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Cyber Escalation Lab (CEL)

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The Cyber Escalation Lab (CEL) is an institutional division of the Center for the Peace and Security Studies (cPASS).

This lab will serve as the institutional home for a critical mass of researchers capable of analyzing and contributing to an analytical social science of cyber conflict. CEL will develop a keystone data project to form the empirical basis for analysis and debate on the subject. Together, these strategies will allow young scholars at the intersection of cyber and international relations to test theories using this data and develop their CV and to build out their networks to succeed in the field.

To join our community, fill out this form for (rare!) email updates and to get on the cyber escalation primer.  

More about CEL

Our institutions are vulnerable to, and indeed have already been targeted by, cyber-attacks. At the same time, it is worth noting that much of the potential for harm is muted by motivation or other human social factors. While every rock could become a projectile, most remain on the ground. Only occasionally does someone pick up a rock and throw it at someone else. The capacity for harm usually tells us less about who strikes whom than an understanding of the basis for greed or grievance. At the same time, the intensity of virtual conflict varies more than any other domain. What causes some actors to intensify their aggression, when most cyber conflict is fairly mild?
We need to understand how humans and their institutions interact with technology in order to better assess how the introduction of a new kind of connectedness through cyberspace shapes decisions concerning power projection. Regrettably, at present we lack both the information and experts to do this. Increasing rigor in the social sciences paradoxically stands as a barrier to progress in this most technological of subjects. Cutting edge social science requires data to test theories and establish new consensus. Cyber security is a relatively new subject with (ironically) little in the way of canonical data or established theory to guide researchers. At the same time, a cadre of experts has been slow to develop because of the lack of data and the limited supply of rigorously trained experts capable of vetting new scholarship. Joint expertise across computer science and social science is even more rare, stymying efforts to master a complex subject area.

cPASS wishes to foster the development of scholars that both operate within existing disciplinary boundaries for professional success and between them for fruitful inquiry. The Cyber Escalation Lab will do this through two essential initiatives: (1) creating a critical mass of researchers capable of analyzing and contributing to an analytical social science of cyber conflict, and (2) developing a keystone data project to form the empirical basis for analysis and debate on the subject. 

Events

UCSD Workshop Call for Abstracts

Cyber Escalation in Conflict: Bridging Policy, Data, and Theory

Workshop dates: February 23 -24, 2023

Over the past two decades, we have seen a steady increase in the state use of cyber capabilities as a tool of statecraft. Cybersecurity has become one of the top national security priorities for the United States, whose adoption of a more proactive posture in cyberspace has garnered a lot of attention in policy circles and the media. Similarly, countries around the globe use new technologies to pursue various forms of competition short of armed conflict. There is an urgent need to understand how humans and their institutions interact with technology in order to better assess how the introduction of a new kind of connectedness through cyberspace shapes decisions concerning power projection. Despite the increased importance of cyberspace for state conduct, the field of cybersecurity studies still struggles to produce rigorous, data-driven scholarship and secure publications in flagship journals in political science, international relations, and security studies.

Join the Center for Peace and Security Studies (cPASS) at the University of California, San Diego for our workshop titled “Cyber Escalation in Conflict: Bridging Policy, Data, and Theory.” Our goal is to bring together a small group of scholars focused on furthering the development of empirical approaches to understanding state behavior in cyberspace. We hope the event will also foster empirically-based approaches to cybersecurity studies and networks for junior scholars to develop and meet the growing need for expertise in cyber escalation.

The two-day in-person workshop will be held at UCSD on February 23-24, 2023 at the Center for Peace and Security Studies. Topics include, but are not limited to:

  • Cyber capabilities in peacetime and in war
  • Cyber escalation
  • Cyber strategy and policy
  • Intelligence, covert operations, and cyber competition
  • Social media data and cyber security studies
  • Information operations and interstate conflict
  • Computational social science, text analysis, and cyber conflict
  • Synthetic data generating processes for cybersecurity studies

We are especially interested in methodological and applied work that addresses the measurement challenges in cybersecurity research: data collection, missingness, bias, etc.

If you would like to present at this workshop, please complete an online application form. We welcome abstract submissions from researchers studying cybersecurity. We are particularly interested in young scholars, including PhD students, postdocs, and junior faculty. We welcome participants with expressed interest in cybersecurity who come from a number of disciplinary backgrounds including political science, computer science, international relations, security studies, and beyond. There will be limited funding to support in-person attendance.

Important dates:
Call for abstracts: August 15, 2022

Submission deadline: September 15, 2022

Acceptance notification: October 15, 2022

Online registration: December 15, 2022

Paper submission: February 1, 2023

Workshop dates: February 23 -24, 2023

For any questions, reach out to Jelena Vićić at jvicic@ucsd.edu.

cPASS would like to thank Hewlett Foundation for their generous support.

Contributors to the Project

  • Erik Gartzke - Project Investigator
  • Rex Douglass - Project Scientist
  • Thomas Scherer - Postdoc
  • Jelena Vicic - Postdoc
  • Kennedy Pitcher - Graduate Student Researcher
  • Natalie Gold - Research Assistant
  • Giana Pedro -Research Assistant

Research and Content

  • The UCSD Cyber Escalation Primer compiled by Kennedy Pitcher identifies scholars studying cyber escalation with an emphasis on UCSD and the UC system. It also includes information on potential outreach opportunities, ongoing projects, relevant journals and workshops and conferences.