# What cyber conflict reveals about power and doctrine, with Allie Mellen

DevFeed: [What cyber conflict reveals about power and doctrine, with Allie Mellen](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/what-cyber-conflict-reveals-about-power-and-doctrine-with-allie-mellen-1912.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://1password.com/blog/cyber-conflict-attribution>)

Author: info@1password.com (Dave Lewis)

Published: 2026-04-22T00:00:00Z

Content type: article

Language: en

Sources: [Blog on 1Password Blog](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/blog-on-1password-blog.md>)

Topics: [Cybersecurity](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/cybersecurity.md>), [Security](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/security.md>), [Cybercrime](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/cybercrime.md>)

Tags: [china](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/china.md>), [podcasts](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/podcasts.md>), [security](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/security.md>), [tech](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/tech.md>), [us](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/us.md>)

## AI overview

The article examines how history, military doctrine, and political intent shape cyber conflict strategies in the United States, China, and Russia. It explains why attribution matters to defenders seeking to understand an operation's motive, targets, and likely next steps.

## Source excerpt

Listen to the episode Cyber conflict is easiest to misread when we treat it as an isolated technical event. In this episode of Chasing Entropy, Dave Lewis speaks with analyst and author Allie Mellen about her book Code War and why the cyber strategies of the United States, China, and Russia make more sense when viewed through the lens of history, doctrine, and political intent. From the Gulf War to Russia's war in Ukraine, cyberattacks are most effective when they reinforce defined objectives within a larger campaign and help a state apply pressure, gather intelligence, or shape the environment around a conflict. History shapes cyber strategy A nation's cyber strategy is rooted in its political history and military doctrine. Mellen traces the US approach to a culture of experimentation and technical tinkering. China's cyber ecosystem emerged from hacktivism and state-linked talent pipelines. Russia's path was shaped by the post-Soviet collapse, when cybercrime became tied to survival and later overlapped with state interests. Those origins still influence how each country organizes teams, chooses targets, and pursues advantage. Countries do not enter cyberspace as blank slates. They bring older power habits with them, and those habits continue to shape how cyber campaigns are built and used. That is the first step to decode cyber conflict. The tools may be technical, but the logic behind them is familiar. States still pursue leverage. They still coordinate across different forms of power. They still use whatever tools best support their goals. Mellen also pushes back on the way cyber conflict is portrayed in pop culture, often appearing as code on screens and elite operators in high-tech rooms. That framing misses the larger story. One of the more memorable examples in the episode is her discussion of how WarGames helped push US policymakers to take computer security more seriously in the 1980s. Public narratives matter, even when they get parts of the story wrong.