in both tactical and strategic

contexts. Tactically, Russia coordinated targeted attacks on Georgia’s government communication

infrastructure with kinetic Russian military operations during the 2008 Russia-Georgia War (White

2018). In December of 2015, Russia performed the world’s first cyberattack on another country’s

12

power grid when it hacked into three separate power distribution centers in Western Ukraine that

affected more than 220,000 people (Connell & Vogler 2016). Strategically, Russia has sought to

affirm its regional and global influence by using cyberspace as a tool to spread disinformation and

foment internal discord within an adversarial state. In 2007, Russia targeted specific distributed

denial of service (DDoS) attacks on critical Estonian websites after the Estonian government

announced the planned removal of a Soviet-era statue in early 2007. Upon the removal of the statue

massive demonstrations ensued that eventually turned violent and killed one person(Connell &

Vogler 2016). Most notably, Russia perpetrated the most comprehensive act of strategic

psychological cyberwarfare to date when it engaged in interference with the 2016 United States

presidential election. After discussing Russian’s regime type and relative military power, I will

provide an in-depth analysis of Russia’s 2016 US election interference as a clear example of the fact

that Russia utilizes a high degree of strategic psychological cyberwarfare.

        For the purposes of this inquiry, an in-depth discussion of Russian institutions is not

warranted. Frankly, there aren’t many political scientists that need convincing that Russia does not

meet modern standards to be classified as a democracy. An accredited history of election fraud and

blatant suppression of opposing political parties is enough by any scholar’s scale to disqualify Russia

as a democracy. Briefly, I will discuss how these two features of “Russian democracy” specifically

violate the recognized standards of democracy found in Cheibub, Ghandi, and Vreeland.

        Beginning with Vladimir Putin’s first electoral victory in 2000 and until his most recent

victory in 2018, there are serious questions as to the legitimacy of Russian elections. For example,

credible international organizations like the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe

have never been allowed to observe an election in Russia to the capacity necessary to draw valid

conclusions about legitimacy (Lukinova et al 2013). Hence, the research of independent investigators

such as Sergei Shpilkin, a well-known Russian elections analyst, are among the most credible results

13

to consider. Using data from Russia’s Central Election Commission, Shpilkin noticed more than 30

notable falsifications in specific voting precincts during Putin’s 2012 electoral victory (Schreck 2018).

Shpilkin has raised similar concerns about Putin’s victory in 2004 and Dmitri Medvedev’s victory in

2008. Beyond voting fraud, opposing political parties have been brutally suppressed in Russia.

Mikhail Kasyanov, a fierce critic of Putin and former prime minister, was removed from the ballot

for conspicuous reasons in 2008 (Lukinova et al. 2011) to pave the way for Putin’s placeholder,

Medvedev5. The Kremlin has denied all such allegations and decried them as Western propaganda,

yet it has not presented convincing evidence to the contrary. Given such considerations, Russian

elections are not deemed to be legitimate and hence do not meet the most basic criteria of

democracy: free and fair elections in which opposing parties are not deliberately excluded from

participating.

         Much like conceptualizing Russia as a nondemocracy, it is relatively obvious to most scholars

that Russia considers the United States to be its primary geopolitical rival: "Moscow undoubtedly

views the United States and its NATO partners as the principal threat to Russian security, its geo-

political ambitions, and most importantly, the Kremlin's continued hold on power" (US Office of

the Secretary of Defense 2017: 15). On that basis, I will discuss Russia’s military power relative to

the United States.

