“With nuclear weapons, we at least had some idea from satellites about how many weapons the Soviet Union had and what they were capable of,” Robert Axelrod, a political scientist at the University of Michigan, told NBC News. “Cyberweapons are different. They can be stockpiled with other countries knowing it, causing them to be more frightened than they need to be, or not frightened enough.”

A new study from Axelrod and fellow University of Michigan researcher Rumen Iliev tries to shed some light on why governments choose to launch cyberattacks, the timing behind them, and what kind be done to prevent them from getting out of hand…

Stuxnet certainly met its objective — delaying Iran’s nuclear progress. But its “escape” was probably unforeseen, said Axelrod, and is just one of the many dangers of letting cyber conflicts go unregulated.