Weapons of Mass Disruption: How Small States Use Cyber to Resist Larger Powers

Abstract

This paper examines the ways in which small states can engage larger actors using cyberattacks. Since the end of both World Wars, small states have increased in both numbers and relevance, with strong international institutions and norms against military aggression allowing small states to gain legitimacy by the very act of participating in the international system. However, although small states can now do more than simply choose a larger, stronger benefactor to ward off their enemies, they still cannot defy larger powers outright due to the stilldramatic difference in capabilities between them. Those small states interested in confronting larger rivals can use cyber capabilities to address the difference. Cyber capabilities differ from conventional capabilities in that, by utilizing internet connections between two or more different computers, they can bypass geography and the conventional military capabilities of larger actors entirely, allowing small states to gain advantages over them and undercutting their attempts at coercion. Nonetheless, scholars have been slow to incorporate small states and cyber capabilities into international relations, due to a lack of clear criteria for “smallness” and technical barriers to entry preventing more widespread study of cyber. This work addresses these difficulties and demonstrates that small states are able to accomplish their strategic goals using cyber capabilities against larger rivals, forcing them and others to pay them attention when they otherwise would not; though larger actors may have greater cyber capabilities, the fragmented nature of cyber defense means that civilian, financial, and infrastructural targets are still vulnerable to cyberattack.