Stuxnet, revisited (again): producing the strategic relevance of cyber operations

More than a decade after Stuxnet hit the Natanz uranium enrichment facility in Iran, it is still discussed as the most vivid example of a cyber operation causing kinetic damage to infrastructure with implications for national security. This article shows that Stuxnet is due a revisit by arguing that the operation represents a paradigmatic shift in perceptions that continue to produce the meaning of ‘strategic relevance’ for cyber operations. The exceptional story of Operation Olympic Games and the Stuxnet malware has underpinned the way contemporary understandings of the (potential) role of cyber operations in international conflict prevail. Through a critical review of academic and policy discourse largely driven by orthodox perspectives on strategic security, the article demonstrates how these perspectives continue to influence American and Western policy objectives based on the imagined utility of cyber operations as an instrument of power. When exploring the strategic relevance of cyber operations as historically and politically produced, tied up in discursive and material interactions, it allows for scholars across the spectrum of security studies to critically consider the emergence of ‘new’ security threats and strategic capabilities.