Network Position in Global Trade Systems and Cyberattack Risk: Evidence from Country-Level Trade Networks, 2010–2020

Cyberattacks increasingly generate systemic economic and geopolitical effects in an era of dense global interdependence. While prior research emphasises geopolitical rivalry, institutional capacity, and technological sophistication as determinants of national cyber risk, less attention has been given to structural vulnerabilities arising from countries’ positions within global economic networks. This study advances a relational theory of national cyber risk, arguing that structurally central countries provide greater systemic leverage to attackers because disruptions to highly accessible nodes can propagate widely across interconnected trade systems. Using annual bilateral trade data from 2010 to 2020, we construct directed, weighted global trade networks and derive centrality measures capturing accessibility, brokerage, and embeddedness. These indicators are linked to country-level cyber incident data to evaluate both the probability and intensity of cyberattacks. Logistic and negative binomial models with lagged network metrics show that countries occupying more accessible positions face significantly higher cyberattack risk. The findings demonstrate that national cyber vulnerability emerges from relational exposure within interconnected economic systems, underscoring the importance of systems-based cybersecurity risk assessment.