         As established earlier, two indicators will be used to assess power in terms of material

resources. The first is CINC, an index that contains data from 1816-2012 on total population, urban

population, iron and steel production, energy consumption, military personnel, and military

expenditure. CINC aggregates all six individual indicators into one value and reflects an average of a

5 Tim Horley, Anne Meng, and Mila Versteeg in partnership with the National Constitution Center published a section

of the project “The Battle for Constitution” in The Atlantic that details how the alternation of power from Putin to
Medvedev was exemplary of one of five common ways that modern autocrats have circumvented constitutional limits
on their power: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/03/new-authoritarianism/607045/

14

state’s share of the total capability in the international system that year. Using data from 2012, Russia

received a CINC score of 0.0408 to the United States’ 0.1393. This indicates that Russia had an

average access to just 4% of capability within the system in 2012 while the United States had access

to triple that at nearly 14%. There are scholars, such as Michael Beckley, who disagree with the

validity of CINC because densely populated states receive inflated capability scores, hence the

second indicator is GDP per capita, which will also be used as a power index to balance out possible

CINC inflation from population (Beckley 2018). Russia’s GDP per capita in 2018 was just

$11,288.87 (USD) while the United States’ was more than five times that at $64,794.58 (USD).

Given these two indicators, Russia is at a clear material power disadvantage to the United States and

we can conclude that Russia is militarily inferior to the United States.

        Given the analysis that has been provided on Russia thus far, my argument predicts that

Russia would exercise higher degrees of psychological cyberwarfare capability. As a nondemocracy

that is militarily inferior to its primary rival, Russia has both the need to establish asymmetric

advantages and the capacity to do so without concern to the worries of its citizens. Beyond the

observations of my argument, Russia was coded as a high degree of use on the independent variable

for two specific reasons: 1) Specific attacks on the United States, and 2) The embrace of information

warfare as an asymmetric tactic within Russian military doctrine.

        Arguably the foremost example of strategic psychological cyberwarfare is the extent to which

Russia interfered with the 2016 United States presidential election. The Russian government created

an entire government agency, the Internet Research Agency (IRA), to create troll farms on US

servers for various social media sites that specifically targeted controversial groups and topics for

exploitation within public discourse (McCombie et al. 2020). Troll farms are organized groups on

the Internet that congregate for the purpose of influencing public opinion by spreading deliberately

false information. The IRA created these entities on US servers to buy advertising space, organize

15

online and real-world rallies, and pit opposing opinions of a controversial topic against each other

(McCombie et al. 2020). While the overall electoral impact was minimal, the real effect of the

interference was the delegitimization of the US electoral system and the perception that Russia had

significant influence over American decision making. The results were a number of grand jury

indictments, a two-year special counsel investigation, and immeasurable damage to the American

political ecosystem that has only become increasingly partisan ever since. Russia’s characteristic

denial of this covert action, despite being confirmed by every US intelligence agency6, only furthered

the qualitative impact of Russian influence by creating additional confusion and public mistrust in

American institutions. Despite being one example in a long list of Russian/Soviet attempts to

subvert American public authority via the electoral system, the use of troll farms by the IRA during

the 2016 US presidential election undoubtedly rises to the required threshold for consideration as a

high use case within the first criterion of evaluation on the dependent variable.

         Like many states since the dawn of 21st century, Russia has incorporated the use of emerging

technologies like cyber within military doctrine. In fact, Aleksandr Burutin, while he was the Deputy

Chief of the General Staff to the Russian president, gave a speech in February of 2008 titled “Wars

of the Future Will Be Information Wars” (Carr 2011). Unlike the United States, Russia has come to

view cyber as a single tool within the broader category of information warfare that is exercised

across all spectrums of warfare rather than a dimension of conflict in and of itself (White 2018). This

view is predicated on the idea that the Russian government views information itself as a medium to

shape individual and collective perceptions, and cyber is tool to facilitate information superiority so

as to control the narrative in a given situation (White 2018). Russian cyber activities during the 2008

Russia-Georgia War solidify this doctrine in practice. Through Russia’s access to an army of civilian

6
 See the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 Election:
https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/publications/committee-findings-2017-intelligence-community-assessment

16

hackers, official Georgian government websites and communications infrastructures experienced

massive DDoS attacks that cut off their ability to communicate during the early stages of the

conflict. This gave the Russian government the ability to shape the international narrative during

that crucial juncture of the conflict and allow them to exercise qualitative superiority over the

situation (White 2018). In addition to its cyber doctrine in practice, the clear Russian embrace of

cyber as a medium of psychological manipulation and narrative control assuredly rises to the

necessary threshold for assessment as a high use case on the dependent variable.

