The Limits of Plausible Deniability in Ukraine and Beyond

Guest post by Costantino Pischedda and Andrew Cheon

Drone strikes targeted Moscow last week. Though much remains unknown about it, the episode appears to be part of a series of unclaimed coercive attacks that US officials attributed to Ukrainian government personnel, including the killing of the daughter of a Russian nationalist, the sabotage of the North Stream pipelines, and drone attacks on the Kremlin.

With unclaimed coercion, perpetrators impose costs on adversaries to signal their resolve to prevail in disputes while denying involvement or simply not making any claim about responsibility. Unclaimed coercion is not unique to the war in Ukraine. Russia launched cyber attacks in 2007 to extract concessions from Estonia, though Moscow denied responsibility, and in 2010 Seoul claimed North Korea torpedoed a South Korean warship, Pyongyang’s denial notwithstanding.

Unclaimed coercion may have strategic benefits. Without unmistakable evidence about the identity of the perpetrator, the absence of a claim of responsibility creates plausible deniability, which, some argue, allows coercers to send intelligible, credible messages to targets while containing escalation risks. It may also reduce the costs of being seen as a norm violator. For instance, Austin Carson observed that, though both Saudi Arabia and the United States viewed the 2019 attacks on Saudi oil facilities as part of an Iranian coercive campaign, the absence both of conclusive evidence and a claim of responsibility prevented Riyadh and Washington from carrying out a tough military response, which would have looked “illegitimate while jeopardizing allies’ support.”

But there may also be drawbacks. Some research suggests that unclaimed acts muddle communication, leaving targets unsure about what is being demanded, making compliance less likely. Even if the coercive message is clear to targets, it may not be credible. If plausible deniability is seen as a way for perpetrators to shield themselves from the costs of appearing as norm violators by third parties and to contain escalation risks, targets may perceive unclaimed acts as cheap. A cheap action may signal unwillingness to engage in costlier and riskier overt acts to prevail in the dispute—that is, low resolve—which could embolden targets to resist.

Furthermore, the absence of a claim of responsibility could reduce the credibility of perpetrators’ reassurances implied in a coercive act (“if you do as I say, I will stop hurting you”). Targets may interpret perpetrators’ unwillingness to acknowledge responsibility as an indication of their deceitful nature, suggesting that promises to end hostile acts in exchange for concessions would likely be violated, in turn reducing incentives to comply.

Besides offering limited coercive leverage, unclaimed acts may fail to contain the risk of escalation. Targets, angry at being attacked, may confidently attribute attacks to the perpetrators despite a lack of evidence—and decide to retaliate. Incidents can engage targets’ reputation and honor, and thus be provocative, even when culpability is uncertain. For example, after the 1898 sinking of the USS Maine in Cuba, “Remember the Maine, to Hell with Spain!” became the popular rallying cry for war, even though it was unclear whether Spain was behind it.

Despite the growing interest in plausible deniability, there has been little empirical analysis of the effects of unclaimed coercion. Our research helps fill this gap, leveraging a vignette experiment, fielded in May 2022 on a sample of 854 US residents, recruited using sampling quotas to match Census statistics for gender, age, and education. The experiment exposed respondents to a fictional scenario depicting a major explosion at a NATO base in Poland used to funnel weapons to Ukraine during the ongoing war. All respondents were told that President Putin had previously warned of “unpredictable consequences” if NATO continued providing weapons to Ukraine and that both intelligence agencies and independent analysts identified Russia as the likely culprit without, however, ruling out the possibility of an accidental detonation. By randomizing whether Russia claimed or denied responsibility for the explosion, we were able to assess the effects of plausible deniability on targets’ views about complying with Putin’s demands and taking escalatory actions in response.

We found that when the attack is unclaimed, respondents are less likely to favor complying with Russia’s demands for interrupting the flow of weapons to Ukraine. Moreover, the absence of a claim of responsibility does not seem to affect respondents’ preferences for escalation. In our analysis of two possible escalatory responses by the United States to the explosion—an air strike against a Russian military base on Ukrainian soil and going to war against Russian forces in Ukraine—we found no statistically significant difference between the two groups of respondents. Thus, plausible deniability appears to reduce coercive leverage without the benefit of containing escalation.

