The first article published in the Journal of Strategic Competition provides a fresh view of a vexing problem – understanding the cost of cyber catastrophe. The prospect of widespread consequences from cyber attacks has led to fierce debate over the appropriateness of offensive cyber operations and the guardrails that may be necessary when conducting them. With virality often a proxy for lethality in the cyber domain, the fear of a cyber weapon “on the loose” raises fears of hundreds of billions – even trillions – of dollars in unintended economic impact. From inadvertently attacking adversaries to even causing self-harm, worst-case scenarios have led to considerable restraint.
“Rewriting History: Understanding Historical Catastrophic Cyber Economic Losses,” newly published on the journal’s website, provides the first rigorous and thorough review of historical economic losses from widespread cyber events. The article provides the first database of its kind, showing historical economic losses from both recent events (like NotPetya) and older cases that often go overlooked, like the Yaha attack of 2003 (which may be the sole case of cyber war with scale).
Scholars have historically had to speculate as to the potential scale of economic impact from cyber operations, with little in the way of precedent or experience to guide inquiry and research. That changes with our latest contribution to the scholarship, which not only reminds the research community of past costly cyber events, but also sets a threshold for what constitutes a “cyber catastrophe” and assigns specific impact estimates to 24 events starting in 1998.
Rather than a final statement on the cost of cyber catastrophe and the economic effects of offensive cyber operations, this article should be treated as a first step in a wide range of opportunities for future research, from examining the effects of cyber operations to exploring the methodology itself.
Read "Rewriting History: Understanding Historical Catastrophic Cyber Economic Losses," in the Journal of Strategic Competition.
Tom Johansmeyer is co-lead of the Economic and Legal Warfare Project and editor-in-chief of the Journal of Strategic Competition. He's a PhD candidate in international conflict analysis at the University of Kent, Canterbury, where he is researching the cyber insurance protection gap as an economic security problem. Tom is also a reinsurance broker in Bermuda, focusing on alternative forms of risk transfer in developing markets for emerging risks.
The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not reflect the official position of the Irregular Warfare Initiative, Princeton University’s Empirical Studies of Conflict Project, the Modern War Institute at West Point, or the United States Government.
Main Image generated by ChatGPT, OpenAI (February, 2026).
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