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During the 2016 presidential election, Russia conducted cyber attacks on US voting systems and political networks, according to the US intelligence community. Cybersecurity experts meanwhile attribute a series of recent intrusions into US nuclear power plants to Russia.

While cyber attacks do not kill humans outright in the way that the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor did, they degrade the faith of Americans in their political systems and infrastructure in a way that could potentially devastate the country, and furthers the foreign policy goals of the US's adversaries.

"When Americans have lost trust in their electoral system, or their financial system, or the security of their grid, then we're gonna be in big trouble," Eric Rosenbach, a former US Army intelligence officer and former Secretary of Defense Ash Carter's chief of staff, said at Defense One's Tech Summit last Thursday.

For decades, the US has relied on the concept of deterrence, or discouraging nation-states from taking action against the US because of the perceived consequences, for protection.

But Russia's brazen hacks during the US presidential election and recent cyber attacks on Ukraine's powergrid and infrastructure reveal "a failure of deterrence" on the part of the US, according to Rosenbach.

"Deterrence is based on perception," said Rosenbach. "When people think they can do something to you and get away with it, they're much more likely to do it."