Jon R Lindsay
Biographic Data
| ID | 2362595 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Jon R Lindsay |
| GIVEN NAMES | Jon R |
| FAMILY NAME | Lindsay |
| SIGNATURE | LINDSAY J R |
| AFFILIATIONS | Georgia Institute of Technology |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-9218-4932 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 19 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 194 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 19 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2004 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
End of the happy times
Strategic Interdependence
This article challenges the view that war and interdependence are inherently incompatible by examining how combatants manage collective institutions during conflict. Using the internet as a case of such an institution, we show that belligerents selectively preserve or disrupt mutual access based on battlefield conditions. Disruption is more likely during mobile offensives, which offer greater operational freedom, while static or constrained opera…
Stuxnet revisited
Introducing ICBe
How do international crises unfold? We conceptualize international relations as a strategic chess game between adversaries and develop a systematic way to measure pieces, moves, and gambits accurately and consistently over a hundred years of history. We introduce a new ontology and dataset of international events called ICBe based on a very high-quality corpus of narratives from the International Crisis Behavior (ICB) Project. We demonstrate that…
The Shadow of Deterrence
Defense policy makers have become increasingly concerned about conflict in the “gray zone” between peace and war. Such conflicts are often interpreted as cases of deterrence failures, as new technologies or tactics—from cyber operations to “little green men”—seem to increase the effectiveness of low-intensity aggression. However, gray zone conflict could also be a case of deterrence success, where challengers adopt a constrained form of aggressio…
Abducted by hackers
Most cyber intrusions are a form of intelligence rather than warfare, but intelligence remains undertheorized in international relations (IR). This article develops a theory of intelligence performance at the operational level, which is where technology is most likely to affect broader political and military outcomes. It uses the pragmatic method of abduction to bootstrap general theory from the historical case of Bletchley Park in World War II. …
Prediction and Judgment
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 …
Politics by many other means
The land, sea, air, space, and cyber domains have distinct operational characteristics. Specialization in the means of using or threatening force is not just a technical issue because choices to use different kinds of military instruments have political consequences. Conventional and nuclear capabilities in these domains have comparative advantages and disadvantages for three general types of strategy – coercion, warfighting, and deception. More …
Cyber conflict vs. Cyber Command
Is cyber conflict more like war, intelligence, or something else? The stakes of this debate are not simply conceptual but institutional. United States Cyber Command emerged from the American intelligence community, but it has strong legal and organizational imperatives to explain its operations in military terms. Even though cyber operations are essentially a digital manifestation of classic intelligence practice, or secret statecraft, CYBERCOM i…
A tale of two cybers - how threat reporting by cybersecurity firms systematically underrepresents threats to civil society
Public and academic knowledge of cyber conflict relies heavily on data from commercial threat reporting. There are reasons to be concerned that these data provide a distorted view of cyber threat activity. Commercial cybersecurity firms only focus on a subset of the universe of threats, and they only report publicly on a subset of the subset. High end threats to high-profile victims are prioritized in commercial reporting while threats to civil s…
Demystifying the Quantum Threat
In theory, a fully functional quantum computer could break the cryptographic protocols that underwrite cybersecurity everywhere, which would be disastrous for national security, global trade, and civil society. Quantum cryptography, conversely, promises an unprecedented level of security, yet this benefit comes with some danger: revisionist actors with impenetrable communications might be able to conduct surprise attacks and covert conspiracies. …
The Influence of Sea Power on Politics
Students of world politics have long shown a special interest in sea power. International relations, however, tends to treat the means of power as homogeneous and interchangeable. Are military capabilities largely undifferentiated goods, or do specific assets matter for politics? We argue that the characteristics of naval power offer distinctive tradeoffs in terms of the causes of war. Naval presence, firepower, and mobility enable naval nations …
Target Practice
The nineteenth-century strategist Carl von Clausewitz describes "fog" and "friction" as fundamental features of war. Military leverage of sophisticated information technology in the twenty-first century has improved some tactical operations but has not lifted the fog of war, in part, because the means for reducing uncertainty create new forms of it. Drawing on active duty experience with an American special operations task force in Western Iraq f…
The Impact of China on Cybersecurity
