A dominant paradigm for militarised cyber operations, owing to a growing interest in such actions, is seeking an ability to strike back and launch cyber counter attacks immediately after being attacked. This commentary challenges view based on the argument that it leads to a contra-productive tit-for-tat game with no decisive or deterrent outcome. It argues that cyber attacks are information, which an initially passive targeted society can gather to refine and consolidate its cybersecurity and over time receive an advantage over the initial attacker.

In this commentary, I will use strategic cyberwar theory1 to explain why India has a higher level of cyber resilience than several of its potential adversaries. Even if India has challenges in its government-led cyber defence,2 there are cyber resilience benefits to be drawn from the way Indian society operates, functions and is constitutionally designed and accepted by its constituents, independently of any cyber defence efforts. First, the concept of strategic cyberwar.

Humanitarian cyber operations would allow democratic states to utilise cyber operations as a humanitarian intervention to capture information and create a foundation for decision making for collective international action supported by humanitarian international law. This follows the legal doctrine of responsibility to protect, which relies first on the nation state itself but when the state fails to protect its citizens, then the international community can act, ignoring the repressive or failed state’s national sovereignty.