Analysis of China’s cyber warfare capabilities

DESMOND BALL of the Strategic and Defence Studies Center at the Australian National University at Canberra analyzes the development of China's cyber-warfare capabilities since the mid-1990s, the intelligence and military organizations involved, and the particular capabilities that have been demonstrated in defence exercises and in attacks on computer systems and networks in other countries.
In an article in Security Challenges, "China’s cyber warfare capabilities", he states that it was often very difficult to determine whether these attacks originated with official agencies or private "Netizens" as well as that China's demonstrated offensive cyber-warfare capabilities were fairly rudimentary such as denial-of-service, Trojan horse etc. that have been fairly easy to detect and remove. He also states that  there was no evidence that China's cyber-warriors could penetrate highly secure networks or systematically cripple selected command and control, air defence and intelligence networks and databases of advanced  adversaries, or to conduct deception operations by secretly manipulating the data in these networks. 

He concludes that it could however employ asymmetric strategies designed to exploit the relatively greater dependence on IT by its potential adversaries but could not compete in extended scenarios of sophisticated information warfare operations and would function best when used pre-emptively, as the PLA now practices in its exercises.

Economic Cyber Warfare

PAUL CORNISH of the International Security Program at the Chatham House reviews the vulnerability of developed states to aggressive economic action through cyberspace asking whether economic cyber warfare should be considered a strategic problem. 
In his working paper, "The Vulnerabilities of Developed States to Economic Cyber Warfare", he states that a composite of economic warfare and cyber warfare - economic cyber warfare could offer a low-cost, low-risk alternative to cause grave damage to an increasingly interconnected global economy, a parasitism of sorts whereby the attacker would seek to exploit the target economy through espionage and intellectual property theft, rather than to destroy or impede it. 
He concludes that economic cyber warfare should be subject to sustained and careful scrutiny requiring more agility and mutually supportive relationships between national governments and critical sectors of the economy such as science, innovation, manufacturing, industry, financial and banking sectors since the first casualties of economic cyber warfare were likely to be confidence and predictability that form the bedrock of the national economy and the credibility of national government.

On "Cyber"War

PAUL CORNISH, DAVID LIVINGSTONE, DAVE CLEMENTE and CLAIRE YORKE of the Chatham House assess the evolving challenges in cyberspace and describe it as terra nullius, beyond the reach of mature political discourse providing actors opportunities to achieve strategic objectives without armed conflict, conferring disproportionate power, anonymity, a blurring of military-civilian boundaries and that cyberspace could be considered a fifth battlespace after land, water, air and space. In a Chatham House report, "On Cyber warfare", they argue that cyber warfare should be constrained and validated by politics, ethics, norms and values, to resolve its challenges while extending its complexities back into the world of politics would question deeply embedded assumptions about the primacy of the state, the authority of government and the role of government agencies and the armed forces as providers of national security.