        Based on a widely-attributed example of strategic psychological cyberwarfare capability use

and the explicit embrace of cyber as an asymmetric tool to control operational and strategic

narratives via psychological manipulation, Russia is patently assigned a high degree of use on the

dependent variable.

                    ii. China

        The People’s Republic of China (PRC) is a nondemocratic and militarily weaker power

relative to its primary geopolitical in the United States. As one of the prominent cyber powers on the

international stage, China has created and continues to operate the world’s most pervasive campaign

of cyber espionage (Carr 2011, Daniels 2017). China acknowledges the technical superiority of the

United States, and accordingly China has embraced cyberspace as a medium to make up for that

technological gap by stealing intellectual property (Carr 2011). In 2009, the Munke Center for

International Studies in Toronto released a report that attributed Chinese state hackers to malware

that was actively saving, storing, and transmitting data placed on government information

technology infrastructures in India, Taiwan, Tibet, Japan, and the United States among others back

to Chinese servers (Walton et al. 2009). To this day, China continues to penetrate the networks of

US defense agencies and contractors to steal intellectual property for technological and economic

17

gain (Carr 2011, Daniels 2017). Despite the obvious employment of considerable cyber power, the

absence of verified examples where strategic psychological cyberwarfare was utilized complicate the

strict categorization of China as a high use case on the dependent variable. Regardless, after

assessing Chinese regime type and relative military power, I will discuss how China’s embrace of an

aggressive cyber doctrine that is conducive to using strategic psychological cyberwarfare

substantiates the argument that China utilizes a medium-high degree of strategic psychological

cyberwarfare capability.

        Similar to regime type in the Russian context, the vast majority of political scientists do not

need significant persuasion that China is a nondemocracy. In fact, the PRC is the antithesis of a

democratic state by modern regime classification standards. Among many others, a one-party

political system and the absence of democratic elections are two fundamental features of Chinese

politics that classify the PRC as a nondemocracy.

        While there are several local political parties throughout China, all parties are kept under the

leadership and supremacy of the singular national party, the Chinese Communist Party or CCP

(Shigong 2010). The supremacy of the CCP over all other parties is the fundamental core of the

Chinese government largely because the CCP was the body that prevailed in the Chinese

Communist Revolution in 1949 to establish the People’s Republic of China (Shigong 2010).

Accordingly, all local political parties are nationally controlled, and their existence is affirmed only by

their cooperation with the ideology and demands of the CCP. Further, the absence of national

democratic elections prevents citizens from choosing their representation, and the only pathway for

turnover at the highest echelons of Chinese politics is promotion within the CCP (Guo 2007). Both

the existence of a single-party system and the absence of democratic elections relegate the PRC to

nondemocracy by nearly all standard criteria, including the criteria recognized in this research from

18

Chiebub, Gandhi, and Vreeland. Effectively, the CCP is able to pursue any action or measure it

wants without regard for the passions and concerns of its citizens.

        As a state that has seen its geopolitical power soar since economic integration with the

developed world in the late 1900s, China’s regional and global military power is beginning to rival

that of the United States. In summarizing a 2019 Chinese defense white paper, Anthony H.

Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies argues: “[The white paper] flags the

fact that America and China are now competing superpowers, and that China’s growing military

forces are developing to the point where they will be able to challenge the United States”

(Cordesman 2019: 1). As its established primary rival, I will discuss Chinese military power relative

to the United States.

        According to the National Material Capabilities database from the Correlates of War Project,

the PRC received a CINC score in 2012 of 0.218166 to the United States’ 0.139352. As such, the

PRC had an average access to almost 22% of capability within the international system in 2012 as

compared to the United States’ nearly 14% (Correlates of War 2017). As discussed earlier, there are

scholars that disagree with the validity of CINC to estimate capability due to the fact that highly

populated states will receive inflated capability based on high total and dense urban populations

(Beckley 2018). As the most populous country in the world with several of the largest urban

populations globally, I find it highly likely that population positively inflated PRC’s 2012 CINC

score. Material power indicators like GDP per capita that check for population (Beckley 2018)

indicate that China’s national material power is likely lower than the US: data from the World Banks

shows that China’s 2017 GDP per capita was a meager $8,826.99 (USD) to the United States’

$59,531.66 (USD).

