Resolved: The benefits of the United States federal government’s use of offensive cyber operations outweigh the harms.

Lastly, it also comes at a cost of increased nuclear proliferation. Believe it or not, cyber operations are one of our best tools to prevent autocratic countries from acquiring nuclear arms. According to the Journal of Conflict & Security Law: 

My framework is simple: "PARANOID ANDROID". The nickname from this comes from the essence of the necessity of security. We must enforce trust and alliance with foreign nations. But unfortunately, robots, networks, and drones can only exhibit our intentions and behaviors. We strike unnecessarily at the vague idea of the anonymous hacker. We arbitrarily dehumanize them while calling our operations justified. Yet in reality, looking at the reasoning behind the attacks, the Con framework makes it very clear that we are no more than... PARANOID ANDROIDS. I do not deny that the FBI has stopped some hackers from gaining private information. But I argue that the US's "Paranoid Android" attitude will result in two problematic categories. One, with the US oppressing countries that have no threat, or two, attacking the sleeping giant and provoking greater retaliation. Of course, full-blown warfare was precisely what Pro wanted to avoid, so the latter case is worse. Yet the former case is arguably equally bad because we become no different from our enemies. If they were already defenseless in the first place, aren't we the terrorists?

Voters should note carefully how every country pro lists only enhances the "paranoid" thought set, undermining international relationships and causing distrust among our people, and the foreign countries' people. After all, how can we trust the US government to respect ourselves if they don't respect other peaceful countries?

I. China

An author from Harvard Kennedy school knows what's up with our Paranoid Android here. We're exaggerating the Chinese threat (and to an extent, the Russian threat) and treating them as enemies, but they have no reason to attack us unless we provoke them. In summary, Jon advocates for the US's standard democratic ideals: "To ensure the continued high performance of information technology firms and the mutual benefits of globalization, the United States should preserve liberal norms of open interconnection and the multi-stakeholder system—the loose network of academic, corporate, and governmental actors managing global technical protocols." [1] Also, China is rational and wants its mutually beneficial growth with the US. Both countries are major trade partners, and cutting that off would just destroy the two from the inside slowly.

The further we investigate, the more it's unclear who is the bully and victim here. The US's significant advantage makes me feel like China is unnecessarily suffering here. My expert continues, "The United States conducts its cyber espionage against China, as the Edward Snowden leaks dramatized, which can indirectly aid U.S. firms (e.g., in government trade negotiations). China's uneven industrial development, fragmented cyber defenses, erratic cyber tradecraft, and the market dominance of U.S. technology firms provide considerable advantages to the United States". 

Now Pro's probably like, "That's great! China is zero threat, proving our cyber offense success!" Yet China was already ineffective in essence before the US struck in the first place. Merely our defenses holding in place were enough. Pro claims “Chinese hacking groups have stolen U.S. intellectual property from industrial manufacturers and military contractors.” Yet the amount of this is incredibly insignificant and has no reasoning. The logistics behind the hacking are far more complex than Pro realizes. As Jon furthers: " there is little evidence of skill or subtlety in China's military cyber operations. Although Chinese strategists describe cyberspace as a highly asymmetric and decisive domain of warfare, China's military cyber capacity does not live up to its doctrinal aspirations... the Chinese military is rigidly hierarchical and has no wartime experience with complex information systems. Further, China's pursuit of military "informatization" increases its dependence on vulnerable networks and exposure to foreign cyberattacks." Yet the US's defenses are plenty strong. His news is incredibly ambiguous and illogical as a result. 

Now US implements its PARANOID ANDROID plan, undermining the trust we may have had for each other, causing unnecessary tension. Now China is getting its revenge in other ways-- "China moves to exclude U.S. firms such as IBM, Oracle, EMC, and Microsoft from its domestic markets and attempts to persuade other states to support governance reforms at odds with U.S. values and interests". And we can't just keep pressuring with the cyber offense when we have economics at stake, something on a completely different battlefield. 

So clearly, the US is a Paranoid Android against China and blurs the line of warfare. What's preventing us from being the terrorists, hacking China's private information, and holding it above their head? Not anything. You could argue from self-defense that China's attempt to strike back was perfectly reasonable. We have spent billions of dollars on cyber operations and only ended up with a squabble that lost us the potential of a globalized economy. The net loss must be somewhere in the hundreds of billions of dollars, not to mention we reduce the people's trust. 

II. Russia

The Paranoid Android swings the opposite way for the powerful adversary Russia. We must forgive and forget what has been done to us. Russia holds a significant advantage in cyber warfare. If we continue being angry and vengeful, we are well on our way to a losing war, rather than discouragement. As Wired notes, "the US economy and infrastructure is far more reliant on digitization and automation than Russia's, giving the Kremlin an inherent advantage in any future no-holds-barred cyberwar". [2] But I guess, the correct word is more of "insecure" than "paranoid". Regardless, we haven't tried hard enough with diplomatic power or economic incentives. The idea of "eye for an eye" to stop Russia is ridiculous. Russia would happily tango with us as unlike China, trading is not essential, and the escalation for war is far more costly for both. As soon as we escalate, Russia can do the same. There is no unique benefit we hold over here. And we're just gonna keep building and building up the reasons for warfare, and I'm afraid it won't end as neatly as The Cold War. 

