Limits to a cyber-threat

ABSTRACT

This paper reveals the limits to representing cyberspace as a threat. In contrast to more conventional threats, the suggestion is that the not-immediately-apparent consequences of a cyber-attack make it largely reliant on official practices of representation. Exploring the implications of this reliance, the paper outlines how attributing meaning and culpability – always contested practices – are amplified in the potential absence of a readily apparent attack. Given these limits, does the cyber-threat then require a different lexicon of danger to both educate and engender a sense of caution? Examining the discursive construction of the cyber-threat, the paper demonstrates how this threat draws upon an established economy of danger – likening it to warfare and terrorism – but also suggests a limit to these representations. Specifically, by engaging post-structuralist literature the paper illustrates that these limits are best understood through an appreciation of the performative and the constitutive ‘lack’ in signification. It thus concludes that the value of the cyber-threat is not determined by transparently representing a cyber-attack. Rather, it is drawn from processes of hyper-securitization and through the establishment of institutions like the NATO Center of Excellence in Cooperative Cyber Defense that retroactively bring into existence the very object it purports to defend against.

KEYWORDS:

• Cyberspace
• terrorism
• securitization
• post-structuralism
• discourse

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

R. Guy Emerson is a Professor at the Department of International Relations and Political Science at the Universidad de las Americas, Puebla. He has recently published in New Political Economy, Contemporary Politics, International Studies Perspectives, Social Identities, Alternatives, Humanities Research, and the Journal of Iberian and Latin American Studies.

Notes

1. For more a specific definition of cyber-war, see Clarke and Knake (2012). It concerns ‘[a]ctions by a nation-state to penetrate another nation's computers or networks for the purposes of causing damage or disruption’.

2. For a debate on the actual nature of cyber-threat (see Arquilla, 2012; Rid, 2012). While Rid is critical of Arquilla's claims regarding the possibility of a cyber-war, Rid nonetheless acknowledges that ‘aggressive behavior online is widening’ and that the sophistication of attacks has increased.

3. This is often referred to as cloning an IP address. This is done to protect the identity of the hacker, by masking themselves behind the IP addresses of other users. For more on the difficulty of locating cyber-attackers (see Kello, 2013, p. 33; Lindsay, 2013, p. 378).

4. In terms of defining a cyber attack, the U.S. typology includes computer network attacks (CNA), computer network exploitation (CNE) and computer network defense (CND) as the third pillar of its Computer Network Operations (CNO). For its part Canberra defines cyber security as: ‘[m]easures relating to the confidentiality, availability and integrity of information that is processed, stored and communicated by electronic or similar means’. To reiterate, however, this paper is not concerned with how the cyber-threat is necessarily defined. Indeed, the above typology and definition appears adequate. Rather, the paper explores how such threats are made apparent to the public, and how the ambiguity already alluded to in its representation is mitigated.

5. For more recent interpretations on the importance of this process (see Butler, 1993, pp. 68–70; Laclau, 1996, p. 56; Žižek, 2008).

6. This claim that the materiality of any attack can never be fully represented is broadly based on the notion of the trace outlined by Jacques Derrida. As signification is processes of difference and deferral, the linguistic system signifies insofar as it differantially refers to another element and, therefore, is not itself present. The present, in this sense, is constituted by a network of traces. Viewed accordingly, the analysis here does not question absence in signification nor notions of the trace; rather, it suggests that an inability to completely represent an actual referent, in this case the disastrous consequences of a terrorist attack, helps constitute meaning, thereby haunting signification as the presence of its absence. For more on Derrida and the trace (see Derrida, 1982, p. 12, 21).

7. Cited in Baudrillard (2005, p. 68).

8. For a more detailed discussion on the deterrence value of cyberspace (see Lupovichi, 2015; Liff, 2012; Libicki, 2009)

9. For more on the signifier as an impossible object of desire, and thus the site of phantasmatic investment (see Žižek, 2008, p. 104), especially chapter 3 ‘Che Vuoi?’ Expanding on this reading, Žižek critiques discourse analysis for its failure to mark the ‘Real’ which resists symbolisation.