DOCSLIB.ORG

Springer on Rid, 'Cyber War Will Not Take Place'

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Springer on Rid, 'Cyber War Will Not Take Place' H-War Springer on Rid, 'Cyber War Will Not Take Place' Review published on Thursday, December 6, 2018 Thomas Rid. Cyber War Will Not Take Place. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. 232 pp. $14.95 (paper), ISBN 978-0-19-066071-0. Reviewed by Paul Springer (Air University, Air Command and Staff College) Published on H-War (December, 2018) Commissioned by Margaret Sankey (Air War College) Printable Version: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showpdf.php?id=52150 Thomas Rid is a professor of strategic studies at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies. He previously served as reader in War Studies at King’s College London. In 2013, he published Cyber War Will Not Take Place, making the argument that because war requires an element of violence, a cyber attack by definition cannot be an act of war. This concept is in keeping with the traditional Clausewitzian definition of war—and so long as that definition remains the norm, the argument is hard to refute. However, there are a number of potential consequences for any cyber attack, to include some form of physical retaliation outside of the digital domain. For the author, the term “cyber war” is a terribly misleading concept. Instead, he believes that cyber operations are most useful for three key activities, all of which are often associated with war, but are not considered acts of war on their own. Specifically, cyber attacks are particularly effective in performing acts of espionage, sabotage, and subversion. While all of these are relatively common activities in the intercourse of states, they have all also been cited as viable causes for war, and thus, it is possible that Rid is making a distinction without a difference. Rid correctly notes that even though a cyber conflict cannot be considered a war per se, it still might provide the necessary triggering event for such a conflict. For Rid, then, the question of “cyber war” comes down to definitions—if war needs both force and violence, cyber attacks will not count by themselves, but they will serve as key enablers for other forms of war. Perhaps a shift in terminology will eventually prove appropriate—but perhaps Rid is right that if cyber operations allow the same effects as war without the death and destruction that normally accompany it, cyber attacks may be the ethical option for nations. Of course, this is all predicated upon accepting that states have a right to engage in espionage, sabotage, and subversion, all of which are well suited to the cyber domain. Rid sees cyber defenses as massively favored in any cyber conflict. Offensive cyber that is destructive tends to be quickly detected due to its obvious effects, and thus is quickly countered. Defenses make repeatability of attacks unlikely by anyone, not just the original actor, and the propagation of new attack vectors is countered by the sharing of patches and defensive countermeasures. Thus, Rid tends to believe that cyber attacks, even when successful, tend to have a very short window of effect, so long as they are detected. Of course, the biggest espionage and sabotage campaigns conducted through the cyber domain belie this concept—but Rid counters that the victims should have noticed what was happening far sooner, and that they are not the norms for the domain. The chapter on sabotage is well written, thorough, and interesting. Rid places particular emphasis, Citation: H-Net Reviews. Springer on Rid, 'Cyber War Will Not Take Place'. H-War. 12-10-2018. https://networks.h-net.org/node/12840/reviews/3313115/springer-rid-cyber-war-will-not-take-place Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. 1 H-War with good reason, upon the Stuxnet attack, which he is certain was the cooperative work of the United States and Israel. It illustrates the fact that cyber attacks can sometimes achieve physical effects—in this case, the destruction of Iranian centrifuges being used to enrich uranium—without the dangers of a physical attack that would definitely be classified as an act of war. While cyber sabotage by itself is not war, it is certainly a major concern, as it offers a tremendous opportunity to inflict an enormous amount of damage in exchange for a minimal investment, and to do so with relative impunity. Of course, the same is true for an individual in the forests of the western United States with a pack of matches. The espionage chapter is also thorough and detailed, through 2013. However, because there are no updates to the original work, this book is missing many of the latest developments and specific attacks, all of which have served to demonstrate the particular dangers of cyber espionage. The same is true for the subversion discussion—and there is a lot of room for updates, especially a longer-term perspective on the Arab Spring and the rise of the Islamic State. Rid argues that the problem of