Abstract

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 Under the Nuclear Shadow: China’s Information-Age Weapons in International Security (Princeton University Press, 2025) Fiona Cunningham explains this distinctive aspect of China’s post–Cold War military strategy using an original theory of strategic substitution. When crises with adversaries created leverage deficits that 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. Drawing on hundreds of original Chinese-language sources and interviews with experts in China, the book provides new insights into the information-age technologies that are reshaping military strategy.

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.  Fiona’s first book Under the Nuclear Shadow: China’s Information-Age Weapons in International Security (Princeton University Press, 2025) examines China’s distinctive approach to the dilemma of coercing an adversary under the shadow of nuclear war, which relies on substitutes for nuclear threats. Her research on U.S.-China relations, nuclear strategy, cybersecurity, and escalation dynamics has been published in International Security, Security Studies, Journal of Strategic Studies, and Texas National Security Review. Fiona has held fellowships at the Renmin University of China in Beijing, 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 the ANU National Security College.