War Gaming
Fighting Propaganda with Censorship: A Study of the Ukrainian Ban on Russian Social Media
Yevgeniy Golovchenko
Journal of Politics, forthcoming
Abstract:
Many states have become concerned with Russian cyberattacks and online propaganda. The Ukrainian government responded to the information threat in 2017 by blocking access to several Russian websites, including VKontakte, one of the most popular social media websites in Ukraine. By exploiting a natural experiment in Ukraine, I find that the sudden censorship policy reduced activity on VKontakte, despite the fact that a vast majority of the users were legally and technically able to bypass the ban. Users with strong political and social affiliations to Russia were at least as likely to be affected by the ban as those with weak affiliations. I argue that the ease of access to online media - not political attitudes toward the state - was the main mechanism behind the users' response to the ban. These findings suggest that this pragmatic view on the effects of censorship holds, even in the highly politicized military conflict between Russia and Ukraine, which later evolved into a full-scale Russian invasion.
Kettles of Hawks: Public Opinion on the Nuclear Taboo and Noncombatant Immunity in the United States, United Kingdom, France, and Israel
Janina Dill, Scott Sagan & Benjamin Valentino
Security Studies, March 2022, Pages 1-31
Abstract:
Recent scholarship has established that a majority of Americans will support the use of nuclear weapons and violate the principle of noncombatant immunity when American lives are on the line. Some scholars contend, however, that these hawkish American attitudes are an outlier and that other Western democratic publics have more fully internalized the nuclear taboo, as well as the prohibition on deliberately killing civilians. To investigate cross-national attitudes on these important norms, we conducted a survey experiment of American, British, French, and Israeli citizens. We find that American attitudes are not exceptional. Rather, Israeli respondents display the most hawkish preferences; French and American citizens are roughly equally hawkish; and the British public is consistently the least supportive of nuclear use or targeting civilians. Categorical prohibitions - against nuclear use and targeting civilians - do little to shape public opinion in these four countries. Instead, public opinion in each state follows the same consequentialist logic: a majority or near majority of respondents are willing to support using nuclear weapons when they are more effective than conventional options, but support declines when collateral civilian deaths rise. Respondents' preferences for compatriots over foreign civilians and respondents' retributiveness help explain individual-level variation in attitudes.
A Lot of Cyber Fizzle, but not a Lot of Bang: Evidence about the Use of Cyber Operations from Wargames
Jacquelyn Schneider, Benjamin Schechter & Rachael Shaffer
Stanford Working Paper, March 2022
Abstract:
Despite a burgeoning focus on cyber and international security, there is still great debate about how cyber operations fit amongst other military and foreign policy means. Are they a substitution option--a way to create similar effects with different, potentially less risky, means? Or are they a support to other means, meant to enable and increase the efficacy of military operations and foreign policy options? Finally, are they a new complement to existing means--a unique way to influence, coerce, and derive military outcomes? The answer to these questions is significant because how cyber operations are used has implications for crisis stability as well as the ways wars are fought. In order to test these theories of cyber and state power, we use a crisis wargame that examines the use of cyberspace operations across a game series played over two years with 500+ players. We find that, despite a general increase in focus within the game on cyber operations, these operations still have little influence on the overall violence of the crises. Instead, cyber operations are primarily used to shape narratives as a complement to diplomacy prior to war and then as a support to military operations after war has escalated. Cyber operations, therefore, show an increasing and important amount of fizzle, but not a lot of bang.
The Unintended Consequences of Financial Sanctions
Ritt Keerati
Columbia University Working Paper, March 2022
Abstract:
This paper studies the economic impact of the U.S. financial sanctions against Russian companies in the aftermath of Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014. It shows that this sanctions program, which primarily cut off access to international financial markets for sanctioned companies, produced an unintended consequence of strengthening the sanction targets relative to their unsanctioned peers. Specifically, while the policy successfully halted new international borrowings by sanctioned companies, the spillover impact of the policy resulted in these targets shrinking in size by less than unsanctioned Russian firms. To explain the results, I propose a model with segmented capital markets and financial frictions in which sanctions on international borrowers led to credit rationing on domestic borrowers. This research highlights the limitation of "targeted sanctions" and identifies factors for policymakers to consider in calibrating future sanctions programs. It also suggests broader implications on the impact of financial deglobalization and capital flows on firm size dynamics.
