Deterrence really is about the ability to alter an adversary's actions by changing its cost-benefit calculations. It reflects subjective, psychological assessments, a "state of mind," as the US Department of Defense says, "brought about by the existence of a credible threat of unacceptable counteraction." In addition to massive retaliation, the adversary's decisions can also be affected by defenses, in what has been called "deterrence by denial." If you can't get what you want by attacking, then you won't attack in the first place.
The effect of this on real-world politics is driven by the fact that the question of "who" in cyberspace is far more difficult than ever could have been imagined by the original thinkers on deterrence theory back in the 1950s. Tanks and missile launches are hard to disguise, while networks of compromised machines or tools like Tor make anonymity easy. The threat of counterstrike requires knowing who launched the initial attack, a difficult thing to prove in cyberspace, especially in a fast-moving crisis. Computer code does not have a return address, and sophisticated attackers have grown adept at hiding their tracks. So painstaking forensic research is required, and, as we saw, it's rarely definitive.
Moreover, for the purposes of deterrence, it's not enough to trace an attack back to a computer or find out who was operating a specific computer. Strategically, we must know what political actor was responsible, in order to change their calculations.
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