Exaggerated fears about the paralysis of digital infrastructure and the loss of competitive advantage contribute to a spiral of mistrust in U.S.-China relations. In every category of putative Chinese cyber threat, there are also considerable Chinese vulnerabilities and Western advantages. China has inadvertently degraded the economic efficiency of its networks and exposed them to foreign infiltration by prioritizing political information control …
Weaving Tangled Webs
It is widely believed that cyberspace is offense dominant because of technical characteristics that undermine deterrence and defense. This argument mistakes the ease of deception on the Internet for a categorical ease of attack. As intelligence agencies have long known, deception is a double-edged sword. Covert attackers must exercise restraint against complex targets in order to avoid compromises resulting in mission failure or retaliation. More…
Reinventing the Revolution
Two big ideas have shaped recent debate about military doctrine: the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) and Counterinsurgency (COIN). These 'network centric' and 'population centric' worldviews appear contradictory, but this is a false dichotomy. American forces have actively developed RMA concepts in COIN environments during recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; the exemplar par excellence is innovation by US Special Operations Command (SOCOM) …
Stuxnet and the Limits of Cyber Warfare
Stuxnet, the computer worm which disrupted Iranian nuclear enrichment in 2010, is the first instance of a computer network attack known to cause physical damage across international boundaries. Some have described Stuxnet as the harbinger of a new form of warfare that threatens even the strongest military powers. The influential but largely untested Cyber Revolution thesis holds that the internet gives militarily weaker actors asymmetric advantag…
War upon the Map
The role of users as agents of technological change has been well established in the commercial realm, but military bureaucracy poses challenges to user innovation in theory and practice. This article relates the history of a U.S. military software application called FalconView, which emerged in the 1990s as a user-developed alternative to official Air Force mission planning systems and then evolved through user networks in the 2000s to become a …
Huntington and Hispanics
Raul Yzaguirre, Roberto Suro, Fouad Ajami, Roger Daniels, Tamar Jacoby, Patrick Buchanan, Ricardo Hausmann, Bruce E. Wright, Daniel T. Griswold, Jon Lindsay, Wayne Cornelius, Edward Lopez Jr., , Gary Orfield, Roger Geertz Gonzalez, Minxin Pei, Huntington and Hispanics, Foreign Policy, No. 142 (May - Jun., 2004), pp. 4+6+8-10+12-13+84-91
Stuxnet and the Limits of Cyber Warfare
Stuxnet, the computer worm which disrupted Iranian nuclear enrichment in 2010, is the first instance of a computer network attack known to cause physical damage across international boundaries. Some have described Stuxnet as the harbinger of a new form of warfare that threatens even the strongest military powers. The influential but largely untested Cyber Revolution thesis holds that the internet gives militarily weaker actors asymmetric advantag…
Weaving Tangled Webs
It is widely believed that cyberspace is offense dominant because of technical characteristics that undermine deterrence and defense. This argument mistakes the ease of deception on the Internet for a categorical ease of attack. As intelligence agencies have long known, deception is a double-edged sword. Covert attackers must exercise restraint against complex targets in order to avoid compromises resulting in mission failure or retaliation. More…
The Impact of China on Cybersecurity
Exaggerated fears about the paralysis of digital infrastructure and the loss of competitive advantage contribute to a spiral of mistrust in U.S.-China relations. In every category of putative Chinese cyber threat, there are also considerable Chinese vulnerabilities and Western advantages. China has inadvertently degraded the economic efficiency of its networks and exposed them to foreign infiltration by prioritizing political information control …
A tale of two cybers - how threat reporting by cybersecurity firms systematically underrepresents threats to civil society
Public and academic knowledge of cyber conflict relies heavily on data from commercial threat reporting. There are reasons to be concerned that these data provide a distorted view of cyber threat activity. Commercial cybersecurity firms only focus on a subset of the universe of threats, and they only report publicly on a subset of the subset. High end threats to high-profile victims are prioritized in commercial reporting while threats to civil s…
The Shadow of Deterrence
Defense policy makers have become increasingly concerned about conflict in the “gray zone” between peace and war. Such conflicts are often interpreted as cases of deterrence failures, as new technologies or tactics—from cyber operations to “little green men”—seem to increase the effectiveness of low-intensity aggression. However, gray zone conflict could also be a case of deterrence success, where challengers adopt a constrained form of aggressio…
Prediction and Judgment
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 …
Politics by many other means
The land, sea, air, space, and cyber domains have distinct operational characteristics. Specialization in the means of using or threatening force is not just a technical issue because choices to use different kinds of military instruments have political consequences. Conventional and nuclear capabilities in these domains have comparative advantages and disadvantages for three general types of strategy – coercion, warfighting, and deception. More …
