Rethinking Power in the Digital Age

International Security, 2013

While decisionmakers warn about the cyber threat constantly, there is little systematic analysis of the issue from an international security studies perspective. Some scholars presume that the related technology's scientific complexity and methodological issues prohibit orderly investigation; only a minimum degree of technical acuity is needed, however, revealing the scope of maneuver in the cyber domain. Other skeptics argue that the cyber peril is overblown, contending that cyber weapons have no intrinsic capacity for violence and do not alter the nature or means of war. This view misses the essence of the danger and conceals its true significance: the new capability is expanding the range of possible harm and outcomes between the concepts of war and peace—with important implications for national and international security. The cyber domain, moreover, features enormous defense complications and dangers to strategic stability: offense dominance, attribution difficulties, techno...

Cyberspace is a socio-political and technological domain with unique characteristics. It is a human made domain that offers universal reach and access to its users. Its decentralized nature and the fact that it is mostly owned and managed by the private sector, raise a number of questions regarding the limits of state sovereignty and the most effective form of governance. Viewing cyberspace as a global commons, balancing between state sovereignty and the fragmentation of cyberspace and debating between multilateral governance and multi-stakeholderism, illustrate the difficulty of regulating human activities behind keyboards and computer screens. The cases of ITU, ICANN, IGF and NETmundial offer us a pragmatic insight into the power politics of cyberspace. Reducing uncertainty between the various stakeholders, developing norms, advancing law-making efforts and matching geopolitics with technology are all pieces of the complex puzzle of cyberspace governance.

European Conference on Social Media

Cyberspace was until last decade and half a perfect additional intelligence gathering tool. Within a phase of time during the spread of the world wide web, the cyberspace expanded outside the boundaries of intelligence gathering to a perfect weapon in the hands of both state and non-state actors for destabilizing or devastating the state of critical infrastructures of perceived enemy or competitors. In the heart of the storm, Social Scientists have either focused on extensive definitions and clarifications of cyberwar, others are fixated on explaining the various emerging dangers of cyber weapons on society, like the consequences of weaponizing the cyberspace against a nation’s power grid, nuclear command, and control systems, neutralizing a petrochemical plant, paralyzing a government’s health care or governance structure and possibilities of manipulating elections. But few, if any have considered the question which is central to this paper: How did the cyberspace evolve from an in...

2025

We are greatly indebted to them for their contributions; however, any errors are the responsibility of the authors.

Journal of Strategic Security, 2019

2013

Strategic Studies Quarterly, 2011

What is the strategic purpose of cyberpower? All too many works on cyberspace and cyberpower are focused on the technical, tactical, and operational aspects of operating in the cyber domain. These are undoubtedly important topics, but very few address the strategic purpose of cyberpower for the ends of policy. Understanding its strategic purpose is important if policy makers, senior commanders, and strategists are to make informed judgments about its use. Cyberpower does indeed have strategic purpose relevant to achieving policy objectives. This strategic purpose revolves around the ability in peace and war to manipulate perceptions of the strategic environment to one's advantage while at the same time degrading the ability of an adversary to comprehend that same environment. While it is proper to pay attention to the technological, tactical, and operational implications, challenges, and opportunities of cyberspace, this article concerns itself with its use-"the ability to use cyberspace to create advantages and influence events in all the operational environments and across the instruments of power"-for achieving the policy objectives of the nation. 1 Transforming the effects of cyberpower into policy objectives is the art and science of strategy, defined as "managing context for continuing advantage according to policy" (emphasis in original). 2 The definition provides the overall strategic impetus for the use of cyberpower. To fully understand the power of cyber, one must acknowledge the character of cyber-power and cyberspace. The linkage between strategic context, strategy, and

2020

The focus of this inquiry is the prospect of the decline of nation-states and the emergence of cyber-states as governing institutions, resulting in a technological form of government that is automated, intelligent, and with minimum human intervention. The design of this paper will define the ‘what is’ and the nature of a cyber-state by a posteriori reasoning, uncovering the differentiated and empirical components we can observe, globalization and computer networks, cyberwarfare and autonomous weapons systems, e-governance, e-economy and virtual currency, and the internet as a new social contract. The decline of the nation-state is not a proposition of elimination; it is a suggestion of metamorphosis. The tradition of political philosophy is to ask the question, what is an ideal regime form? The streamlined nature of technology has swiftly integrated into the human condition to such a degree, political science as a discipline has struggled to incorporate the hard sciences fast enough...