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• There is no clear, emerging consensus on the precise shape of cyber norms.
• The gap on cybersecurity issues between the United States and both China and Russia remains very wide, and there is limited room for mutually agreed restraints on behavior.
• Cyberspace has specific characteristics that may impede the development of norms to restrict state behavior.
• Norms can affect state behavior even when leaders disagree with them, and they can become established through "bottom-up" efforts rather than being imposed by governments.
• Norms tend to be more effective when they are simple rather than complex and emotive rather than dry.
• The current status of international discussions does not provide the basis for believing that any universal agreements on cyber norms are feasible in the near term.

Recent years have seen a mounting concern in the United States over foreign efforts to harm election security or legitimacy through cyber means, increased cyber espionage, and attacks of growing sophistication. The United States has been engaged for almost a decade in international negotiations over agreed normative constraints on such activities, but the prospects for a comprehensive international agreement appear dim.

In this report, the authors develop a renewed agenda for utilizing cyber norms to limit destabilizing behavior in cyberspace. To do so, they survey the literature on norms and norm emergence and describe the process by which norms tend to arise. They identify the common and conflicting interests that major states have in cyberspace, summarize the history of intergovernmental and private-sector initiatives on cyber norms, outline the principles governing U.S. policy on the issue since 2007, and survey current proposals for cyber norms.

Based on this analysis, the authors propose a bottom-up, "outside-in" approach to promoting cyber norms that would allow the United States to bypass current international disagreements to encourage the development of norms to constrain the most destructive and escalatory forms of cyber aggression.

• Chapter One

  The Challenge of Norms in Cyberspace

• Chapter Two

  Understanding Norms

• Chapter Three

  The Current Status of International Dialogues on Cyber Norms

• Chapter Four

  Identifying Next Steps in Cyber Norm Development