attribution is one of the fundamental hurdles when it comes to considering cyber attacks an act of war. Because proving responsibility for cyber attacks is such a thorny issue, it may be impossible to consider them overt acts of war—and a covert war is often considered an entirely different form of conflict in the twenty-first century. To prove his point, Rid provides a very complete walk-through of the major cyber attacks throughout history, until 2013. And that leads to the most frustrating aspect of this work—while it has been proclaimed by Oxford University as a “Conflict Classic,” it is already substantially out-of-date. Updating a four-year-old book might seem strange for historians—but in the cyber domain, four years is almost an eternity, and thus, this book had the potential to expand its discussion and remain a fresh examination of the specific challenges of cyber warfare. Instead, it is actually the exact same text as the 2013 book, with a seven-page epilogue and a six-page afterword. The epilogue is actually a reprint of a 2013 article from the Journal of Strategic Studies, and was written by John Stone as a refutation of an earlier Rid article from the same journal. The afterword contributes almost nothing new to the 2013 discussion—it primarily provides an explanation for why Rid does not wish to update the book. He commences the section by proclaiming his own work a classic, thus echoing the publisher’s marketing department, and clearly demonstrates his awareness of the changes that have occurred in the cyber domain in the few years since the original writing. But, demonstrating an awareness and sharing its ramifications are two different things—and as a result, the afterword reads as a list of excuses rather than anything new or noteworthy. Because this is essentially just a reprint of the 2013 book, with a bit of extraneous (and mostly unhelpful) material tacked on at the end, there is no compelling reason to purchase this work if one already owns the earlier version. Readers interested in cyber warfare should certainly have a copy of Rid’s work on their shelf—and the lower price of this paperback version might make it more accessible to some readers, although there are plenty of used copies of the earlier work available at even lower prices. Thus, if one is seeking an argument that counteracts much of the media hyperbole regarding cyber warfare, this is a work well worth examining. But if one is seeking the latest explanation of recent cyber events, it would be best to look elsewhere. Citation: Paul Springer. Review of Rid, Thomas,Cyber War Will Not Take Place. H-War, H-Net Reviews. December, 2018. URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=52150 Citation: H-Net Reviews. Springer on Rid, 'Cyber War Will Not Take Place'. H-War. 12-10-2018. https://networks.h-net.org/node/12840/reviews/3313115/springer-rid-cyber-war-will-not-take-place Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. 2 H-War This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Citation: H-Net Reviews. Springer on Rid, 'Cyber War Will Not Take Place'. H-War. 12-10-2018. https://networks.h-net.org/node/12840/reviews/3313115/springer-rid-cyber-war-will-not-take-place Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. 3.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • A F L D U U R E E Fearful Symmetry: How to Achieve Coherence Among
    ASPJ–Africa and Francophonie Fall Fall 2010 Volume I, No. 3 John Hursh John En marche vers la démocratie au Maroc ? Maroc au démocratie la vers marche En Africa: A Light at the End of the Tunnel? Dustin Dehéz Dustin Herman J. Cohen en Afrique subsaharienne : Saisir toute l’histoire toute Saisir : subsaharienne Afrique en Réforme du secteur de la sécurité et services de renseignements renseignements de services et sécurité la de secteur du Réforme Cracks in the Jihad Thomas Rid, PhD 2010 Rumu Sarkat, PhD PhD Sarkat, Rumu une même volonté pour tous les acteurs ? acteurs les tous pour volonté même une Peacekeeping by Regional Organisations Une symétrie de la peur : Comment peut-on atteindre peut-on Comment : peur la de symétrie Une Lt Gen Vijay Kumar Jetley, PVSM, UYSM, Retired Colonel (ER) Jiyul Kim, USA Kim, Jiyul (ER) Colonel Cultural Dimensions of Strategy and Policy Dimension culturelle de la stratégie et de la politique la de et stratégie la de culturelle Dimension Col Jiyul Kim, USA, Retired Général de corps d’armée indienne (2s) Vijay Kumar Jetley, PVSM, UYSM PVSM, Jetley, Kumar Vijay (2s) indienne d’armée corps de Général Fearful Symmetry: How to Achieve Coherence among Le maintien de la paix par des organisations régionales organisations des par paix la de maintien Le All the Players Rumu Sarkar, PhD Thomas Rid, PhD Rid, Thomas Fissures dans le Jihad le dans Fissures Intelligence Services in Sub-Saharan Africa: Making Security Sector Reform Work tomne 2010 Herman J. Cohen J. Herman Dustin Dehéz Afrique : le bout du tunnel est-il en vue ? vue en est-il tunnel du bout le : Afrique Moving toward Democracy in Morocco? John Hursh Volume 1, No.
