Yes.
There are levels of provocations. Cyber attack does not qualify for that unless...one hacks the enemies missiles control system to target the enemy!
Israel and/or America supposedly introduced a virus inside the Iranian nuclear plants' computer system. That slowed the Iranians some. Iranians grumbled. Embarrassed. But moved on. But had it been a real bomb dropped then...
Incorrect...It truly does. Here is why...
What is a country's currency? Technically speaking, a dollar/deutschmark/pound/yuan/yen/whatever bill is nothing but paper and colored liquid. Its worth is practically nil. But then why do countries go to great length to protect the integrity, value, and physical sanctity of their currency, in paper or in metal? Because that object physically represent a tiny part of their country's potential. A potentiality that comprises the country's physically natural resources, human capital, current and future, economic condition, military might, and governmental authority over the country. That piece of paper and metal thing is a tiny physical representative of a virtual reality called the 'United States of America' or 'Great Britain' or 'Japan' or "People's Republic of China" or 'Italy' and so on...and on...
So then what happens if someone falsify, in other words, create a
UNAUTHORIZED physical representative of that virtual reality? The victim country would mobilize forces to prosecute the offender. If said offender is a non-state agent who is acting on his own behalf, the victim country has an appropriate response agency to mete out punishments commensurate to the offender's stature. But what if the offender is another country? An ordinary criminal who falsify a piece of currency or coinage does not wish ruination of the victim country. He does not have the resources to do such catastrophic damages. He is capable of making enough false 'documents', so to speak, to enrich himself in petty ways.
On the other hand, when countries go to war against each other, ruination and even erasure of a country is very much the goal of every country that engages in a war. So if the offender of currency forgery is another country, the victim country can only assume that the goal of such an assault on the virtual reality of itself is nothing else but ruination and eventual erasure of said country from existence. The response
WILL BE military, read physical, in nature. The victim country will try its very best to first prevent further damages to its reputation, as in forged currency, then it will exact vengeance against the offending country by punishing the country's physical being, such as cities, or producers of natural resources, and even the human capital.
Another example is this thing called 'airspace'.
What is that all about? Is this something new? Was 'airspace' nonexistent back in our ancestors' days? But since we know that 'airspace' did exist prior to aviation, which is not even one hundred years old, we also know that countries existed and got along just fine without this thing called 'territorial airspace' or 'sovereign airspace'.
The reason why 'airspace' became important is because we finally managed to exploit it for the long term and to destructiveness if we want to. In our ancestors' days, we live in a two-dimensional world. Only birds live in a three-dimensional world and even then, they can only live in the third dimension briefly and mindlessly. Not us humans. Although we cannot live in that third dimension, we exploited it for ourselves much more than thoughtless animals can ever do. We travel through it and finally we learned to kill each other from it. And once we know how to bring ruination and possibly erasure from existence of a country from that third dimension, the non-physical reality called 'territorial airspace' became necessary to defend and to respect if we are going to have peace among countries.
Virtual possessions and territories have been with us all this time and vigorously defended when they are threatened and violated. Cyberspace is no different.