Issue Brief: War Games Redux - CyberThreats and US-Russian strategic stability

The possibility that hackers might break into nuclear command and control facilities, compromise early warning or firing systems, or even cause the launch of nuclear weapons, has become disturbingly real. While this challenge will impact all nuclear-armed states, it appears particularly acute for the United States and Russia given their large, diverse, and highly alerted nuclear forces. In the current discouraging situation, new cyber threats are both exacerbating the already strained U.S.-Russia strategic balance – particularly the perceived surety of nuclear forces – and, at the same time, creating new vulnerabilities and problems that might be exploited by a third party. In this Issue Brief, Andrew Futter analyzes these dynamics and their impact on arms control and possible future nuclear reductions and offers a number of concrete suggestions on how to address this complex interplay.

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Abstract

The development of offensive cyber capabilities is creating a range of new challenges and problems for the safe, secure, and reliable management of U.S. and Russian nuclear forces, and for the U.S.-Russian strategic relationship more broadly. In particular, they increase the risk that hackers might gain access to nuclear C2 systems and either spoof them into believing an attack is underway or facilitate the launch/detonation of a nuclear weapon.

While the most logical response to this challenge would appear to be de-alerting and reducing U.S. and Russian nuclear forces, so as to minimize the risk of terrorists or non-state actors breaking into C2 systems and precipitating a launch, this is unlikely to happen any time soon. Essentially neither the United States nor Russia feels inclined to move away from launch-on-warning modes. This is particularly acute for Russia, when U.S. cyber capabilities are combined with concerns about ballistic missile defenses, new conventional precision strike technologies, and the increasing problems in the Russian command and control infrastructure.