    [Show full text]
  • Active Measures: the Secret History of Disinformation & Political
    Active Measures: The Secret History of Disinformation & Political Warfare | Thomas Rid Philosophers have only interpreted the world. The point, May 25th, 2020 however, is to change it. — Karl Marx INTRODUCTION Thomas Rid is Professor of Strategic Studies at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies. Rid’s latest book, Active Measures, a startling history of disinformation, was published in late April 2020 with Farrar, Straus and Giroux (also in Russian, Japanese, Polish). His most recent book, Rise of the Machines (2016), tells the sweeping story of how cybernetics, a late- 1940s theory of machines, came to incite anarchy and war (also in Chinese, Russian, German, Japanese, Turkish). His 2015 article “Attributing Cyber Attacks” was designed to explain, guide, and improve the identification of network breaches (Journal of Strategic Studies 2015). In 2013 he published the widely-read book Cyber War Will Not Take Place. Rid’s Ph.D. thesis, “War and Media Operations: The US Military and the Press from Vietnam to Iraq,” was the first academic analysis of the role of embedded media in the 2003 Iraq War, providing a concise history of US military public affairs management since Vietnam. Rid testified on information security in front of the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence as well as in the German Bundestag and the UK Parliament. From 2011 to 2016, Rid was a professor in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London. Between 2003 and 2010, he worked at major think tanks in Berlin, Paris, Jerusalem, and Washington, DC. Rid holds a PhD from Humboldt University in Berlin.
    [Show full text]
  • Cyber Terrorism and Public Support for Retaliation – a Multi-Country Survey Experiment
    British Journal of Political Science (2021), page 1 of 19 doi:10.1017/S0007123420000812 ARTICLE Cyber Terrorism and Public Support for Retaliation – A Multi-Country Survey Experiment Ryan Shandler1* , Michael L. Gross1 , Sophia Backhaus2 and Daphna Canetti1 1School of Political Sciences, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel and 2Department of Psychology, University of Konstanz, Konstanz, Germany *Corresponding author. E-mail: [email protected] (Received 14 May 2020; revised 15 September 2020; accepted 19 November 2020) Abstract Does exposure to cyber terrorism prompt calls for retaliatory military strikes? By what psychological mechanism does it do so? Through a series of controlled, randomized experiments, this study exposed respondents (n = 2,028) to television news reports depicting cyber and conventional terror attacks against critical infrastructures in the United States, United Kingdom and Israel. The findings indicate that only lethal cyber terrorism triggers strong support for retaliation. Findings also confirm that anger bridges exposure to cyber terrorism and retaliation, rather than psychological mechanisms such as threat percep- tion or anxiety as other studies propose. These findings extend to the cyber realm a recent trend that views anger as a primary mechanism linking exposure to terrorism with militant preferences. With cyber ter- rorism a mounting international concern, this study demonstrates how exposure to this threat can gener- ate strong public support for retaliatory policies, depending on the lethality of the attack. Keywords: cyber terrorism; terrorism; retaliatory strikes; foreign policy preferences; critical infrastructure; anger Security officials have long warned of the foreboding threat posed by cyber terrorism. In recent years, following a spate of reports about next-generation cyber attacks causing real-world physical destruction, this threat has come of age.
    [Show full text]
  • Attributing Cyber Attacks Thomas Rida & Ben Buchanana a Department of War Studies, King’S College London, UK Published Online: 23 Dec 2014
    This article was downloaded by: [Columbia University] On: 08 June 2015, At: 08:43 Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK Journal of Strategic Studies Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/fjss20 Attributing Cyber Attacks Thomas Rida & Ben Buchanana a Department of War Studies, King’s College London, UK Published online: 23 Dec 2014. Click for updates To cite this article: Thomas Rid & Ben Buchanan (2015) Attributing Cyber Attacks, Journal of Strategic Studies, 38:1-2, 4-37, DOI: 10.1080/01402390.2014.977382 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01402390.2014.977382 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content.
