In an Economist Brief entitled "Ransomware Highlights the Challenges and Subtleties of Cybersecurity", references an article in The National Security Review by a Minerva-Funded team: "The Escalation Inversion and Other Oddities of Situational Cyber Stability."
The relevant paragraph:
As more states develop stronger and more active cyber-forces, the idea that the best—perhaps the only—form of defense is something which looks very like an attack points to ever-more intense competition over computer networks. “Perhaps defending forward is necessary to frustrate particularly reckless and brazen campaigns,” argue Columbia University’s Jason Healey and Robert Jervis. “But in the long run it may someday spark a larger conflict.” Because Russia and China scarcely admit to conducting cyber-operations at all, it is impossible to say how far they have trodden the same path.