Reinventing the Revolution
Two big ideas have shaped recent debate about military doctrine: the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) and Counterinsurgency (COIN). These 'network centric' and 'population centric' worldviews appear contradictory, but this is a false dichotomy. American forces have actively developed RMA concepts in COIN environments during recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; the exemplar par excellence is innovation by US Special Operations Command (SOCOM) …
Target Practice
The nineteenth-century strategist Carl von Clausewitz describes "fog" and "friction" as fundamental features of war. Military leverage of sophisticated information technology in the twenty-first century has improved some tactical operations but has not lifted the fog of war, in part, because the means for reducing uncertainty create new forms of it. Drawing on active duty experience with an American special operations task force in Western Iraq f…
Abducted by hackers
Most cyber intrusions are a form of intelligence rather than warfare, but intelligence remains undertheorized in international relations (IR). This article develops a theory of intelligence performance at the operational level, which is where technology is most likely to affect broader political and military outcomes. It uses the pragmatic method of abduction to bootstrap general theory from the historical case of Bletchley Park in World War II. …
The Influence of Sea Power on Politics
Students of world politics have long shown a special interest in sea power. International relations, however, tends to treat the means of power as homogeneous and interchangeable. Are military capabilities largely undifferentiated goods, or do specific assets matter for politics? We argue that the characteristics of naval power offer distinctive tradeoffs in terms of the causes of war. Naval presence, firepower, and mobility enable naval nations …
War upon the Map
The role of users as agents of technological change has been well established in the commercial realm, but military bureaucracy poses challenges to user innovation in theory and practice. This article relates the history of a U.S. military software application called FalconView, which emerged in the 1990s as a user-developed alternative to official Air Force mission planning systems and then evolved through user networks in the 2000s to become a …
Demystifying the Quantum Threat
In theory, a fully functional quantum computer could break the cryptographic protocols that underwrite cybersecurity everywhere, which would be disastrous for national security, global trade, and civil society. Quantum cryptography, conversely, promises an unprecedented level of security, yet this benefit comes with some danger: revisionist actors with impenetrable communications might be able to conduct surprise attacks and covert conspiracies. …
Huntington and Hispanics
Raul Yzaguirre, Roberto Suro, Fouad Ajami, Roger Daniels, Tamar Jacoby, Patrick Buchanan, Ricardo Hausmann, Bruce E. Wright, Daniel T. Griswold, Jon Lindsay, Wayne Cornelius, Edward Lopez Jr., , Gary Orfield, Roger Geertz Gonzalez, Minxin Pei, Huntington and Hispanics, Foreign Policy, No. 142 (May - Jun., 2004), pp. 4+6+8-10+12-13+84-91
Huntington and Hispanics
Raul Yzaguirre, Roberto Suro, Fouad Ajami, Roger Daniels, Tamar Jacoby, Patrick Buchanan, Ricardo Hausmann, Bruce E. Wright, Daniel T. Griswold, Jon Lindsay, Wayne Cornelius, Edward Lopez Jr., , Gary Orfield, Roger Geertz Gonzalez, Minxin Pei, Huntington and Hispanics, Foreign Policy, No. 142 (May - Jun., 2004), pp. 4+6+8-10+12-13+84-91
War upon the Map
The role of users as agents of technological change has been well established in the commercial realm, but military bureaucracy poses challenges to user innovation in theory and practice. This article relates the history of a U.S. military software application called FalconView, which emerged in the 1990s as a user-developed alternative to official Air Force mission planning systems and then evolved through user networks in the 2000s to become a …
Reinventing the Revolution
Two big ideas have shaped recent debate about military doctrine: the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) and Counterinsurgency (COIN). These 'network centric' and 'population centric' worldviews appear contradictory, but this is a false dichotomy. American forces have actively developed RMA concepts in COIN environments during recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; the exemplar par excellence is innovation by US Special Operations Command (SOCOM) …
Stuxnet and the Limits of Cyber Warfare
Stuxnet, the computer worm which disrupted Iranian nuclear enrichment in 2010, is the first instance of a computer network attack known to cause physical damage across international boundaries. Some have described Stuxnet as the harbinger of a new form of warfare that threatens even the strongest military powers. The influential but largely untested Cyber Revolution thesis holds that the internet gives militarily weaker actors asymmetric advantag…
The Impact of China on Cybersecurity
Exaggerated fears about the paralysis of digital infrastructure and the loss of competitive advantage contribute to a spiral of mistrust in U.S.-China relations. In every category of putative Chinese cyber threat, there are also considerable Chinese vulnerabilities and Western advantages. China has inadvertently degraded the economic efficiency of its networks and exposed them to foreign infiltration by prioritizing political information control …
Weaving Tangled Webs
