The CIENS held its research workshop on Tuesday 13 May, during which Marie-Gabrielle Bertran, a post-doctoral cyber researcher, presented her research on the history of strategic thinking and more particularly on the links between cyber and nuclear, exploring the possibility of considering cyber as a tool for deterrence and nuclear counter-proliferation.
By reading Anglo-Saxon authors such as Martin Libicki, an American academic and expert in cyber deterrence, she reviewed the points of convergence and the differences.
Cyber is considered to be at the lower end of the conflict spectrum, while nuclear is at the higher end (beyond conventional warfare). Cyber is characterised by frequent and repeated use, while nuclear is the domain of non-use par excellence.
However, thinkers on ‘cyber deterrence’ have tended to draw an analogy between nuclear and cyber because of this strategic representation, which situates the two domains as being outside the realm of war, even though they are part of the conflict between states.
The Stuxnet malware programme
Historical and situational factors also lead us to think about the link between these two fields, such as the construction of the Internet, a digital communications network that was intended to ensure the persistence of US military communications in the event of a nuclear strike, and the case of the Stuxnet programme.
This malicious programme designed by the NSA and used against uranium enrichment centrifuges in Iran between 2007 and 2010 was perhaps intended to dissuade Iran from developing its nuclear capabilities, or at least to slow down the process. Cyber may have been used here as a counter-proliferation tool.
These reflections are intended to feed into CIENS’ third line of research, which focuses on new conflicts and the future of deterrence, with the following sub-areas: 1) cyber and outer space, 2) technologies, AI and new risks of escalation, and 3) the future of war and deterrence.
The next session, on 27 May, will feature a presentation by Eve Benhamou, a doctoral student in the history of international relations at the Université Sorbonne Nouvelle, who is preparing a thesis on French policy towards the Israeli-Palestinian conflict between 2002 and 2017.
