By Richard Stiennon, Chief Research Analyst, IT-Harvest

Martin Libicki’s “Cyberdeterrence and Cyber War” has been released as a RAND monograph and in book form on Amazon.

This is the first cogent look at the efficacy of waging strategic cyber war and I hope will serve to slow the rhetoric coming from the US Defense community about acquiring cyber offensive capability.

I wrote before about the National Resource Council’s report, Technology, Policy, Law, and Ethics Regarding US Acquisition and Use of Cyberattack Capabilities.

That report explored many of the same difficulties addressed by Libicki but came to different conclusions.

An introductory statement from Libicki:

All this might lead to a belief that the historic constructs of war—force, offense, defense, deterrence—can be applied to cyberspace with little modification.

Not so.

Instead, cyberspace must be understood in its own terms, and policy decisions being made for these and other new commands must reflect such understanding.

Attempts to transfer policy constructs from other forms of warfare will not only f