    [Show full text]
  • Review: Thomas Rid, Cyber War Will Not Take Place
    Thomas Rid, Cyber War Will Not Take Place (London, Hurst, 2017), pp. 232, ISBN 9781849047128 Reviewed by Myriam Dunn Cavelty Center for Security Studies, ETH Zürich It is a clear signal of how cybersecurity is still unusual as a field of research when a book first published in 2013 receives the label “conflict classic” in 2017. Yet, Thomas Rid’s “Cyber War Will Not Take Place” is undoubtedly that: a classic. Published at an opportune time when a considerable knowledge deficit needed to be filled, the book has helped to structure the cyber-conflict debate in meaningful ways and can be considered one of the must-reads for students, journalists and analysts entering the field. However, being a classic comes with a burden. In a field as strongly driven by the dynamics of events in the form of cyber-attacks, how solid are the underlying assumptions? How long until it will become outdated, a mere relic of how we once thought about this issue? In addition, how can we ensure that the rapidly growing academic cyber-conflict literature can continue to profit from its content in the future? Arguably, the book fares much better with regards to the first than the second: It makes a robust, time-enduring contribution to structure the debate, but its scientific value is declining as knowledge about cyber-attacks becomes consolidated in the expert community. The catchy title of this publication tempts two types of people to cite it. The first group consists of those sympathetic to the claim that cyber-war will not take place.
    [Show full text]
  • Cyberwar and Peace Hacking Can Reduce Real-World Violence Thomas Rid
    Cyberwar and Peace Hacking Can Reduce Real-World Violence Thomas Rid “ yberwar Is Coming!” declared the title of a seminal 1993 article by the rand Corporation analysts John Arquilla and David CRonfeldt, who argued that the nascent Internet would funda- mentally transform warfare. The idea seemed fanciful at the time, and it took more than a decade for members of the U.S. national security establishment to catch on. But once they did, a chorus of voices resounded in the mass media, proclaiming the dawn of the era of cyberwar and warning of its terrifying potential. In February 2011, then cia Director Leon Panetta warned Congress that “the next Pearl Harbor could very well be a cyberattack.” And in late 2012, Mike McConnell, who had served as director of national intelligence under President George W. Bush, warned darkly that the United States could not “wait for the cyber equivalent of the collapse of the World Trade Centers.” Yet the hype about everything “cyber” has obscured three basic truths: cyberwar has never happened in the past, it is not occurring in the present, and it is highly unlikely that it will disturb the future. Indeed, rather than heralding a new era of violent conflict, so far the cyber-era has been defined by the opposite trend: a computer-enabled assault on political violence. Cyberattacks diminish rather than accentuate political violence by making it easier for states, groups, and individuals to engage in two kinds of aggression that do not rise to the level of war: sabotage and espionage. Weaponized computer code and computer- based sabotage operations make it possible to carry out highly targeted attacks on an adversary’s technical systems without directly and physically harming human operators and managers.
    [Show full text]
  • End This Phony Cyberwar
    OPINION End this phony cyberwar Talk of combat in the fifth domain has become a fixture in Washington. But cyberwar has never happened and probably never will, says Thomas Rid EXACTLY two decades ago, the harder than it looks. Target RAND Corporation, an influential intelligence is needed. Control think tank, proclaimed that systems are often configured “cyberwar is coming!” In 2005, for specific tasks, limiting the the US Air Force declared it possibility of generic attacks. Even would now “fly, fight, and win if they happened, such attacks in cyberspace”. The future of may not constitute a use of force. war would surely play out in that The second threat is cyber fifth domain, on top of land, sea, espionage. Data breaches are air and space. Dark warnings not just a risk, but a real bleeding of “Cyber Pearl Harbor” soon wound for the US, Europe and became a staple of Washington other advanced economies. But discourse. espionage is not war, and cyber Leaks revealed last week that espionage is not cyberwar. the US government spends a Finally, there is subversion – staggering $4.3 billion a year using social media and other on cyber operations. In 2011, internet services to undermine American intelligence agencies established authority. It is not a reportedly mounted 231 offensive surprise that subversives, from operations. The US, it seems, is Anonymous and Occupy to Arab gearing up for cyber combat. protesters, use new technologies. What would an act of cyberwar Twitter and Facebook have made look like? History suggests three organising non-violent protest features. To count as an armed easier than ever, often in the attack, a computer breach would service of liberty and freedom.