Adapting to Sanctions: Evidence from Firm Response and Market Reallocation in Iran
Ebad Ebadi
George Washington University Working Paper, January 2022
Abstract:
How do targeted firms respond to international trade sanctions? While the macroeconomic effect of trade sanctions has been extensively studied, little is known about how trade sanctions shape firm dynamics and their asymmetric effects in a targeted country. Exploring detailed Iranian manufacturing firm surveys, I examine microeconomic effects of the 2012-2013 U.S. and EU trade sanctions against Iran due to Iran's nuclear program. Empirical analysis shows that the sanctions cut Iranian firms' exports in half and imports by over 30 percent and, on average, reduced firm-level productivity, profit, revenue, and employment. However, intriguingly, exporting firms were found to mitigate negative effects of sanctions through increased presence in the domestic market, transferring sanction shocks to non-exporting firms. At the same time, importing firms responded to sanctions by sourcing more domestic inputs at the expense of non-importing firms. Based on a stylized model featuring heterogeneous firms with capacity constraints, I show that the export sanctions increased consumer welfare by 4.35 percent by decreasing domestic prices for a given income level. In contrast, import sanctions led to a 7.5 percent consumer welfare loss by increasing prices. The stylized model implies alleviating exporting firm capacity constraints during adverse trade shocks increases positive impacts through export channels.
Asymmetric flooding as a tool for foreign influence on social media
Alexandra Cirone & William Hobbs
Political Science Research and Methods, forthcoming
Abstract:
Research on Russian troll activity during the 2016 US presidential campaign largely focused on divisive partisan messaging. Here, we document the use of apolitical content-content that could counteract mobilization efforts and escape detection in future campaigns. We argue this resembled techniques used by autocratic regimes domestically, in "flooding" social media with entertainment content to distract from and displace mobilizing messaging. Using automated text analysis and hand coding to construct a timeline of IRA messaging on Twitter, we find left-leaning trolls posted large volumes of entertainment content in their artificial liberal community and shifted away from political content late in the campaign. Simultaneously, conservative trolls were targeting their community with increases in political content. This suggests the use of apolitical content might be an overlooked strategy to selectively manipulate levels of attention to politics.
Hawkish Biases and Group Decision Making
Joshua Kertzer et al.
International Organization, forthcoming
Abstract:
How do cognitive biases relevant to foreign policy decision making aggregate in groups? Many tendencies identified in the behavioral decision-making literature - such as reactive devaluation, the intentionality bias, and risk seeking in the domain of losses - have been linked to hawkishness in foreign policy choices, potentially increasing the risk of conflict, but how these "hawkish biases" operate in the small-group contexts in which foreign policy decisions are often made is unknown. We field three large-scale group experiments to test how these biases aggregate in groups. We find that groups are just as susceptible as individuals to these canonical biases, with neither hierarchical nor horizontal group decision-making structures significantly attenuating the magnitude of bias. Moreover, diverse groups perform similarly to more homogeneous ones, exhibiting similar degrees of bias and marginally increased risk of dissension. These results suggest that at least with these types of biases, the "aggregation problem" may be less problematic for psychological theories in international relations than some critics have argued. This has important implications for understanding foreign policy decision making, the role of group processes, and the behavioral revolution in international relations.
Prediction and Judgment: Why Artificial Intelligence Increases the Importance of Humans in War
Avi Goldfarb & Jon Lindsay
International Security, Winter 2021/22, Pages 7-50
Abstract:
Recent scholarship on artificial intelligence (AI) and international security focuses on the political and ethical consequences of replacing human warriors with machines. Yet AI is not a simple substitute for human decision-making. The advances in commercial machine learning that are reducing the costs of statistical prediction are simultaneously increasing the value of data (which enable prediction) and judgment (which determines why prediction matters). But these key complements - quality data and clear judgment - may not be present, or present to the same degree, in the uncertain and conflictual business of war. This has two important strategic implications. First, military organizations that adopt AI will tend to become more complex to accommodate the challenges of data and judgment across a variety of decision-making tasks. Second, data and judgment will tend to become attractive targets in strategic competition. As a result, conflicts involving AI complements are likely to unfold very differently than visions of AI substitution would suggest. Rather than rapid robotic wars and decisive shifts in military power, AI-enabled conflict will likely involve significant uncertainty, organizational friction, and chronic controversy. Greater military reliance on AI will therefore make the human element in war even more important, not less.
