From cyberpiracy to cyberattacks: Political science and the challenge of cyberwarfare

Abstract

In the last decade, the expansion of internet access led to new forms of social mobilizations from State actors as well as non-State actors. This not only implied new patterns of political expression but also a new way of warfare. Indeed let us have a brief look at the global military balance: the worlds powerful navy has only some 300 ships, there is one geosynchronous orbit with the number of satellites limited, and a military airplane can easily cost more than 100 million a satellite system more than 1 billion and a warship more than 3 billion . By contrast, there are billions of cyberusers around the world, an internet connection costs perhaps 40 a month, a good computer can be purchased for 600 and complex software can be created by a single person or downloaded off the Internet. Cyberspace and particularly the Internet do not know any boundary to their activities. Obviously this phenomenon led to the production of plenty of bold statements about the likely implications for International Relations theories. Because of this technological trend, scholars tended to assert that traditional concepts of geopolitics like territories, borders were to become outmoded. Then, ancient notions of frontiers, national sovereignty, and national framework for law enforcement were to become irrelevant in the digital age. Some argued that the power of pace was outstripping the value of place and consequently geographies were increasingly dimensionalized by speed, not territory.