{"id":265254,"date":"2026-06-05T16:15:00","date_gmt":"2026-06-05T20:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/06\/05\/a-first-step-to-unpacking-cyber-deception-and-intelligence-contests\/"},"modified":"2026-06-05T16:25:10","modified_gmt":"2026-06-05T20:25:10","slug":"a-first-step-to-unpacking-cyber-deception-and-intelligence-contests","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/06\/05\/a-first-step-to-unpacking-cyber-deception-and-intelligence-contests\/","title":{"rendered":"A First Step to Unpacking Cyber, Deception, and Intelligence Contests"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.lawfaremedia.org\/article\/a-first-step-to-unpacking-cyber--deception--and-intelligence-contests\">A First Step to Unpacking Cyber, Deception, and Intelligence Contests<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.lawfaremedia.org\/article\/a-first-step-to-unpacking-cyber--deception--and-intelligence-contests\">https:\/\/www.lawfaremedia.org\/article\/a-first-step-to-unpacking-cyber&#8211;deception&#8211;and-intelligence-contests<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Publish Date: <a href=\"publish_date]\">2026-06-05 16:15:00<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Source Domain: <a href=\"www.lawfaremedia.org\">www.lawfaremedia.org<\/a><\/p>\n<p>In our first jobs in cybersecurity, at the Pentagon in 1998, Greg Rattray and I had to help the Air Force to \u201cnormalize\u201d cyber and other information operations. But was it more \u201cnormal\u201d to treat such operations as an aspect of intelligence or instead as warfighting in a new domain? Our answer matters little to history, as the Air Force and Pentagon subsequently seesawed many times about what was \u201cnormal.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Jon Lindsay\u2019s \u201cAge of Deception\u201d sides with those saying cyber operations predominantly serve intelligence functions. Since cybersecurity is driven by the \u201clogic of deception,\u201d normalizing it requires treating it as a new form of an ancient type of international contest, what he calls \u201csecret statecraft.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAge of Deception\u201d is two books in one. The first explores secret statecraft, drawing from international relations, intelligence, and cyber conflict. Anchored in crucial case studies, it provides novel insights about how the logic of deception affects gray-zone cyber competition between states.<\/p>\n<p>The second book extends that foundation to claim that all of cybersecurity\u2014not just the competition between states taking place in cyberspace, but all of it\u2014is best seen through the lens of deception. Here Lindsay overreaches. Deception of course matters, but he overlooks other key factors, especially vulnerability.<\/p>\n<p>Deception in cybersecurity may never have received such sustained attention from an academic of Lindsay\u2019s caliber. His book deserves the attention of all those interested in the ways in which governments use their intelligence and cyber capabilities. The book\u2019s importance would have been magnified had he either focused more fully on developing his theory of deception and secret statecraft or more systematically addressed the complex ways deception plays out across all of cybersecurity.<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"text-align:center;\"><strong>Deception and Secret Statecraft<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\u201cSecret statecraft,\u201d the book begins, \u201cis the use of organized deception for&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.lawfaremedia.org\/article\/a-first-step-to-unpacking-cyber--deception--and-intelligence-contests\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A First Step to Unpacking Cyber, Deception, and Intelligence Contests https:\/\/www.lawfaremedia.org\/article\/a-first-step-to-unpacking-cyber&#8211;deception&#8211;and-intelligence-contests Publish Date: 2026-06-05 16:15:00&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":265256,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/lawfare-assets-new.azureedge.net\/assets\/images\/default-source\/article-images\/artificial-intelligence-(ai)-security.jpg?sfvrsn=982907ba_5","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[27],"class_list":["post-265254","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cybersecurity","tag-vulnerability"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265254"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=265254"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265254\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":265258,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265254\/revisions\/265258"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/265256"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=265254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=265254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=265254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}