Klimburg - The darkening web: the war for cyberspace

As Hermes once took to his feathers light,

When lulled Argus, baffled, swoond and slept,

So on a Delphic reed, my idle spright

So playd, so charmd, so conquerd, so bereft

The dragon-world of all its hundred eyes

John Keats, A Dream, After Reading Dantes Episode of Paolo and Francesca

T here is an ancient Indian parable, best reinterpreted in an old New Yorker cartoon, of what an elephant must feel like to a roomful of blind men trying to describe it. One man would feel the trunk and identify a snake, another would feel its sides and identify a wall, another would feel the legs and identify a tree, and still another would feel the ears and identify a fan, and so on. The image has always been popular with those who seek to describe the Internet, for the difficulty of grasping the entire cyberspace beast is tremendous, and the way you approach it inadvertently defines the way you see it. Some observers may concentrate on the economic impact of cyberspace, others on the socially transformative aspects, yet others on the technological development itself, or on the behavior of cyber criminals. This is a book about security, and in particular international security.

A very great number of people probably dont spend much time thinking about security and cyberspace. When the word cybersecurity (itself a contentious term, as we shall see) comes up, most of us probably think of cyber crimethe danger that our credit card or banking data may be stolen, or our devices infected with a virus, or our social network profiles hijacked. A slightly smaller section of the population may think about rampant cyber espionage pitting states against each other in a constant struggle, with governments and businesses hacked on an almost-daily basis. Others may be concerned with the prospect of catastrophic cyberattacks (another contentious term) on critical infrastructure, most notably the power grid. And some may also wonder how the Internet itself can be governed, how human rights can be guaranteed while at the same time ensuring a basic level of data security for the average user. Although these seem like disparate issues, they are all connected.

Security in cyberspace is in itself a vast subjecta whole new elephant to analyze, with each attempt to grapple with the beast inherently bearing the risk of overemphasizing that particular component. This book is oriented toward one part of that bodythe tusks, if you willthat represents the security interests of nation-states and their governments in cyberspace. It is rooted in the ongoing debate on cyberspace and international relations conducted today in both research organizations and governments worldwide. This book is therefore largely concerned with how governments perceive and address what are loosely referred to as international cybersecurity issues and how they are framing this new domain as a means to project power.

The aspirations of states in cyberspace, together with the technical realities of this new artificial world, are creating significant risks for human welfare writ large. These risks are associated with new means to not only inflict large-scale destruction in interstate conflict and war but also do catastrophic damage to liberal democratic societies through a subtle reframing of information overall as a weapon. Ultimately, we face the small but real prospect that in the not-too-distant future the Internet, a fabulous artifice of human civilization largely perceived today as a domain for advancing freedoms and prosperity, could become instead a dark web of subjugation.