That makes escalation likely
Ryan Goodman 18, founding co-editor-in-chief of Just Security, Professor of Law and Co-Director of the Reiss Center on Law and Security at New York University School of Law, 3/8/18, “Cyber Operations and the U.S. Definition of ‘Armed Attack’,” https://www.justsecurity.org/53495/cyber-operations-u-s-definition-armed-attack/
These types of legal uncertainties are compounded by factual uncertainties in the cyber realm. While the United States appears to have an increasingly impressive ability to determine attribution, many other States lack that sophistication and are thus more likely to make costly errors. State D may mistake a cyber operation launched by a rogue hacker or organized non-State group operating out of country Y as being perpetrated by State Y itself. And governmental or non-governmental cyber hackers in a third country may very purposefully make it look like State Y conducted a cyberattack. Another difficulty in the cyber realm is determining whether certain effects of a hostile cyber operation were intended by the attacker. For example, State D may detect an imminent threat of malware in its systems that appears would at least temporarily compromise its most sensitive military arsenal—but is that what the perpetrator intended (and how, as a legal issue, should that question of intentionality matter)?
In cyberspace, many of these actions and interactions will take place at greater speeds thanks, in part, to artificial intelligence. These conditions may shrink the window of time for political and military leaders to make decisions, and place pressure on them to pre-authorize or create automated responses. It is not hard to imagine tit-for-tat uses of force quickly ascending a ladder of escalation. And there is no legal reason the rungs of that ladder will remain confined to the cyber realm.