Image source: isn.ethz.ch
Has the gradual transition to cyber-based international relations had unintended consequences? Myriam Dunn Cavelty thinks so. By focusing exclusively on state-to-state relations and defending against cyber-attacks, state actors have given short shrift to other voices and the possibility of large-scale cyber-exploitation.
We have arrived in an age of mega-hacks, in which high-impact and high-attention cyberincidents are becoming the new normal. The increase in strategically consequential, targeted cyberincidents is met with intensified efforts to reduce the risk of cyberconflict through norm-building, mainly geared towards creating deterrent effects at the state level. While these new developments have an overall stabilizing effect on cyber-international relations, the narrow focus on destructive cyberattacks and on state-to-state relations is creating unintended security-reducing side-effects.
For half a decade, cyberincidents, both big and small, have made the news almost daily. The fact that insecurity in and through the cyberdomain has come to dominate political discussions is not a trend – it is old news. Nevertheless, something has subtly changed in the last few years: There is an increasing sense of unease about the escalatory potential of cyberconflict, mainly fueled by the certainty that more and more states are using cyberspace to achieve strategic ends. As a result, the traditional world of states is more actively seeking to stabilize political interaction in and through cyberspace by a variety of means. Overall, cyberspace has been upgraded to a strategic domain whose development is no longer left to non-state actors.
This chapter focuses on the efforts of states to pacify cyberspace. It explores both, the causes of this trend as well as wanted and unwanted consequences of this gradual normalization of cyber-international relations. Despite big differences between traditional security problems and the newer issues of cyberspace, states are using traditional tools of diplomacy and statecraft, shaped and tested during the Cold War, to develop norms. On the one hand, this stands in contrast to two major truisms of our age: that states have no power in the virtual realm and that traditional state response strategies are useless because the cyberdomain is too different. Since the cyberdomain is not a natural environment that develops beyond human control, it is almost entirely malleable. In other words, traditional response strategies and rules of conduct can be made to apply – at least in part. On the other hand, a focus on state-to-state relations and a focus on cyberattacks with destructive effects leaves two major issues untouched: first, how to extend norms, understood as shared expectations about appropriate behavior held by a community of actors, to non-state actors (both, as threat actors and security providers); and second, how to deal with large-scale cyberexploitation, or activities that are not destructive, but are used to extract data or to prepare for potential future ‘cyberwar’. This omission leads to paradoxical effects: Even though more stability for state interaction is created, other state actions are, directly and indirectly, to blame for making both, the virtual but also, by implication, the real world rather less than more secure.
This chapter has three sections. The first discusses two developments in cyber-in-security. The first is about the ‘normalization’ of cyberconflict and the second about targeted attacks. Both trends give the impression that aggression in the virtual space has destabilizing effects and that there is a high risk of escalation. A second section describes the attempts between states to stabilize interaction in cyberspace as a result of these insecurities and shows how norm-building is used to attempt cyberspecific deterrence. The third describes intended and unintended effects of these stabilization efforts, pointing to the main sources of tension. In conclusion, the chapter shows that the current stabilization and normalization processes are doomed to fail, unless the underlying issues are recognized and tackled.
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Peter Vincent is an attorney specializing in international relations, immigration, and political management. Know more about his professional background here.
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