Stuxnet, the computer worm which disrupted Iranian nuclear enrichment in 2010, is the first instance of a computer network attack known to cause physical damage across international boundaries. Some have described Stuxnet as the harbinger of a new form of warfare that threatens even the strongest military powers. The influential but largely untested Cyber Revolution thesis holds that the internet gives militarily weaker actors asymmetric advantages, that offense is becoming easier while defense is growing harder, and that the attacker's anonymity undermines deterrence. However, the empirical facts of Stuxnet support an opposite interpretation; cyber capabilities can marginally enhance the power of stronger over weaker actors, the complexity of weaponization makes cyber offense less easy and defense more feasible than generally appreciated, and cyber options are most attractive when deterrence is intact. Stuxnet suggests that considerable social and technical uncertainties associated with cyber operations may significantly blunt their revolutionary potential. This article is part of the following collections: A Decade of Nuclear Scholarship in Security Studies Acknowledgments Jon R. Lindsay is an assistant research scientist with the University of California Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation (igcc), located at uc San Diego. He holds a PhD in political science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, an ms in computer science from Stanford University, and he has served as an officer in the us Navy. He would like to thank Erik Gartzke, Robert Giesler, Brendan Green, Tim Junio, Sean Lawson, Carrie Lee Lindsay, Charles Perrow, Joshua Rovner, and the editors and anonymous reviewers at Security Studies for their valuable comments and advice on previous drafts. Notes The original announcement of “Rootkit.TmpHider” was posted by Sergey Ulasen of VirusBlokAda on an information security forum on 12 July 2010, http://www.anti-virus.by/en/tempo.shtml. For an accessible account of Stuxnet's discovery see Kim ...