        China’s population has historically inflated CINC scores during periods of Chinese history

where the implications of their CINC scores do not make logical sense. For example, between 1911

19

and 1949 China was largely an underdeveloped state that was dealing with civil conflict between the

nationalists and communists following the fall of the Qing dynasty while also suffering a terrible

defeat in the First Sino-Japanese War. During the same time, the Soviet Union engaged successfully

in both World Wars and emerged as one of the two major global powers in the post-WWII era.

Conventional logic would predict Soviet capability to be much higher than China’s, but from 1911-

1949 China held an average CINC score of 11.5% while the Soviets held an average score of 12.8%.

Logically, one would expect the disparity in capability between these two states to be much larger

during this time period. The small CINC disparity between Russia and China during this time period

is a testament to the fact that China’s CINC score is inflated by its exceptionally large total

population. After checking for population’s effect, it is assessed that the United States likely

exercises a material power advantage over China.

        Given the provided analysis on the independent variables within the context of China, my

argument would predict a higher degree of use on the dependent variable. Due to the likelihood that

a rising and developing China is at a smaller military disadvantage relative to the United States than

Russia is, a higher degree of use is associated with the implications drawn from China’s score on the

independent variables. However, a lower degree of higher use is warranted for two specific reasons

derived from observations performed on the dependent variable: 1) There are no attributable cyber

activities to China that can be considered an act of strategic psychological cyberwarfare, but its

extensive campaign of cyber espionage could be easily re-configured for such capabilities; and 2)

Chinese military doctrine since the 1990s has begun to embrace concepts that are consistent with the

development of strategies for the use of strategic psychological cyberwarfare.

        Currently, there are no significant studies that have proven examples of Chinese cyber

activities containing elements of strategic psychological cyberwarfare. Primarily, the PRC has tailored

its cyber capability to supplement technological and economic development via cyber espionage

20

(Carr 2011). Chinese state hackers have targeted US defense agencies and private contractors by

stealing troves of data and intellectual property critical to research and development in areas like

missile technology and naval warfare (Carr 2011). These activities may not strictly fall under

elements of strategic psychological cyberwarfare, but the PRC has effectively demonstrated the

cyber capability necessary to pursue such a strategy if desired. Interestingly enough, there are

unverified reports of Chinese-government linked social media accounts spreading targeted

disinformation campaigns through troll farms to influence the outcome of the 2020 Taiwan

presidential election (Allen-Ebrahimian 2020). Although it may be proven differently in the future, it

is assessed that China’s cyber activities do not exhibit elements of strategic psychological

cyberwarfare and do not meet the specified criteria to be considered a high-use case within the first

criterion of the dependent variable.

        Chinese military doctrine began to take note of high tech’s integration within military

operations after the United States secured an overwhelming victory in the First Gulf War against an

Iraqi force who received its arms and implements from Russia and China (Carr 2011). Chinese

military strategy accordingly adopted the concept of ‘informatization,’ which refers to the application

of information technology to command, intelligence, training, and weapons systems (Kanwal 2009).

This concept also inspired the PRC to raise an ‘army’ of private citizen hackers who can facilitate

hacking campaigns against China’s adversaries (Kanwal 2009). Interpretively, such a strategy can be

easily recalibrated to wage strategic psychological cyberwarfare via online troll farms. Broadly, the

PRC views developing capability in cyberspace as a way to level the playing field against the United

States, who exercises technological superiority over China (Kanwal 2009). Further, experts like Kate

Farriss have argued that China has embraced an increasingly broad view of information warfare to

emphasize aspects like psychological operations and deception (Carr 2011). While a lack of

significant attributable examples does not allow an evaluation of Chinese cyber doctrine in practice,

21

it is clearly understood that China is embracing military doctrine that is supportive of psychological

manipulation and deception in cyberspace.

