The Subversive Trilemma: Why Cyber Operations Fall Short of Expectations

Author(s): Lennart Maschmeyer
Journal Title: International Security
Publisher(s): MIT Press
Publication Year: 2021

Many expect cyber operations to provide independent utility in both warfare and low-intensity competition, but they tend to fall short of their promise, due to the subversive trilemma of cyber operations, whereby speed, intensity, and control are negatively correlated. They thus pose a trilemma for actors because a gain in one variable tends to produce losses across the other two variables. In this International Security article, CSS' Lennart Maschmeyer provides empirical support for this argument using a case study of the Russo-Ukrainian conflict.

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