SPEECH CON

Resolved: the Benefits of US Government Offensive Cber Operations Outweigh the Harms

New Con:
Introduction: To begin, judges, I would like to establish what this debate is about. This is not a debate of whether or not these cyber operations are a “necessary evil” that the United States must engage in. This debate is instead a cost benefit analysis of whether or not the benefits of offensive cyber operations outweigh the costs. Of course, OCO’s are a weapon of war, and all weapons have a negative effects, regardless of their “necessity” For example, some may claim that the nuclear bombing of Nagasaki was “necessary”,
but nobody claims that it was a “good” thing to do from a world point of view. It is therefore impossible to argue that the benefits of a weapon outweighs the costs. We will prove that on balance OCO’s are more harmful than beneficial, both though lack of solvency and risks of escalation that far outweigh whatever benefits may be rendered by using a cyber operation.

Contention 1: Cyber Warfare is a Critical Step Towards Decreasing Nuclear Deterrence and Potentially Starting a Conventional war: While some may claim that cyberwar will stay within the domain of cyberspace, a primary concern of officials is that cyber attacks could potentially escalate into a physical conflict in what is known as “cross domain escalation” (CPO magazine ‘19). Even limited objective “defending forward” attacks, such as the planting of un triggered viruses in an adversary’s networks, could be mis interpreted and lead to inadvertent escalation (CATO Insititute ‘19). Examples of “cross domain escalation” have yet to surface within the US, but this is because we have yet to truly embrace offensive cyber operations. The Israelian Defense Force in 2019 launched a missile against Hamas after they were penetrated by a supposed cyber attack. The United States, in fact, has itself demonstrated a willingness to escalate cyber operations; in 2015, the United States launched a drone strike with a mission to kill ISIL hacker Junaid Hussain, who had committed multiple cyber offenses against the US (Forbes ‘19). Escalation may even be possible though “false flag” attacks, where an actor who wants war between the US and china, for example, would fake an American cyber attack to make CHina respond, and the situation escalates from there (Washington post, 2019). If the United States actively participates in cyber warfare, there is no plausible way the United States could say “No, that isn’t something we do”. Cross domain escalation even has the potential to reduce nuclear deterrence, a definite harm from any angle. Considering how flexible cyberspace and computers are, this is a frighteningly plausible scenario. All of these different possible avenues of escalation could lead to a war, even a nuclear war, with China, Russia, or North Korea. The UNited States is currently not at any risk of a large scale conflict. To paint a picture of what such a war might look like, Tikhonova in 2019 states that “Russia would wipe the US off the face of the earth” and Masters in 2019 states that a nuclear war would lower temperatures by a degree Celsius. This would have devastating effects, and even raising the risk of nuclear confrontation a tenth of a percent is an unacceptable risk, yet this is the risk the US is forced to accept when they run unthinking into cyber operations heedless of potential consequences.

Contention 2: Benefits of Stand-Alone OCO’s have not in fact provided a long term solution despite their costs:
	 Now that we have reviewed the potential for OCO’s to potentially lead to nuclear disaster, it is now prudent to review what Cyber operations have gained us, and the answer is absolutely nothing. Student, a widely publicized attack that partially destroyed Iran’s nuclear capabilities, cost 100 million dollars according to the ib times in 2014. If we examine what it actually accomplished in the long term, however, we find that it had no long term strategic affect, as we are still dealing with Iran’s nuclear threat even today. In fact, the New York Times reports in 2019 that Iran has now resolved to break the rules set in place by earlier agreements, despite Stuxnets affects. According to the CATO institute in 2019, this lack of solvency is true for most cyber attacks, with only 4% of cyber attacks ever actually producing a political concession to date. CATO further explains that the operations that did produce political concessions required “Other instruments of national power, such as diplomatic negotiations, economic sanctions, and military threats”. It is quite clear that cyber operations are incapable of independently producing decisive strategic affect. To more broadly address the financial burden of cyber attacks, Boyd in 2019 states that the DOD requested 9.6 billion dollars in cyber funding for “cyber defense and operations”. (Nextgov.com). If we consider that only 4% of cyber operations are successful, this is a terrible return on investment for a country that wastes too much money as it is.