Looking Back to Look Forward: Autonomy, Military Revolutions, and The Importance of Cost
Jacquelyn Schneider & Julia Macdonald
Stanford Working Paper, January 2022
Abstract:
Despite the strong belief that unmanned and autonomous systems will create revolutionary effects on the battlefield, what exactly makes these systems more or less revolutionary is still largely unresolved. For some, autonomy creates speed, precision, range, or decision advantage, creating decisive tactical and operational advantages for states that adopt autonomy appropriately. However, for others, autonomy is a technological substitute for missions that are "dull, dirty, or dangerous." Too often these narratives elide and autonomous systems become all things, an expensive acquisition hedging strategy in which the US Department of Defense and its armed services invest across a wide array of mission sets and capabilities in the hope that one of these investments will provide some sort of decisive advantage. But this exploratory investment strategy is both expensive and potentially distracts resources and time away from more fruitful uses of unmanned technologies. In this paper, we examine the historical context of technologies and revolutions and argue that most technological characteristics - lethality, range, maneuver, precision - rarely create long term advantages for states. Instead, our analysis shows that for technology to have truly revolutionary effects on the outcomes of war, it has to change the economic and political cost of warfare. Mitigating economic cost helps create mass, increase firepower, and decrease the burden on supporting societies while mitigating political cost allows states to use weapon systems without disenfranchising domestic populations (important for post levee en masse conflicts) or escalating conflicts with adversaries willing to sustain costs over time. We then apply these theories of cost and military revolutions to a range of autonomous systems - including sensors, munitions, and platforms - to advocate a different approach towards the investment and adoption of autonomous systems within modern militaries.
"Twice the Citizen": How Military Attitudes of Superiority Undermine Civilian Control in the United States
Risa Brooks & Sharan Grewal
Journal of Conflict Resolution, forthcoming
Abstract:
Civilian control of the military is central to the making of security policy, ensuring that civilian officials and the elected leaders that appoint them oversee and decide military affairs. This paper exposes a challenge to civilian control in the United States that originates in the disparaging attitudes military personnel hold toward civilian society. We argue that when military personnel view military culture as superior, they are more likely to view civilian political leaders as illegitimate and in turn to favor actions that undermine civilian control. We develop a typology of civilian control in which military officers can constrain, contest and limit civilian authority. Our empirical analysis provides strong and consistent evidence of the corrosive effects of military superiority on civilian control across three surveys of U.S. military personnel: the 1998-99 TISS survey of 2901 military officers, a 2014 YouGov of 275 veterans, and an original 2020 survey of 770 West Point cadets.
Terrorism activates ethnocentrism to explain greater willingness to sacrifice civil liberties: Evidence from Germany
Christina Novak Hansen & Peter Thisted Dinesen
Political Science Research and Methods, forthcoming
Abstract:
Research from the United States has shown that the 9/11 terrorist attacks activated individuals' ethnocentric predispositions to structure public opinion toward several political and social issues. Beyond this overall finding, several aspects of the activation hypothesis remain unexplored, including its geographical and substantive scope. Using the quasi-random timing of terrorist attacks during the collection of the 2016 GGSS, we demonstrate the terrorism-induced activation of ethnocentrism in Germany. Specifically, a cascade of terrorist attacks involving immigrants in the summer of 2016 activated ethnocentrism among native Germans to predict (lower) support for civil liberties relative to security concerns after its influence had been absent just a month before. Further, we show that the activation of ethnocentrism holds up in a series of robustness checks and is not explained by alternative factors, including other predispositions.
Painful Words: The Effect of Battlefield Activity on Conflict Negotiation Behavior
Eric Min
Journal of Conflict Resolution, forthcoming
Abstract:
How does battlefield activity affect belligerents' behavior during wartime negotiations? While scholars have studied when and why warring parties choose to negotiate, few insights explain what negotiators do once seated at the table. I argue that actors engage in obstinate negotiation behavior to signal resolve when undergoing contentious and indeterminate hostilities. I explore this claim by analyzing all negotiation transcripts and associated daily military operations reports from the Korean War. Using text-based, machine learning, and statistical methods, I show that high levels of movement or casualties in isolation produce clear information on future trends, thus yielding more substantive negotiations, while more turbulent activity featuring high movement and casualties in tandem produces cynical negotiations. Moving past contemporary literature, this study explores micro-level dynamics of conflict and diplomacy, builds a theoretical bridge between two perennial views of negotiation, and provides a framework for studying war by applying computational methods to archival documents.