In “Strengths Become Vulnerabilities”, the authors begin by drawing an analogy to the extensive road network of the Roman Empire. While this infrastructure initially enabled unprecedented administrative coordination, economic integration, and military mobility across multiple continents, it ultimately exposed the empire to
vulnerabilities that contributed to its decline.
In the context of the US, the central argument advanced by Jack Goldsmith and Stuart Russell is that the foundational pillars of the American “temple” - free speech, privacy, the rule of law, and a free market - simultaneously constitute a point of entry for actors seeking to undermine the system.
In cyberspace, adversaries may exploit openness and legal protections to conduct influence operations, spread disinformation, and manipulate digital platforms in ways that would be far more limited in more restrictive systems. Consequently, the authors suggest that the very values that sustain the American democratic framework may
also creates structural challenges in the borderless, rapidly evolving environment of the digital age.
The authors’ argument regarding structural vulnerability is both persuasive and analytically sound. In particular, the concept of asymmetrical dependence highlights a fundamental imbalance within the contemporary cyber domain. The US, by virtue of its advanced digital infrastructure and highly networked society, maintains a far greater degree of technological integration than many of its strategic competitors. While this connectivity drives economic innovation, communication, and global leadership, it simultaneously expands the nation’s cyber attack surface, creating numerous points through which malicious actors may exploit systemic weaknesses.
This asymmetry is reinforced by an authoritarian information shield: regimes such as Russia, China, and Iran tightly control their information environments, limiting the effectiveness of external influence operations common in the more open United States.
A similar tension appears in the economic domain. The United States holds vast amounts of intellectual property and trade secrets, making it a prime target for cyber-enabled espionage. However, its commitment to free-market principles limits direct government intervention to protect or retaliate on behalf of private assets, unlike
more centralized economies. As a result, the openness that drives American innovation also creates a paradoxical strategic vulnerability.
A second illustrative example further reinforces this dynamic of asymmetric vulnerability. As illustrated by the 2012 Iranian bank cyberattacks, cyber operations against major U.S. financial institutions demonstrated how digital dependence can constrain strategic responses. During these DDoS attacks attributed to Iran, policymakers in the United States avoided forceful retaliation due to concerns that escalation could expose the
the nation’s more vulnerable digital infrastructure.
Consequently, digital superiority functions not only as a source of strength but also as a form of self-deterrence, wherein the potential costs of escalation discourage decisive
action. While these dynamics reveal real vulnerabilities, they may also represent strategic advantages. In the United States, an open and decentralized market system enables private-sector innovation and a rapidly evolving cybersecurity ecosystem that centralized, state-controlled systems may struggle to match.
By contrast, authoritarian approaches to digital governance may offer short-term defensive benefits but carry significant long-term tradeoffs. For example, systems of strict internet regulation, such as the Great Firewall maintained by China, enable governments to shield domestic populations from certain external information operations. However, such constraints can simultaneously suppress open knowledge exchange, limit global
cultural influence, and restrict the innovative dynamism that emerges from open technological ecosystems.
This raises a key question: can the United States turn these vulnerabilities into strengths? The answer is cautiously yes. Doing so requires modernizing legal and institutional frameworks to match the twenty-first-century technology, strengthening the guard without closing the gates. The challenge is not a lack of power, but a misalignment between outdated regulations and today’s digital realities.
The question that follows, therefore, is not merely whether these vulnerabilities exist, but how they may be strategically mitigated while preserving the foundational principles of an open society. A constructive path forward lies in leveraging the very institutional strengths that characterize the United States and transforming them into mechanisms of resilience:
• Strategic transparency can serve as a powerful tool for strengthening cyber defense. The United States’ tradition of governmental openness creates opportunities to deepen public–private collaboration in cybersecurity.
• The United States can act as a norm entrepreneur within the international system. Rather than viewing the rule of law as a constraint on cyber strategy, it can be used as an instrument to shape global standards of responsible state behavior in cyberspace.
• The strengths of an open society can be harnessed to build societal resilience against information manipulation. Through this approach, misinformation becomes less effective not because it is suppressed through top-down censorship, but because an informed and digitally literate public is better equipped to identify and reject it.
Thus, the central task of cybersecurity in the digital age is not to abandon openness, but to
secure it.