Cyberspace And The State

The major aim of Cyberspace and the State is to provide conceptual orientation on the new strategic environment of the Information Age. It seeks to restore the equilibrium of policy-makers which has been disturbed by recent cyber scares, as well as to bring clarity to academic debate on the subject particularly in the fields of politics and international relations, war and strategic studies. Its main chapters explore the impact of cyberspace upon the most central aspects of statehood and the state systempower, sovereignty, war, and dominion. It is concerned equally with practice as with theory and may be read in that sense as having two halves.

This insightful book focuses on the application of mass surveillance, its impact upon existing international human rights and the challenges posed by mass surveillance. Through the judicious use of case studies State Sponsored Cyber Surveillance argues for the need to balance security requirements with the protection of fundamental rights.

“A must-read...It reveals important truths.” —Vint Cerf, Internet pioneer “One of the finest books on information security published so far in this century—easily accessible, tightly argued, superbly well-sourced, intimidatingly perceptive.” —Thomas Rid, author of Active Measures Cyber attacks are less destructive than we thought they would be—but they are more pervasive, and much harder to prevent. With little fanfare and only occasional scrutiny, they target our banks, our tech and health systems, our democracy, and impact every aspect of our lives. Packed with insider information based on interviews with key players in defense and cyber security, declassified files, and forensic analysis of company reports, The Hacker and the State explores the real geopolitical competition of the digital age and reveals little-known details of how China, Russia, North Korea, Britain, and the United States hack one another in a relentless struggle for dominance. It moves deftly from underseas cable taps to underground nuclear sabotage, from blackouts and data breaches to election interference and billion-dollar heists. Ben Buchanan brings to life this continuous cycle of espionage and deception, attack and counterattack, destabilization and retaliation. Quietly, insidiously, cyber attacks have reshaped our national-security priorities and transformed spycraft and statecraft. The United States and its allies can no longer dominate the way they once did. From now on, the nation that hacks best will triumph. “A helpful reminder...of the sheer diligence and seriousness of purpose exhibited by the Russians in their mission.” —Jonathan Freedland, New York Review of Books “The best examination I have read of how increasingly dramatic developments in cyberspace are defining the ‘new normal’ of geopolitics in the digital age.” —General David Petraeus, former Director of the CIA “Fundamentally changes the way we think about cyber operations from ‘war’ to something of significant import that is not war—what Buchanan refers to as ‘real geopolitical competition.’” —Richard Harknett, former Scholar-in-Residence at United States Cyber Command

Cyber Mercenaries explores the secretive relationships between states and hackers. As cyberspace has emerged as the new frontier for geopolitics, states have become entrepreneurial in their sponsorship, deployment, and exploitation of hackers as proxies to project power. Such modern-day mercenaries and privateers can impose significant harm undermining global security, stability, and human rights. These state-hacker relationships therefore raise important questions about the control, authority, and use of offensive cyber capabilities. While different countries pursue different models for their proxy relationships, they face the common challenge of balancing the benefits of these relationships with their costs and the potential risks of escalation. This book examines case studies in the United States, Iran, Syria, Russia, and China for the purpose of establishing a framework to better understand and manage the impact and risks of cyber proxies on global politics.

The Internet was supposed to be an antidote to authoritarianism. It can enable citizens to express themselves freely and organize outside state control. Yet while online activity has helped challenge authoritarian rule in some cases, other regimes have endured: no movement comparable to the Arab Spring has arisen in China. In Contesting Cyberspace in China, Rongbin Han offers a powerful counterintuitive explanation for the survival of the world’s largest authoritarian regime in the digital age. Han reveals the complex internal dynamics of online expression in China, showing how the state, service providers, and netizens negotiate the limits of discourse. He finds that state censorship has conditioned online expression, yet has failed to bring it under control. However, Han also finds that freer expression may work to the advantage of the regime because its critics are not the only ones empowered: the Internet has proved less threatening than expected due to the multiplicity of beliefs, identities, and values online. State-sponsored and spontaneous pro-government commenters have turned out to be a major presence on the Chinese internet, denigrating dissenters and barraging oppositional voices. Han explores the recruitment, training, and behavior of hired commenters, the “fifty-cent army,” as well as group identity formation among nationalistic Internet posters who see themselves as patriots defending China against online saboteurs. Drawing on a rich set of data collected through interviews, participant observation, and long-term online ethnography, as well as official reports and state directives, Contesting Cyberspace in China interrogates our assumptions about authoritarian resilience and the democratizing power of the Internet.