Indeed, as an expert analyzes, even the UK has problems especially with ethics and international relations as it tries to deter Russia [3]. Remember that any of Russia's offenses can also apply to the US -- there is no clear standard or line to determine the true intentions or label for the cyber operation. The research admits that Russia's attacks "can certainly be looked upon from Moscow’s point of view as a necessary ‘defense’ mechanism with the general aim of destabilizing potential adversaries and, in particular, of warding off a regime-destroying ‘color revolution’. Such Russian measures can, of course, also be seen in another light: as aggressive and designed to weaken Russia’s Western opponents so that, in a zero-sum sense, they create latitude for Russia, as a revisionist state, to be a more powerful global player (Adamsky 2018)". From Russia's point of view, they see the same thing as the US sees. So we are stuck in an eternal loop. Some people will be forced to suffer as someone's self-defense. We claim that Russia is bad, but return punch for punch and ironically justify their self-defense in return. 

As an extension, other sources suggest that the US may also unintentionally violate the international rules. Edwin notes, "The United States is only entitled to respond to economic cyber intrusions with countermeasures if it can establish that the intrusions undertook against it breach international law." [8] Yet the economic intrusions often fall into a grey line that is very hard to truly determine. Not to mention that it likely does not violate sovereignty, as it doesn't prevent the US government from executing major functions. By contrast, the US's violation is far more obvious. We are obtaining exact data from China government. We admit to preventing their cyber technology from advancing. It would be much easier to convict us than them.

Thornton wisely realizes that we don't know if the US's true intentions are good or not. While stopping hackers seems good, the extent to our offensive operations has reached too far. Two senior officers in a journal remarked that "the US political and military leaders view the worldwide information environment as a domain of its vital interests and control over it as a way to achieve their strategic objectives of global domination’ (Vorobyov and Kiselyov 2014, 52)". In this essence, we are no more human than our opponents. We think of any means to achieve our desired ends, rather than our upholding of values. The US thinks that Russia is the country that started this, but it is impossible to know for sure. "Heather Dinniss notes, it is ‘difficult to state with any certainty that the entity that appears to be the perpetrator of the attack is, in fact, the ultimate attacker’ (Dinniss 2012, 100). "  

So not only does this destroy any certainty in pro's self-defense idea, this reinforces the problem of "paranoid android". Yes, perhaps Russia is also a paranoid android. But we are no better than them. Pro claims we do not arbitrarily attack them, yet provides no clear rules to determine whether someone truly holds threat, or is merely defending themselves like our own justifications. And the US also runs the risk of falling into the trap of accused of launching a "retaliatory attack", which violates established laws. Soon enough it'll be our allies against ourselves, not just our enemies. Let Russia crumble on their own and expose them for what they're doing. Don't be the same as them and be also confused as a power-hungry country that wants to dominate the world.

Quick Rebuttal: Military Necessity

We are talking about utilitarian benefits. As such, any Kantian "necessary virtue/ideal/practice" is useless. We aren't talking about "what if Cyber offensive operations did not exist". There is no such thing as a "Con world". There is only this world, and arguing about benefits vs detriments. Pro might say: if the US is a paranoid android, we can never use cyber offensive operations. However, it's also entirely possible that all US targets have been wrong thus far and we must patiently wait for the right opportunity. As a result, this argument has almost zero impact whatsoever. Pro says it *could* bring an advantage. I'll buy that. But the premise is not "COULD" the US Cyber Offensive Operation benefits outweigh the harms. So this argument's only practicality is stopping Iran. But this is also meaningless since pro never mentioned any justification for stopping Iran in the first place. Unfortunately, this argument comes down to a big fat zero.

III. Target of Innocents

We have a famous idea in the US: better let ten guilty men go free than one innocent man jailed. Yet the violation of innocent civilians is very clear in cyber operations, especially linking back to international law and personal trusts. Remember: When we harm civilians, we lose our credibility. When we harm bystanders, we become the villain. As ICRC introduces, "Apart from causing substantial economic loss, cyber operations can cause physical damage and affect the delivery of essential services to civilians. Cyber attacks against electrical grids and the health-care sector have underscored the vulnerability of these services." [4] With the lack of clear standards for rules of war, there is little preventing the US from targeting civilians, as we did in the Vietnam War -- with no less than 4 million civilian deaths [5].

In the state of true war, the cyber offensive operations would extend these problems to a widespread rate that would be even harder to detect and make the US responsible for endless deaths. Even if that were decades, the problems continue in areas that are difficult to monitor. Specifically, even Afghanistan had 132 civilians killed last year alone. [6] This may not seem like much, but imagine it was 130 power plants shut down instead. Or electrical grids. In more developing countries near Iraq and Iran, the problem would multiply tenfold as the citizens who already have difficulty accessing resources would be denied all services. If two wars alone aren't enough, just take a look at the Somalia wars. We didn't even care about the airstrike, and only focused on winning the war. [7] All our past examples highlight that we cannot trust the US in wars. This is worse in that it inherently blurs lines and has ambiguous rules. And our ruthlessness would far exceed any mere "stolen personal information" as presented by a pro. If even a handful of innocents die with no true justification, then the war's negatives outweigh the positives. Nothing is more important than one's own life. Not to mention that our proclaimed "deterrence" had arbitrary reasoning, to begin with.