        In addition to the fact that Chinese military doctrine is embracing cyberspace as an

asymmetric tool to facilitate operations that are deceptive and psychological in nature, the

implications drawn from the PRC contextualized within both independent variables support the

assignment of a higher degree of use on the dependent variable. However, the lack of significant

attributable examples and the fact that Chinese military disadvantages relative to the United States

are lower than that of Russia prompt the assignment of a medium-high degree of use on the

dependent variable for the People’s Republic of China.

                   iii. India

        India is a democratic state that exercises a relative military superiority over its primary rival,

Pakistan. Despite considerable conventional military capability and consistent cyber conflict with

Pakistan since 1998, India’s state cyber power is rather underdeveloped compared to other cases in

this study (Carr 2011). After discovering a Chinese variant of the Stuxnet worm on government

infrastructure and suffering multiple defacements to its most secure government website from the

Pakistan Cyber Army in 2010 (Carr 2011), India has been attempting to develop capabilities to

secure its domestic cyberspace by improving its cyber defenses (Hathaway et al. 2016). The 2013

National Cyber Security Strategy was designed to give India a visible path toward such a goal, but an

ill-defined implementation plan has delayed many of the deliverables that the 2013 strategy called for

(Hathaway et al. 2016). Currently, India is still conceptualizing how it plans to develop capabilities

and infrastructure to consolidate its cyber power. India is therefore assigned a low degree of use on

the dependent variable for India in Table 1.1 due to the absence of significant state cyber capability,

much less even utilizing capabilities with which the dependent variable is concerned.

22

        Similar in that most contemporary scholars implicitly characterize Russia and China as

nondemocracies, it is a relatively obvious reflection that India is a democratic state. Historically,

scholars point to India’s colonial experience before 1947 as catalyst for the cultivation of democratic

ideals within broad national ideology (Mehta 2012). Today India is a vibrant and competitive

parliamentary democracy whose politics are marked not by shared common interests but the ideal

that holding the state accountable is to gain access to its power and resources (Mehta 2012). The

existence of intense political competition among parties is a testament to the fact that citizens of

India are empowered to engage in national and regional politics. Institutionally, frequent competitive

elections and a constitutional separation of powers enables incumbent turnover and provides

citizens with a legitimate check on government power (Mehta 2012). Considerable voter turnout and

civilian control of the military are further indications that India meets not only broad requirements

to be a democracy but specific criteria such as that articulated by Cheibub, Gandhi, and Vreeland.

On the provided basis it is assessed that India is a democratic state whose citizens have an active

role in holding the state accountable and determining its future.

        The 1947 partition of India that resulted in the creation of the independently sovereign

Indian and Pakistani states created a lasting rivalry between the two powers who would both

eventually become armed with nuclear capabilities (Majeed 2013). Since then, on three separate

occasions the fierce India-Pakistan rivalry has resulted in full-scale war and startling nuclear

conflagration in 1998 over the historically-disputed Kashmiri peninsula (Majeed 2013). Long-lasting

disputes over territory remain and increasing Pakistani military cooperation with states India

considers to be hostile, such as China, present the most direct threat to India’s national security

(Iqbal & Amin 2016). Given that Pakistan is considered to be India’s primary rival, I will assess

India’s military power relative to Pakistan.

23

        Data from the National Material Capabilities databases suggest that India exercises a

considerable material power advantage with a 2012 CINC score of 0.0809 (8.09%) as compared to

Pakistan’s 0.0145 (1.45%) (Correlates of War 2017). According to these figures, in 2012 India had an

average access to capability within the international system that was nearly eight times higher than

that of Pakistan. Using data from the World Bank, net measures of capability reinforce the

conclusion drawn from CINC as Pakistan’s 2018 GDP per capita of $1,482.40 (USD) was

considerably lower than India’s 2018 GDP per capita at $2,010 (USD). Ultimately, scholars have

pointed to a larger economic base and a lasting three-decade expansion of military spending to be

the principal basis for India’s conventional superiority over Pakistan (Iqbal & Amin 2016).