FInal THoughts: TO summarize, we find that cyber operations in the status quo hardly come with any benefits, while endangering the lives of millions of people and costing the United States large amounts of money. Their low success rate and potential to escalate into full scale war clearly proves that on balance benefits of  United States offensive cyber operations do not outweigh the harms.

Cards:
CATO 2019: https://www.cato.org/publications/policy-analysis/myth-cyber-offense-case-restraint
Card 1: Even limited-objective cyber offensive action defined as “defending forward” can be misinterpreted and lead to inadvertent escalation. As the historian Cathal Nolan puts it, “intrusions into a state’s strategically important networks pose serious risks and are therefore inherently threatening.”
Card 2:
To date, cyber operations do not appear to produce concessions by themselves. Offense, whether disruption, espionage, or degradation, does not produce lasting results sufficient to change the behavior of a target state. Only 11 operations (4 percent) appear to have produced even a temporary political concession, with the majority associated with sustained, multiyear counterespionage operations by U.S. operatives usually targeting China or Russia. Furthermore, each of these operations involved not just cyber actions, but other instruments of national power, such as diplomatic negotiations, economic sanctions, and military threats.

CPO Magazine 2019: https://www.cpomagazine.com/cyber-security/france-latest-nation-to-acknowledge-offensive-cyber-operations/
Card 1: The real risk of escalation is something that military planning experts refer to as “cross-domain escalation.” What this means in practical terms is that a cyber war suddenly morphs into a kinetic conflict and even cyber attacks under a minimum threshold level might escalate quickly. Since cyber weapons are generally non-lethal, they might require the use of additional “kinetic force” to make a real statement to the adversary.
Forbes 2019:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kateoflahertyuk/2019/05/06/israel-retaliates-to-a-cyber-attack-with-immediate-physical-action-in-a-world-first/#f9c9fb6f8953
Card 1: The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has launched a physical attack on Hamas in immediate response to an alleged cyber-assault. The IDF hit a building in the Gaza Strip with an airstrike after claiming the site had been used by Hamas cyber operatives to attack Israel’s cyber space. It came amid days of intense fighting between the IDF and terror groups in the Gaza Strip.

Washington Post 2019:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/false-flag-cyberattacks-are-a-growing-threat-we-must-strengthen-our-defenses/2019/10/24/dfaf0ab2-f50a-11e9-a285-882a8e386a96_story.html

Card 1:False-flag operations are becoming more common for nation-states, and more sophisticated. The National Security Agency this week released a warning that hacks in 35 countries that appeared at first glance to come from Iran were not what they seemed: The intruders instead were Russians who had hijacked the other country’s servers to spy in disguise. Days before, a Wired investigation meticulously recounted an assault that threatened to cripple the PyeongChang Winter Olympics last year, also by Russia, which in this case made it seem as though the attack came from North Korea.

Tikhonova 2019:
https://www.valuewalk.com/2015/04/russia-vs-us-the-world-war-3/
Card 1: You see, while Washington would be able to hit just a part of Russia’s massive territory, the US would be wiped off the face of the Earth. And Russia has a major advantage if that sort of conflict occurs as it would be able to launch its advanced missiles from its ships off the coast of the US.

Masters 2019:
https://www.wunderground.com/resources/climate/nuke.asp


New York Times 2019:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/17/us/politics/iran-nuclear-deal-uranium.html
Card 1:WASHINGTON — Iran threatened on Monday to accelerate its nuclear program in violation of a 2015 nuclear agreement, moving it closer to the ability to build an atomic weapon — something that President Trump has vowed to prevent.

Boyd 2019: https://www.nextgov.com/cybersecurity/2019/03/what-dod-plans-do-96-billion-cyber-funding/155564/
Card 1: The cyber leadership at the Defense Department offered an opaque breakdown of how the services would use the $9.6 billion in funding for cyber defense and operations requested in the president’s 2020 budget proposal.