Jelena Vićić is Assistant Professor of Cybersecurity at the Institute of Security and Global Affairs at Leiden University. She is a research collaborator at the Center for Peace and Security Studies (cPASS) and Center for Cybersecurity Strategy and Policy (CCSP) and an associate fellow at The Hague Program on International Security. Her work examines international conflict and technology, with the focus on the use of cyber capabilities as a tool of statecraft. Currently, Jelena is working on projects related offensive cyber operations, escalation, and cyber-enabled influence operations, as well as several projects on data measurement challenges in cyber events data. Jelena received her PhD in Political Science from the University of Cincinnati. Her work was published in Journal of Peace Research, Intelligence and National Security, Cyber Defense Review, Political Research Quarterly, American Politics Research. For broader audiences, her writing was published in Scientific American, War on The Rocks, Lawfare, and Binding Hook.

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Erik Gartzke is Professor of Political Science and founding Director of the Center for Peace and Security Studies (cPASS) at the University of California, San Diego, where he has been on the research faculty since 2007. Previous permanent faculty positions include Columbia University in the City of New York (2000 to 2007) and the Pennsylvania State University (1997 to 2000).  He has held temporary positions at the Australian Defense College, Dartmouth University, the Ecole des Affaires Internationales (Sciences Po), the Naval Postgraduate School, U.C. Santa Barbara and at the University of Essex.  Dr. Gartzke received a PhD in Political Science from the University of Iowa in 1997.  

Professor Gartzke’s research focuses on war, peace and international institutions.  His scholarly interests include deterrence, nuclear security, the liberal peace, alliances, information and war, cyberwar, and the evolving technological nature of interstate conflict.  He has written on the effects of global commerce, development, system structure and climate change on war.  Recent studies include the role of military automation on patterns of conflict, geography/seasonality and disputes, cross/multi-domain deterrence and research contributing to the intellectual foundations of cyber conflict.  Professor Gartzke’s research appears in the American Political Science Review, the American Journal of Political Science, the British Journal of Political Science, International Organization, International Security, International Studies Quarterly, the Journal of Conflict Resolution, the Journal of Politics, Security Studies, World Politics, and elsewhere. His latest book manuscript, with Jon Lindsay, Elements of Deterrence: Strategy, Technology, and Complexity in Global Politics is forthcoming from Oxford University Press in January 2024.

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How are Cyber Enabled Influence Operations (CEIOs) affected by evolving real-world conditions? Do CEIO operators change their tactics and targets as new opportunities emerge, or do they tend to stick to an established strategy regardless of what is happening in the target country? We evaluate several factors that have been proposed as likely influences on the Russian social media influence operation during the 2016 U.S. Federal election. This case is especially tractable because it includes factors like the rise of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, as well as the fact that the Donald J. Trump campaign illegally shared sensitive information about its electoral strategy and survey results with Russian operatives. Despite relatively little evidence that the Russian CEIO was particularly responsive to other inputs or changes during the U.S. election cycle, we are able to demonstrate an association between Russian social media targets and the leak of information from the Trump campaign.