It is widely believed that cyberspace is offense dominant because of technical characteristics that undermine deterrence and defense. This argument mistakes the ease of deception on the Internet for a categorical ease of attack. As intelligence agencies have long known, deception is a double-edged sword. Covert attackers must exercise restraint against complex targets in order to avoid compromises resulting in mission failure or retaliation. More…
Target Practice
The nineteenth-century strategist Carl von Clausewitz describes "fog" and "friction" as fundamental features of war. Military leverage of sophisticated information technology in the twenty-first century has improved some tactical operations but has not lifted the fog of war, in part, because the means for reducing uncertainty create new forms of it. Drawing on active duty experience with an American special operations task force in Western Iraq f…
A tale of two cybers - how threat reporting by cybersecurity firms systematically underrepresents threats to civil society
Public and academic knowledge of cyber conflict relies heavily on data from commercial threat reporting. There are reasons to be concerned that these data provide a distorted view of cyber threat activity. Commercial cybersecurity firms only focus on a subset of the universe of threats, and they only report publicly on a subset of the subset. High end threats to high-profile victims are prioritized in commercial reporting while threats to civil s…
Demystifying the Quantum Threat
In theory, a fully functional quantum computer could break the cryptographic protocols that underwrite cybersecurity everywhere, which would be disastrous for national security, global trade, and civil society. Quantum cryptography, conversely, promises an unprecedented level of security, yet this benefit comes with some danger: revisionist actors with impenetrable communications might be able to conduct surprise attacks and covert conspiracies. …
The Influence of Sea Power on Politics
Students of world politics have long shown a special interest in sea power. International relations, however, tends to treat the means of power as homogeneous and interchangeable. Are military capabilities largely undifferentiated goods, or do specific assets matter for politics? We argue that the characteristics of naval power offer distinctive tradeoffs in terms of the causes of war. Naval presence, firepower, and mobility enable naval nations …
Cyber conflict vs. Cyber Command
Is cyber conflict more like war, intelligence, or something else? The stakes of this debate are not simply conceptual but institutional. United States Cyber Command emerged from the American intelligence community, but it has strong legal and organizational imperatives to explain its operations in military terms. Even though cyber operations are essentially a digital manifestation of classic intelligence practice, or secret statecraft, CYBERCOM i…
Prediction and Judgment
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 …
Politics by many other means
The land, sea, air, space, and cyber domains have distinct operational characteristics. Specialization in the means of using or threatening force is not just a technical issue because choices to use different kinds of military instruments have political consequences. Conventional and nuclear capabilities in these domains have comparative advantages and disadvantages for three general types of strategy – coercion, warfighting, and deception. More …
Introducing ICBe
How do international crises unfold? We conceptualize international relations as a strategic chess game between adversaries and develop a systematic way to measure pieces, moves, and gambits accurately and consistently over a hundred years of history. We introduce a new ontology and dataset of international events called ICBe based on a very high-quality corpus of narratives from the International Crisis Behavior (ICB) Project. We demonstrate that…
The Shadow of Deterrence
Defense policy makers have become increasingly concerned about conflict in the “gray zone” between peace and war. Such conflicts are often interpreted as cases of deterrence failures, as new technologies or tactics—from cyber operations to “little green men”—seem to increase the effectiveness of low-intensity aggression. However, gray zone conflict could also be a case of deterrence success, where challengers adopt a constrained form of aggressio…
Abducted by hackers
Most cyber intrusions are a form of intelligence rather than warfare, but intelligence remains undertheorized in international relations (IR). This article develops a theory of intelligence performance at the operational level, which is where technology is most likely to affect broader political and military outcomes. It uses the pragmatic method of abduction to bootstrap general theory from the historical case of Bletchley Park in World War II. …
Stuxnet revisited
End of the happy times
Strategic Interdependence
This article challenges the view that war and interdependence are inherently incompatible by examining how combatants manage collective institutions during conflict. Using the internet as a case of such an institution, we show that belligerents selectively preserve or disrupt mutual access based on battlefield conditions. Disruption is more likely during mobile offensives, which offer greater operational freedom, while static or constrained opera…
Political science (15 works) · Computer Science (13 works) · Law (13 works) · Cybersecurity and Cyber Warfare Studies (10 works) · Computer security (9 works) · Politics (9 works) · Sociology (9 works) · Law (8 works) · Intelligence, Security, War Strategy (7 works) · Political economy (6 works)