Cheerleading in Cyberspace: How the American Public Judges Attribution Claims for Cyberattacks

Abstract

How does the US public evaluate claims attributing responsibility for a cyberattack? It seems plausible that political factors complicate how the US public judges attribution claims. In this article, we collect original survey data and use two survey experiments to explore this subject. Specifically, we analyze how cues and endorsements from partisan, intelligence, and independent non-governmental actors affect public confidence in attribution claims regarding the identity of cyberaggressors and support for retribution. We find evidence of polarization, particularly regarding perceptions of Russia's threat in cyberspace. To uncover whether this polarization results from partisan cheerleading or more sincere motivations, we conduct two experiments regarding political factors and attribution claims. In the first experiment, we find that respondents respond similarly to independent observers’ endorsements of attribution claims but that Democrats appear to respond strategically in a test of the link between attribution and retribution rather than endorse a proposal by then-President Trump. In the second experiment, we find that partisans respond similarly to intelligence and independent experts' evaluations of attribution claims, and that both respond much more favorably to independent experts than the intelligence community. Superficial polarization thus turns out to look more like partisan cheerleading.