Just in the unlikely event of disarmament negotiations between cyber super powers in the future. You can count nukes and explosive power, but you can't count cyber weapons.
A new deterrence doctrine,nobody knows what will happen.
It has already evolved. I don't want to rehash everything here, but I wrote something that made the rounds at the Munich security conference some years back and the bottom line is deterrence to massive cyberattack is via nuclear weapons.
Do you like Moscow? Ok great. Keep the lights on stateside.
That's the policy.
I know it isn't what HN likes to hear but it's not like it doesn't exist. There is a reason the nuclear football has a switch to disable the internet for at least the USA and probably Canada too because of NORAD, etc. Even Matt Tait (aka, pwnallthethings) has talked about the "strategic threats" from the cyber domain of war at a completely unclassified conference in Miami and he ended the talk with a mushroom cloud up. I believe it was the keynote, but I can't quite remember.
I am also after this info. I believe the parent poster given his high reputation, I just hope he can point us to some sort of article about it as google is failing me
I like the idea of adding rather vague threats, compared to kinetic weapons, with often not clearly or quickly identifiable causers/perpetrators as a possible justification for a nuclear weapon use.
It's hard to count HUMINT assets too, and yet it is the subject of negotiations.
Biological weapons have been similar and are perhaps most analogous. Though, you can offer tours of your facilities and it's harder to hide large fermenters and the like. But it's much harder to identify offensive weapons research than it is offensive production.
It's not terribly difficult to hide nuclear warheads themselves. Their launch systems, however, require a significant amount of infrastructure that is usually easily visible. As is the infrastructure for building the warheads.
A new deterrence doctrine,nobody knows what will happen.