    [Show full text]
  • On Algorithmic Warfare and Humanitarian Violence
    War and Algorithm 16028-0303f-Finalpass-r01.indd 1 9/24/2019 12:03:26 PM OPEN ACCESS The open access publication of this book is made possible by a grant from Riksbankens Jubileumsfond (The Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation) for the Advancement of the Humanities and Social Sciences. 16028-0303f-Finalpass-r01.indd 2 9/24/2019 12:03:26 PM War and Algorithm Edited by Max Liljefors, Gregor Noll, and Daniel Steuer London • New York 16028-0303f-Finalpass-r01.indd 3 9/24/2019 12:03:26 PM Published by Rowman & Littlefield International Ltd 6 Tinworth Street, London, SE11 5AL, United Kingdom www.rowmaninternational.com Rowman & Littlefield International Ltd. is an affiliate of Rowman & Littlefield 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706, USA With additional offices in Boulder, New York, Toronto (Canada), and Plymouth (UK) www.rowman.com Selection and editorial matter © Max Liljefors, Gregor Noll, and Daniel Steuer, 2019 Copyright in individual chapters is held by the respective chapter authors. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: HB 9781786613653 PB 9781786613646 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Available ISBN 9781786613653 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN 9781786613646 (paper : alk. paper) ISBN 9781786613660 (electronic) The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.
    [Show full text]
  • The New German Darknet-Criminal Law-Draft – Darkening by Restricting Individual Rights–
    Ceza Hukuku ve Kriminoloji Dergisi-Journal of Penal Law and Criminology 2020; 8(1):33-58 ISSN: 2148-6646 / E-ISSN: 2602-3911 http://jplc.istanbul.edu.tr Research Article DOI: 10.26650/JPLC2020-0008 The New German Darknet-Criminal Law-Draft – Darkening by Restricting Individual Rights– Alman Yeni Darknet Ceza Kanunu Tasarısı: Bireysel Hakları Kısıtlayarak Karartma Liane WÖRNER1 , Nicolai PREETZ2 1Prof. Dr. University of Konstanz, Head of Chair of Criminal Law, Criminal Procedure, Comparative Criminal Law, Medical Criminal Law and Legal Theory, Konstanz, Baden-Württemberg, Germany 2Res. Asst. University of Konstanz, Research Assistant and Doctoral candidate at the Chair of Criminal Law, Criminal Procedure, Comparative Criminal Law, Medical Criminal Law and Legal Theory, Konstanz, Baden-Württemberg, Germany ORCID: L.W. 0000-0002-1394-0574; N.P. 0000-0003-3910-0976 ABSTRACT The paper discusses against the background of the current initiative of the German legislator whether criminal law needs to be adapted at all, simply because criminals are going digital. Currently in Germany, the introduction of a new crime law which punishes those, who – illegally and without the possible supervision of the law – are trafficking in goods, or are providing the opportunity for others to do so via the clear-, the deep-, or the darknet. The German legislator with his current draft is simply replying to investigative needs. That is not to be underrated, however, it is not sufficient to introduce another criminal offence by simply preparing the scenery and abstractly
    [Show full text]
  • Zeitenwende | Wendezeiten
    Zeitenwende Wendezeiten Special Edition of the Munich Security Report on German Foreign and Security Policy October 2020 October 2020 Zeitenwende | Wendezeiten Special Edition of the Munich Security Report on German Foreign and Security Policy Tobias Bunde Laura Hartmann Franziska Stärk Randolf Carr Christoph Erber Julia Hammelehle Juliane Kabus With guest contributions by Elbridge Colby, François Heisbourg, Toomas Hendrik Ilves, Andrey Kortunov, Shivshankar Menon, David Miliband, Ana Palacio, Kevin Rudd, Anne-Marie Slaughter, Nathalie Tocci, and Huiyao Wang. Table of Contents Foreword 4 Foreword by former Federal President Joachim Gauck 8 Executive Summary 11 1 Introduction: The Munich Consensus 17 2 Security Situation: Zeitenwende 26 3 Dependencies: Wonderful Together, 50 Vulnerable Together 4 Investments: Instrumental Reasoning 74 5 Public Opinion: Folk Wisdom 106 6 Decision-making Processes: Berlin Disharmonic 144 7 Outlook: Wendezeiten 166 Notes 176 Endnotes 177 List of Figures 203 Image Sources 210 List of Abbreviations 211 Team 214 Acknowledgments 215 Imprint 217 ZEITENWENDE | WENDEZEITEN Foreword Dear Reader, In recent years, the Munich Security Conference (MSC) has highlighted a wide variety of security policy issues at its events in all corners of the world – from Madrid to Minsk, from Tel Aviv to New York, from Abuja Wolfgang Ischinger to Stavanger. In doing so, we focused primarily on international challenges. At our events, however, we were increasingly confronted with questions about Germany’s positions – sometimes with fear and unease about whether Berlin was, for example, taking certain threats seriously enough – but almost always with great expectations of our country. At home, on the other hand, people still regularly underestimate how important our country is now considered to be almost everywhere in the world.
