APT (Advanced Persistent Threat)s and influence: cyber weapons and the changing calculus of conflict

APT(Advanced Persistent Threats)s are the most sophisticated form of cyber weapon that exists. APTs are reshaping the balance of military capabilities in unpredictable and disruptive ways. Unlike simpler attacks, such as distributed denial of service (DDoS) operations, APTs are customized and designed to the systems they are to infiltrate. Therefore, states, rather than hacktivists or terrorists, are the only entities likely to possess the necessary resources and expertise to develop APTs. Prominent international examples of APTs include the American/Israeli Stuxnet worm and Flame virus employed to disrupt Iranian Uranium enrichment capability and China's Shady Rat operation designed to steal data from foreign defense contractors. The increasing use of APTs is potentially destabilizing for the international system especially in East Asia, where the distribution of cyber attack capabilities and vulnerabilities is highly asymmetric. China and North Korea are both important cyber powers and they are extremely active. China leads the world in terms of the number of hostile cyber incidents attributed to it. They are two of the most capable and likely actors to use cyber capabilities during a conflict and have strong incentives to employ APT to cripple, for example, the United States ability to respond to a crisis in the Taiwan Straits and/or Korean peninsula. One of the most potentially destabilizing characteristics of APTs is their offensive nature that incentivizes states to start a war rather than temporize during international crises situations. APTs are highly capable weapon of surprise but are limited by its short-term, single-use nature of their impact. All of this creates acute incentives for a state in possession of superior cyber weapons to attack while its capability exists. APTs are reshaping the balance of military capabilities in unpredictable and disruptive ways as cyber weapons are undeniably an increasingly important component of states' military power.