Cyber Power

JOSEPH NYE of the Harvard University avers that the low price of entry, anonymity and asymmetries in vulnerability meant that smaller actors had greater capacity to exercise hard and soft power in a highly volatile environment such as cyberspace than in more traditional domains of world politics and could create power shifts among states such that small states could leverage asymmetrical warfare to leapfrog larger adversaries. In an essay for the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, "Cyber Power", he concludes that cyber-power was unlikely to be a game-changer and that while governments would continue to be the strongest actors, the cyber-domain would increase the diffusion of power to non-state actors illustrating the importance of networks as a key dimension of power in the 21st century.