The United States

This chapter analyzes US cyber strategy and coercion against rival states. First, the chapter situates the US approach to cyber in the larger intellectual history surrounding a preference for precision strike and how it alters the character of war for US strategists. Second, the chapter connects this logic to the emergence of information warfare concepts in the early 1990s, when US practitioners began to integrate cyber into larger visions of precision strike. Next, the chapter shifts to outline the American approach to cyber coercion. We offer a portrait of how the leading cyber power uses covert coercive cyber actions to shape rival behavior in the digital domain. These insights highlight the importance of the reconnaissance-strike as a strategic construct. They also demonstrate the US approach toward cyber espionage and turning defensive measures into attack vectors through deception.