        In considering India’s assigned score on both independent variables, I predict lower degrees

of use on the dependent variable. As a democratic and militarily superior state relative to its primary

rival, India does not have the option to bypass the passions of its citizens nor the impetus to

establish asymmetric advantages over Pakistan. Beyond the implications that be drawn from the

independent variables, the required observations made on the dependent variable substantiate

India’s assignment as a low use case for two specific reasons: 1) There are no historic or

contemporary examples of utilizing the required capabilities as India is a rather underdeveloped

cyber power; and 2) State-level efforts aimed at developing national capability have been historically

insufficient.

        Despite being a country commonly associated with modern technological advancement,

India’s national defensive and offensive cyber capabilities are significantly underdeveloped

(Hathaway et al. 2016). It goes without saying that there are no examples of India using cyber

capabilities that are the focus of this research, but there is serious question as to what cyber

capabilities India does possess. Among others, a series of cyberattacks on India’s National Security

Council and Central Bureau of Investigation in 2010 woke India’s state officials up to the reality that

24

an unsecure cyberspace contains troubling implications for domestic and national security

(Hathaway et al. 2016). Accordingly, India has set forth a broad initiative to develop cyber capability,

secure domestic cyberspace, and increase awareness: the 2013 National Cyber Security Strategy

(Hathaway et al. 2016). The 2013 strategy called for a variety of action items and goals aimed at

primarily developing India’s cyber defense and attack resiliency (Hathaway et al. 2016). Despite clear

goals and intentions, a severe lack of implementation planning blurred the lines of responsibility

between ministries and created a substantial gap between expectations and actual national readiness

to confront India’s cyber threats (Hathaway et al. 2016). One of the central demands of the 2013

strategy was to create a central coordinating body to oversee the strategy’s development (Hathaway

et al. 2016), and this concept later became the idea behind India’s sluggish and so far incomplete

creation of the Defence Cyber Agency (DCA). As of October 2019, state officials in India are still

conceptualizing how the DCA is going to function and whether or not it will cooperate or be fully

integrated with the Indian Armed Forces (Chawla 2019).

        Based on these observations it is clear that India is in the early stages of developing its state

capability in cyberspace. Combined with the fact that results in capability or doctrine development

thus far have not materialized, India’s underdeveloped cyber power requires an assignment of a low

degree of use on the dependent variable.

                   iv. United States of America

        As a democracy whose military power is substantially greater than its primary rival’s, the

United States of America is arguably the premier cyber power on the international scene in terms of

the predominance and complexity of its capabilities. Historically, the United States has focused the

core development and use of its cyber capabilities for CNA operations (Carr 2011). Unlike Russia

and China who see information warfare as an asymmetric tool, the United States has historically

25

conceptualized information warfare as a way to harden existing cyber and conventional deterrence

with adversaries (Carr 2011). In all likelihood, the most complex computer network attack ever

created was developed by the United States and implanted by Israel (Lindsay 2013). In 2010, Iranian

officials noticed malfunctions with internal computers at the Natanz uranium enrichment facility

and eventually discovered a piece of malware – which became known as Stuxnet – that was slowly

sending thousands of uranium centrifuges at Natanz into overdrive so that the centrifuges were

incapable of producing viable weapons-grade uranium (Lindsay 2013). The attack on Natanz

sparked considerable fear among the international community as to the potential for cyberattacks to

produce kinetic effects. Despite obvious capability for CNAs, there are no examples that indicate

the United States has utilized strategic psychological cyberwarfare capabilities. This data point is

further complicated by the fact that the Trump administration is re-posturing American cyber

doctrine to embrace a more offensive-minded strategy when it comes to information warfare.

Considering these conflicting observations and the implications drawn from the independent

variables, the United States was properly assigned a medium-high degree of use on the dependent

variable in Table 1.1.

