The Geopolitics of Cyberspace

Over the last five years, cyber operations have become a more central part of regional conflict and great power competition. State-backed hackers have mapped critical infrastructure, disrupted democratic systems with disinformation campaigns, held information hostage, and stolen personal data, proprietary information, and state secrets. The international rules governing these actions have failed to keep pace, and the risks to international stability are further heightened with the rapid emergence of technologies that could change the strategic landscape such as artificial intelligence and quantum information sciences. In The Hacked World Order, I describe this new conflict, explain how rising cyber power states are developing, and suggest a set of policies that improve the United States' ability to advance its interests in and through cyberspace. As director of CFR's Digital and Cyberspace Policy Program, I continue to track these issues. The program has also addressed state norms of cyber behavior, information sharing, Russian online disinformation, Chinese cyber espionage, botnets, deepfakes, and other topics through updates to the Cyber Operations Tracker, a roundtable series on Cyber Conflict and Cybersecurity, the Cyber Brief Series, and analysis on the program’s blog, Net Politics.