Past behavior and future judgements: Seizing and freezing in response to cyber operations

Abstract

The use of cyber operations as a foreign policy instrument continues to stimulate academic interest towards interstate behavior in this domain. With continued investment in offensive cyber capabilities, there is an urgency to provide both academics and policy-makers with a better grasp of this phenomenon. While the past decade saw the growth of frameworks that highlight systemic and/or technological factors, this article investigates the role of pre-existing beliefs in the attribution of malicious cyber operations. Through survey experiments, it highlights the phenomenon of seizing and freezing with respect to attributive judgements in response to degradative cyber operations. With respect to theory, the results contribute to the emerging study of the cognitive-affective aspects of cyberspace. As for policy, the results illustrate the potential for biased judgements in response to incidents and reinforces the need to develop mechanisms that minimize its impact on state behavior.