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Thread: The Dog That Didn’t Bark: Why No China-Japan Hacking War Over Diaoyutai/Senkaku (Yet)?

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[quote=SEVEN11,477118]Second, widespread website defacement/political hacking may be more likely when there is a serious power differential between the two sides. With a big gap, the more powerful state is fairly confident that it dictates outcomes at any level of conflict and assumes that the weaker state will not escalate. Taking websites down is low risk. For the weaker side, cyber is an asymmetric weapon that has the added benefit of plausible deniability. It is also relatively confident that the other side does not escalate since it will look like it is overreacting.

With China and Japan, the two sides are near competitors in conventional military strength and the stakes are higher. Neither side can be confident that it controls the escalation ladder or that it can manage signaling. As with the case of the citizen who tore off the flag from the car of the ambassador, website defacement can pour fuel on the fire when the two sides would like to start reeling the conflict back in. Moreover, as Evan Osnos points out, outbreaks of nationalism are a qualitatively different phenomena now that China has over 500 million Internet users.

To strengthen the second argument, it would be nice to see some evidence of the Chinese or Japanese governments coordinating attacks, and eventually signaling to hackers that attacks should not happen or should stop. The role and position of patriotic hackers remains unclear, and the argument could quickly become ad hoc. Hacking between Japan and Korea may be an exception to the power differential rule, one grounded in the fact that there is very little chance of military conflict between two important U.S. security partners.

Cyber conflict is new so there are relatively few cases to study. This is changing, but if analysis is going to truly progress it will have to include this instance between China and Japan, an instance of non-conflict.

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