Entanglement in Cyberspace: Minding the Deterrence Gap

ABSTRACT Conventional models of deterrence focus on the ability to deter adversaries through ex-ante threats that impose ex-post costs or through the elevation of ex-ante costs through strategies that deny. The imposition of costs on adversaries in cyberspace is complex and the establishment of deterrence by threat or denial is constrained by problems associated with resource asymmetries, attribution, and a diverse set of actors with overlapping capabilities. Due to these challenges, conventional models of deterrence have seen limited success in cyberspace. Rather than building more robust defenses or threatening retaliatory actions, entanglement within cyberspace offers an alternative approach that might affect the decision-matrix of adversary states. This paper examines the concept of entanglement as a way of altering how states conceptualize offensive actions in cyberspace and works toward building mutual interdependencies to make actions that disrupt, degrade or deny within cyberspace undesirable.