The Shaping of a Global Battlespace : A quantitative study of a great power struggle and its outcomes on the Cyber domain

Abstract: The cyber domain is in many aspects a unique warfighting domain. Widespread power diffusion and sovereignty gaps creates conditions wherein governments lack the ability to uphold territorial integrity through traditional and military means. In the ongoing great power struggle between the US and the PRC it is apparent that the cyber domain is in focus of what is termed as a strategic cyber competition. The purpose of this thesis is to further the understanding of this rivalry and to explore some of its observable outcomes. This is done on the grand strategic level by quantitatively examining the effectiveness of two aspects of US- respectively PRC power influence, both aimed at shaping the cyber domain through its supply chain.  The employed research method is a novel and interdisciplinary approach, that fuses theories on power analysis from international relations with internet wide scan data from the realm of computer science. The thesis finds that US smart power could have led to a decreased dependency on PRC Information and Communications technology (ICT) within the cyber domains of NATO-allies. The study however finds no support for that the influence of PRC economic power automatically lead to additional PRC ICT devices in the exposed cyber domains of African states. Nevertheless, certain African states are still found to have potentially large ICT dependencies towards the PRC.