Unclaimed attacks are among the possible tools at the disposal of governments, whose effects may vary depending on the circumstances. Policymakers considering resorting to unclaimed coercion—or fretting about its use by adversaries—should be aware that the payoffs are likely to be limited. For Ukraine, denying responsibility for attacks on Russian soil might offer the advantage of limiting reputational damage in the West, which would not be captured in our analysis. However, the evidence indicates that unclaimed attacks are unwieldy tools of coercion and are unlikely to reduce the risks of Russia’s escalatory responses.

Costantino Pischedda is Associate Professor of International Relations in the Department of Political Science at the University of Miami. Andrew Cheon is Assistant Professor of International Political Economy at Johns Hopkins SAIS.

Energy X secures $20M at $120M valuation to slash building sector emissions

Countries worldwide have pledged to reduce their energy usage and reach net-zero energy targets by 2050. To get there, they will need to find clever ways to decarbonize especially dirty businesses, including the buildings sector. The push to clean up the built environment has spawned a lot of policy, as well as overlapping acronyms, including net-zero energy buildings (nZEBs) and zero-emission buildings (ZEBs).

In the EU, a ZEB requirement is expected to start in January 2030 for all new buildings. Likewise, the U.S. Department of Energy said it will retrofit new federal buildings that are greater than 5,000 square feet by 2030. South Korea is also taking measures to reduce emissions in the building sector by retrofitting buildings and strengthening ZEB requirements for new buildings through 2030. 

Buildings are a major source of air, water and noise pollution. The built environment’s whole process — including materials manufacturing, construction, heating and electricity, maintenance and demolition, drives an estimated 40% of greenhouse gas emissions globally. The steep environmental cost and looming deadlines inspired Energy X, a Seoul-based startup and marketplace that “enables the construction of zero-energy buildings,” from architectural design to completion of construction.

Energy X was founded in 2019 by co-CEOs Sean Park and Tom Hong. That’s when the duo pivoted from their first startup — a sustainable architecture crowdfunding platform, called Xquare.

The outfit already works with a host of clients, including large conglomerates that want to retrofit their buildings in South Korea, like Hyundai, Naver and Lotte, Park told TechCrunch. Energy X’s users include building owners, construction companies and architects.  

Since its inception in 2019, the startup says it has sealed 573 deals, which it estimates are worth 1.6 trillion won ($1.3 billion) in terms of the construction cost for sustainable architecture — like zero-energy buildings and LEED-certified (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) buildings. Some projects are still ongoing, and others have already been completed, Park said. 

There are lots of other construction marketplaces on the scene. Procore, a construction tech unicorn, went public in 2021, and Aconex, an Australia-based construction platform, was acquired by Oracle for $1.2 billion in 2017. In energy-efficiency tech, Energy X’s peers include Enpal, which raised a $174 million Series C at a valuation of $1.1 billion in 2021, and Uplight, which received undisclosed funding at a $1.5 billion valuation in 2021, Park mentioned.   

Beyond hosting a marketplace to develop energy-efficient buildings, Energy X says it’s working on solar and energy-saving tech, including BIPV (building integrated photovoltaics) for energy production, HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning) for energy conservation and BEMS (building energy management systems) for energy management, Park explained. More than half of Energy X’s employees focus on energy technologies for the R&D team, Park added. 

“Most building owners are not experts in building management, and they don’t know how to use it because building energy management systems (BEMS) are software-based,” Park said. In addition to the marketplace, “Energy X provides cloud-based BEMS where our AI manages, maintains and optimizes the system at all times without always having to monitor, manage or control directly,” said Park.

The Seoul-headquartered startup secured $20.3 million in Series B financing at a valuation of $120 million, Park told TechCrunch. 

The new round, led by Shinhan Financial Group, brings the startup’s total funding to approximately $31.5 million. The funds will help Energy X expand its marketplace and energy efficiency tech, grow its team from 86 to 200 employees this year and launch in Japan, Park said. The startup will open an office in Japan in February, Park added.

Note: We’ve updated the story to reflect that Energy X plans to grow its team to 200 employees this year.

Energy X secures $20M at $120M valuation to slash building sector emissions by Kate Park originally published on TechCrunch