    [Show full text]
  • Deterrence and Dissuasion in Cyberspace Deterrence and Joseph S
    Deterrence and Dissuasion in Cyberspace Deterrence and Joseph S. Nye Jr. Dissuasion in Cyberspace Can countries deter or dissuade others from doing them harm in cyberspace? In the words of former Estonian President Toomas Ilves, “The biggest problem in cyber remains deter- rence. We have been talking about the need to deal with it within NATO for years now.”1 Since the turn of this century, the Internet has become a general purpose technology that contributed some $4 trillion to the world economy in 2016 and connects nearly half the world’s population. In contrast, a mere twenty years ago, there were only 16 million Internet users, or one-half percent of the world’s population. Cross-border data trafªc increased by a factor of forty-ªve times in the past decade alone. Power and interdependence go together, how- ever, and burgeoning dependence on the Internet has been accompanied by a growing vulnerability that has created a new dimension of international inse- curity. More than 20 billion devices are forecast to be connected to the “Internet of Things” in the next ªve years, and some analysts foresee such hyper- connectivity enormously expanding the range of targets for cyberattack.2 The United States has become increasingly dependent on cyberspace for the ºow of goods and services; support for critical infrastructure such as elec- tricity, water, banking, communication, and transportation; and the command and control of military systems. At the same time, the amount of malicious ac- tivity in cyberspace by nation-states and highly capable nonstate actors has in- creased. Paradoxically, the fact that the United States was at the forefront of the development of cyber technology and the Internet made it disproportionately vulnerable to damage by cyber instruments.
    [Show full text]
  • Why International Order in Cyberspace Is Not Inevitable Brian M
    Why International Order in Cyberspace Is Not Inevitable Brian M. Mazanec Abstract James Forsyth and Billy Pope argue that great powers will inevitably cooperate and establish rules, norms, and standards for cyberspace. The foundation of their argument is that such an outcome is inevitable be- cause “great powers will have no choice but to cooperate . [to] soften the harsh effects of multipolarity and oligopolistic competition.” While it is true that increased competition may create incentives for coopera- tion on constraining norms, the history of norm evolution for other emerging-technology weapons indicates that such an outcome is unlikely. Forsyth and Pope postulate that the advent of cyberwarfare poses such a range of challenges to states that constraining norms will inevitably take root. On the contrary, norm evolution theory for emerging-technology weapons leads one to conclude that constraining norms for cyberwarfare will face many challenges and may never successfully emerge. ✵ ✵ ✵ ✵ ✵ James Forsyth and Billy Pope’s article “Structural Causes and Cyber Effects: Why International Order is Inevitable in Cyberspace” in the Winter 2014 edition of Strategic Studies Quarterly addresses a critical question regarding the unfolding age of cyber conflict: will constrain- ing international norms for cyberwarfare emerge and thrive? This is a pivotal question, as highlighted by recent testimony from Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper, when he stated “the growing use of cyber capabilities . is also outpacing the development of a shared understanding of norms of behavior, increasing the chances for miscalculations and misunderstandings that could lead to unintended escalation.”1 In responding to this question, Forsyth and Pope argue Dr.
    [Show full text]