ABSTRACT
Civilization, have all been taught, advances when societies make the transition from rule of man to rule of law and contract. Life is more predictable. Rules, of course, are only hortatory unless there are ways to monitor compliance and enforce against—which, essentially means punish—noncompliance. Deterrence policies in general and nuclear deterrence policies in particular, constitute an extension of these rules, in the sense that a state declares that a particular behavior is unacceptable and, if observed, will be met with punishment. Schelling's famous deterrence that "left something to chance" was a way of creating a deterrence policy that suggested to the Soviet Union that there was always some likelihood that the United States would respond to something that crossed a line, even if the United States faced a devastating counter-retaliation by doing so. When faced with the gray fog of cyberwar, ambiguity has many attractions. Ambiguity in specifying the means of retaliation has its virtues.
