Abstract
This empirical study focuses on the comparative analysis of cyber defense policies in France and the United States. In recent years, the major military powers have suddenly seized on the ''cyber'' issue by integrating this new technology into their arsenal. But how can we explain the introduction, then the exponential growth in budgets allocated to cyber defense, at a time when military budgets have a strong downward trend? To answer this question, and wishing to go beyond the classic approaches focused mainly on determinants external to the State to explain cyber policies (International Relations, geopolitics, technological determinism) we mobilize in this thesis the tools of public policy analysis to explain cyber defense policies. We are therefore focusing in questions such as the construction of the cyber threat as a ''public problem'', the role played by actors and the reasons explaining the inclusion of Cyber on the government’s agendas, but also the influence of bureaucratic struggles in the emergence of this technology within the states arsenals. Finally, we analyze how cyber is modifying the way in which States now construct their defense policies, for example by resorting to logics of agencification and remote governance, while including private actors. This analysis will ultimately highlight and explain the reasons for the existence of two distinct approaches to cyber defense policies: the “American model”, widely adopted in the Anglo-Saxon world and characterized by the importance of intelligence agencies, coupled with an offensive orientation; and the “French model” which, conversely, remains turned towards a defensive orientation and is based on the establishment of regulatory policies through a central civil agency, with the notable point of the almost total absence of intelligence services in the cyber plan. Our thesis ends with the formalization of an analysis grid in order to allow the study of cyber policies in other countries.