This book creates a framework for understanding and using cyberpower in support of national security. Cyberspace and cyberpower are now critical elements of international security. United States needs a national policy which employs cyberpower to support its national security interests.

How do you describe cyberspace comprehensively?This book examines the relationship between cyberspace and sovereignty as understood by jurists and economists. The author transforms and abstracts cyberspace from the perspective of science and technology into the subject, object, platform, and activity in the field of philosophy. From the three dimensions of 'ontology' (cognition of cyberspace and information), 'epistemology' (sovereignty evolution), and 'methodology' (theoretical refinement), he uses international law, philosophy of science and technology, political philosophy, cyber security, and information entropy to conduct cross-disciplinary research on cyberspace and sovereignty to find a scientific and accurate methodology. Cyberspace sovereignty is the extension of modern state sovereignty. Only by firmly establishing the rule of law of cyberspace sovereignty can we reduce cyber conflicts and cybercrimes, oppose cyber hegemony, and prevent cyber war. The purpose of investigating cyberspace and sovereignty is to plan good laws and good governance. This book argues that cyberspace has sovereignty, sovereignty governs cyberspace, and cyberspace governance depends on comprehensive planning. This is a new theory of political philosophy and sovereignty law.

Domingo explores the potential of cyber capabilities for small states in the Asia-Pacific, the most active region for cyber conflict. He develops a systematic explanation for why Brunei, New Zealand, and Singapore have developed or are developing cyber capabilities. Studies on cyber conflict and strategy have substantially increased in the past decade but most have focused on the cyber operations of powerful states. This book moves away from the prominence of powerful states and explores the potential of cyber capabilities for small states in the Asia-Pacific, the most active region for cyber conflict. It develops a systematic explanation of why Brunei, New Zealand, and Singapore have developed or are developing cyber capabilities despite its obscure strategic value. The book argues that the distribution of power in the region and a "technology-oriented" strategic culture are two necessary conditions that influence the development of cyber capabilities in small states. Following this argument, the book draws on neoclassical realism as a theoretical framework to account for the interaction between these two conditions. The book also pursues three secondary objectives. First, it aims to determine the constraints and incentives that affect the utilization of cyber capabilities as foreign policy instruments. Second, the book evaluates the functionality of these cyber capabilities for small states. Lastly, it assesses the implications of employing cyber capabilities as foreign policy tools of small states. This book will be an invaluable resource for academics and security analysts working on cyber conflict, military strategy, small states, and International Relations in general.

This book explores what the American Civil Liberties Union calls the "third era" in cyberspace, in which filters "fundamentally alter the architectural structure of the Internet, with significant implications for free speech." Although courts and nongovernmental organizations increasingly insist upon constitutional and other legal guarantees of a freewheeling Internet, multi-national corporations compete to produce tools and strategies for making it more predictable. When Google attempted to improve our access to information containing in books and the World Wide Web, copyright litigation began to tie up the process of making content searchable, and resulted in the wrongful removal of access to thousands if not millions of works. Just as the courts were insisting that using trademarks online to criticize their owners is First Amendment-protected, corporations and trade associations accelerated their development of ways to make Internet companies liable for their users’ infringing words and actions, potentially circumventing free speech rights. And as social networking and content-sharing sites have proliferated, so have the terms of service and content-detecting tools for detecting, flagging, and deleting content that makes one or another corporation or trade association fear for its image or profits. The book provides a legal history of Internet regulation since the mid-1990s, with a particular focus on efforts by patent, trademark, and copyright owners to compel Internet firms to monitor their online offerings and remove or pay for any violations of the rights of others. This book will be of interest to students of law, communications, political science, government and policy, business, and economics, as well as anyone interested in free speech and commerce on the internet.