Rethinking Cyber Warfare: The International Relations of Digital Disruption

by R. David Edelman

Overview

Fifteen years into the era of “cyber warfare,” are we any closer to understanding the role a major cyberattack would play in international relations - or to preventing one? Uniquely spanning disciplines and enriched by the insights of a leading practitioner, Rethinking Cyber Warfare provides a fresh understanding of the role that digital disruption plays in contemporary international security.

Focusing on the critical phenomenon of major cyberattacks against wired societies, the book reconsiders central tenets that shaped global powers' policies and explains what forces in the international system might durably restrain their use. Arming the reader with the key technological and historical context to make sense of cyberattacks, it explores how deterrence, international law, and normative taboos operate today to shape whether and how states think about causing this kind of disruption - and how soon those forces might combine to rethink those decisions entirely.

The result is a comprehensive look at one of the most pressing issues in international security that also illuminates a new pathway for managing one of its greatest sources of instability.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780197509685
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	05/07/2024
Pages:	416
Product dimensions:	6.43(w) x 9.28(h) x 1.03(d)

About the Author

R. David Edelman, Distinguished Fellow, Internet Policy Research Initiative, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

R. David Edelman holds research appointments at MIT's Internet Policy Research Initiative (IPRI) and Center for International Studies (CIS) and teaches in its Department of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science. He previously served in the United States Federal Government, including six years at the White House -as the first Director for International Cyber Policy on the National Security Council and later as Special Assistant to the President for Economic & Technology Policy on the National Economic Council. He began his career at the State Department, where he helped found its Office of Cyber Affairs. He holds a B.A. from Yale and an M.Phil and D.Phil in International Relations from Oxford, where he was a Clarendon Scholar.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Part I: Cyberattacks & Restraint
Chapter 1: Defining & Studying Cyberattacks
Chapter 2: Defining & Studying Restraint

Part II: Deterrence
Chapter 3: Evaluating Deterrence
Chapter 4: Constructing Deterrence

Part III: International Law & the Use of Force
Chapter 5: Limiting the Use of Force
Chapter 6: Constructing Self-Defense

Part IV: Humanitarian Protections
Chapter 7: Humanitarian Protections
Chapter 8: Constructing a Prohibition

Conclusion

Editorial Reviews

"At 340 pages of elegantly written but dense text, and with an extraordinarily rich 36-page bibliography, the book was written for academics and, perhaps to a lesser extent, serious policy makers....the book will be an important addition to the curriculum in military academies and university level courses on regulating cyberspace. Moreover, it will be exceptionally useful for those in the world of statecraft and the military who want to think more deeply about how the international order can and should bring some level of control to cyberweapons." — Glenn S. Gerstell, The Cipher Brief

"If this analogy holds, those devising the norms for cyber warfare face a challenge similar to that faced by early-20th-century scholars who were horrified at the lethal prospects of mustard gas. Recommended." — Choice

From the Publisher