In the wake of increasing nation-state-directed cyberattacks, researchers have developed a new game-theoretical model of cyber warfare that yields surprising conclusions.
The team presented their findings in a new paper in Economic Inquiry, where they investigated how investing more strongly in defensive or offensive capabilities affected the outcomes of two country struggles. After identifying the factors that most significantly affect the severity and outcome of these technological clashes, the team pitted unevenly matched attackers and defenders against one another to determine whether offense or defense was the better investment.
Cyberattack Results
In their work, the team found that cyberattack capabilities generally cost less than cyber defense. This is because networks have many channels, meaning that the attacker only needs to get through one to harm its adversary, whereas a defender must secure all channels from attack. Because of this vulnerability, the team found that reducing the number of attack factors was the most efficient way to allocate defense resources to secure the system effectively.
To mitigate these issues, the researchers identified a “star network” as the most easily defended. Such a network only allows a single access point, from which the various parts of the network branch out. This allows the defender to focus on securing a single vector, which is far simpler than securing direct access to many network nodes.
For the attacker, the model revealed that slow, long-term attacks were much more likely to succeed than sudden hostile attacks, which are easier to notice.
Intensifying Conflicts
The team found that the more similar the cyber warfare capabilities of nations become, the more intense the resulting conflicts will likely be. This allows small, less technologically advanced nations to take on countries like the United States if they place greater emphasis on offensive capabilities than on defense. In their paper, the team notes that in many real-world instances, the more technologically advanced nation is the defender in cyber warfare.
“In the context of our work, cyber conflict will be most severe when technological capabilities between attackers and defenders converge towards each other,” co-author Rishi Sharma, PhD, of Colgate University, told The Debrief. “By investing in improved offensive abilities, a less technologically advanced country can not only attack more successfully but also can force defenders to undertake costly and often disruptive improvements to their own defensive capabilities.”
“So overall, to the extent that the attackers are looking to impose costs on the defenders, improving offensive capabilities is doubly effective,” Sharma added.
Nationalizing Cyber Defense
When investigating the roles of private versus public cyber defense, the team found that centralization yielded mixed outcomes. In some ways, it could improve situations; in others, it could intensify conflicts.
“Perhaps most surprisingly, we found that centralized government control of cybersecurity doesn’t always help; sometimes it can actually provoke more aggressive attacks, suggesting that blanket regulations may do more harm than good,” Sharma said.
Another issue with the centralization of cyber defense capabilities in large targets such as the United States, the researchers warn, is that escalation in cyber warfare spending can lead to overspending on cyber defense without achieving significantly better results. Additionally, this can result in underinvestment in private cyber defense, thereby creating vulnerabilities in a nation’s cybersecurity.
The new research provides a cautionary message to larger nations regarding their vulnerabilities and potential missteps in the face of smaller but driven aggressors.
The paper, “Strategic Cyberwarfare,” appeared in Economic Inquiry on November 5, 2025.
Ryan Whalen covers science and technology for The Debrief. He holds an MA in History and a Master of Library and Information Science with a certificate in Data Science. He can be contacted at ryan@thedebrief.org, and follow him on Twitter @mdntwvlf.