        Compared to the other cases in this research, it is the most obvious that the United States

meets minimalist standards to be considered a democracy. American citizens can vote in a myriad of

local, state, and national contested elections on a consistent basis to determine their governmental

representation. Further, the succession of office takes place according to institutional guidelines.

Beyond what is obvious electorally and institutionally, the overall body of research on public opinion

in the United States supports the idea that public opinion matters in American policymaking

(Shapiro 2011). According to Shapiro, the overall takeaways of public opinion research in the US

paints “a sanguine picture of democracy” (Shapiro 2011: 999). Given that regularly occurring and

contested elections have been a historically consistent feature of American politics and research

26

indicates that public opinion plays an important role in policy formulation, it is assessed that the

United States is a democratic state that is beholden to the passions of its citizens.

         The end of the Cold War and post-9/11 engagements reorganized American strategic

thinking away from prioritizing great power competition at the top of its security agenda. However,

the rise of China is now ushering in a new American embrace of great power competition7. In his

2001 book The Tragedy of Great Power Politics John J. Mearsheimer predicted that China and the United

States are destined to be rivals because Chinese economic growth will eventually translate into

military capability that will threaten American hegemony in Asia Pacific (Mearsheimer 2001). Given

mounting economic disputes, China’s aggression in the South China Sea and opposing political

ideologies, it is assessed that the United States considers China to be its primary geopolitical rival.

         Data from the National Material Capabilities database shows that China had average access

of 0.2181 (21.81%) to capability within the international system while the United States had an

average access of 0.1393 (13.93%) in 2012 (Correlates of War 2017). This interpretation mistakenly

implies that the United States is a weaker military power than China for the same reasons provided

in the corresponding section of the China case. It is highly likely that China’s CINC scores, thereby

its military power, are inflated due to its enormous total population. The interpretation that China is

a superior military power to the United States is even more misleading when American GDP per

capita is almost six times the size of China’s (World Bank 2018). Additionally, a significant number

of scholars consider the United States to be militarily superior. According to Carr, the key filter

informing and guiding Chinese security decision-making is American military superiority (Carr

2011). Brooks argues that a significant disparity in military capability is one of the reasons why the

United States does not immediately need to substantially increase its military efforts in response to

7
  In the Introduction of The Trump Administration’s 2018 National Security Strategy the administration articulates that
renewed competition with China and Russia “require the United States to rethink the policies of the last two decades”
(2018 NSS: 3)

27

China’s economic growth (Brooks et al. 2012). Interpretively, the China threat does not

contemporarily require the United States to develop capability and strategy outside of existing

deterrence.

        Considering the observations made thus far on the United States, I predict a lower degree of

use on the dependent variable given that the United States is a democratic state who is militarily

superior to its primary geopolitical rival China. Beyond the implications that can be drawn from the

independent variables, the United States was coded as a medium-high use case on the dependent

variable based on the following observations: 1) There are no public examples of the United States

utilizing cyber capabilities whose explicit goal is strategic psychological manipulation, although the

United States has a history of using tactical psychological capabilities; and 2) The Trump

administration is embracing a cyber doctrine that creates a more aggressive American posture

toward information warfare and cyberspace more broadly.

        The United States has utilized psychological operations and information warfare in a number

of capacities since WWII. During the Cold War, the United States adopted the use of information

warfare and tactical propaganda to counter the ideological threat of Communism that registered

below acceptable thresholds of escalation (Robinson et al. 2018). The core of this effort during the

Cold War was the 1953 creation of the United States Information Agency (USIA). USIA was

dedicated to characterizing American policy and ideology in a credible and appealing light to foreign

audiences until it was disbanded in 1999 (Robinson et al. 2018). During the both Iraq wars,

information operations were largely used in a tactical capacity to undermine the authority of specific

leaders and spread disinformation (Robinson et al. 2018). For example, the United States released

photographs of Saddam Hussein in 2003 that depicted him in a broken and disorderly condition so

as to undermine his support and lend credence to Coalition claims that he had been captured

(Robinson et al. 2018). Given these examples it is quite apparent that the United States is willing to