The Foreign Service Journal, June 2021

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | JUNE 2021 21 FOCUS Emily O. Goldman, Ph.D., is a strategist at U.S. Cyber Command and a thought leader on cyber policy. She served as cyber adviser to the director of policy planning at the Department of State from 2018 to 2019. From 2014 to 2018 she directed the U.S. Cyber Command / National Security Agency Combined Action Group, reporting to a four-star commander and leading a team that wrote the 2018 U.S. Cyber Command vision, “Achieve and Maintain Cyber- space Superiority.” She has published and lectured widely on strategy , cybersecurity, military innovation and organizational change. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect official positions of the Department of Defense or any U.S. government entity. ON GREAT POWER COMPETITION TODAY Cyber Diplomacy for Strategic Competition Fresh thinking and new approaches are needed on diplomacy’s newest frontier. BY EM I LY O. GOLDMAN C yber diplomacy is the use of diplo- matic tools to address issues arising in and through cyberspace. Those issues span a range of security, economic and human rights topics including international cybersecurity standards, internet access, privacy, internet freedom, intellectual prop- erty, cybercrime, state-sponsored cyber conflict and competition, the ethical use of digital tech- nologies and trade. Cyberspace now undergirds the prosperity, security and future of America and its allies in ways impossible to fathom only a few years ago. It is central to the ability to transport com- modities and information, to generate and store wealth, and to coordinate and carry out functions essential to the order and operations of modern economies, societies and governments. This is why cyberspace—and the broader digital environment— has become a major arena for strategic competition. For this reason, new thinking on cyber diplomacy is neces- sary. The diplomatic focus on cooperation among like-minded states to reduce the risk of conflict and to respond collectively after the fact is valuable; but it misses where the strategically consequential cyber action has been occurring for the past decade—in the competitive arena outside of armed conflict. The time has come to up the diplomatic game for cyber compe- tition. But that cannot occur unless and until core assumptions about the evolution of norms and the applicability of a strategy of deterrence to competition in cyberspace are set aside. Strategic Rivalry Over the past decade, adversaries have been bypassing ter- ritorial boundaries by operating in and through cyberspace to gain strategic advantage against America and its allies without risking armed conflict. Sophisticated campaigns of disinfor- mation and propaganda undermine trust and confidence in economic institutions and create doubts about the authority, competency and integrity of democratic processes. Exploit- ing cyber vulnerabilities enables theft of wealth, intellectual property and personal information. Emplacing malware into