Naima Farooq
In today’s society, the internet is both a global village and a battlefield. For a nation’s governance, defence, and trade, the digital infrastructure is essential. But this dependence comes with a trap, the tireless pursuit of cyber superiority, where the gain of one country is the loss of another country. This is the exact Zero Sum Trap where states feel deceived each other in cyberspace, driven by fear, competition, and the risk of digital control. Escaping this trap is nearly impossible, and here’s the reason why.
First, the nature of cyberspace itself built this mindset that, unlike the physical territory, cyberspace is borderless, intangible, and constantly evolving. A country can’t just build a station, troops, or a wall to protect its digital assets. Every network, database, or server is a potential target for attacks that can come from anywhere and at any time. And this thing creates a constant sense of insecurity, like the United States, China, and Russia, which invest heavily in offensive cyber capabilities, like state-sponsored hackers or malware designed to cripple infrastructure, because they fear being outpaced. If one state develops a new cyberweapon, others feel pressured to match or beat it, creating an armed race with no finish line.
Second, these countries don’t trust each other’s In global politics, there’s no world policies to enforce trust, so countries act alone. When one builds better cyber defenses or hacking tools, others see it as a threat and respond by building their own. This creates a cycle where everyone keeps upgrading their systems, fearing they’ll fall behind.
Third, it’s hard to know for a country who is attacking because these cyberattacks are sneaky and it’s often impossible to find out who’s behind them and this thing makes them suspicious for each other, and they ended up preparing worse instead of working together and sharing best ideas together.
Also, the Tech conflicts fuel the fight between countries. All the Countries depend on each other for trade and technology, but they also compete to lead in areas like artificial intelligence or internet networks. The United States might think that tech advances of China can give it an edge in spying or cyberattacks, while China might think the Unites States is trying to hold it back. This competition turns a safe network into a battle where’s the gain of one country feels like the loss of another country. Sometimes political pressure is also one of the reasons to not escape the trap because the leaders want to look powerful and strong and when cyberattack happens people want them to take strict actions not cooperation with attackers so they respond with more strict policies and cyber moves which keeps battle alive.
The big countries like United States, China, Russia use their cyber skills to spy, make money
Or to make their militarily stronger and the smaller countries like North Korea use cyber attacks to punch above their weight, like stealing from bank. Everyone’s playing to get ahead, not to share trust or work together. Even when these countries sit together and talk about cyber rules, old grudges and different priorities make it tough for them to work together. Like why one country shares their best cyber tricks when they think others will keep their secret.
In addition, in our modern era cyberattacks are not just to stealing passwords anymore. They can do beyond expectations now days like shut down power grids, mess with elections or stop hospitals from working. As we know in 2020 solar winds hack, where hackers (some says likely from Russia) got into United States systems, or malware that locked up pipelines. And the recent attacks like in February 2025 North Korea spies on South Korea, March 2025 Chinese fake job scams in the Unites States also Iranian Hackers Target Iraq and Yemen and in July 2025 Russia linked DDoS (Distributed Denial of service Attack) shows the strong cyber system. Only one mistake can create massive damage, so the countries feel they can’t afford to fall or stay behind. They more focus on their cyber powers than damaging others.
In the end countries feel pressured and stuck, they want to be powerful but at the same time safe and ahead of other countries. As a result, countries keep building their cyberspace, cyber defenseman attacks increasingly stronger making the internet more dangerous for everyone. To escape this trap countries, need to cooperate, share rules and trust each other but it’s difficult or nearly impossible in a world full of fear and competition.
The author is an independent researcher, and her area of interest is game theory and cyber security. She can be reached at naimafaq744@gmail.com
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