How can states use military force to achieve their political aims without triggering a catastrophic nuclear war? How has China coped with this dilemma? While other nuclear-armed countries have preferred the traditional options of threatening to use nuclear weapons or fielding capabilities for decisive conventional military victories, China has instead chosen to rely on information-age weapons—offensive cyber capabilities, counterspace capabilities and precision conventional missiles—to coerce its adversaries.
In this event at CISSM, Dr. Fiona Cunningham explains this distinctive aspect of China’s post–Cold War deterrence strategy using an original theory of strategic substitution. When crises with adversaries highlighted the inadequacy of China’s existing military capabilities, China pursued information-age weapons that promised to provide coercive leverage against adversaries more quickly and credibly than the traditional options adopted by other nuclear-armed states.
Cunningham's research provides new insights into the information-age technologies that are reshaping military strategies. This talk is based on her recent book, Under the Nuclear Shadow: China’s Information-Age Weapons in International Security (Princeton University Press, 2025), which draws on hundreds of original Chinese-language sources and interviews with experts in China.
About the Speaker
Fiona Cunningham is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research interests lie at the intersection of technology and international security, with a focus on China. Her articles on U.S.-China relations, nuclear strategy, cybersecurity, escalation dynamics and international law have appeared in International Security, Security Studies, Journal of Strategic Studies and Texas National Security Review. Cunningham is the author of Under the Nuclear Shadow: China’s Information-Age Weapons in International Security (Princeton University Press, 2025), which examines China’s distinctive approach to the dilemma of coercing an adversary under the shadow of nuclear war, relying on substitutes for nuclear threats.
Cunningham has held fellowships at the Renmin University of China, Harvard University, Stanford University, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and Yale University. She has nonresident affiliations with the MIT Security Studies Program, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and ANU National Security College. She received her Ph.D. in Political Science from MIT.