Cyber-diplomacy: cyberwarfare and the rules of engagement

ABSTRACT

This article is designed to outline the lack of international rules of engagement in cyberspace, and how traditional practices and laws of war are applicable to cyberwarfare and how it is not. If there are any legal implications for cyberwarfare, there are very few. Any reasonable anticipation of reprisal after an initial cyberattack by a nation-state upon another is minimum. The problem of attributing a cyberattack to a source remains an enormous challenge for cyber-diplomacy, leading to critics who do not see cyberwarfare as a standalone danger to national security. Regardless of the critics, the Department of Defense (DoD) has established cyber operations as weaponized entities in its Law of War Manual, and there are historical examples that prove cyberwarfare can act as a dangerous weapon against critical infrastructure and exposed populations. If there continues to be a deficiency of understanding on the part of essential decisionmakers regarding the nature of cyberspace in policy, and a sustained escalation of nation-state on nation-state cyberattacks, without proper rules of engagement in this space with universal axioms of proportionality, the international community could end up in error with an unwanted conventional or nuclear war.

KEYWORDS:

• Cyber-warfare
• cybersecurity
• realpolitik
• cyber-diplomacy
• strategy

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jonathan F. Lancelot

Jonathan Lancelot is a cyber security analyst at University of North Carolina Wilmington, and a principal policy analyst for the OSET Institute focused on election cybersecurity as a matter of national security. Jonathan graduated from Norwich University with a master’s in Diplomacy with a focus on cyber-diplomacy, and published the widely shared paper ‘Russia Today, Cyberterrorists Tomorrow: U.S. Failure to Prepare Democracy for Cyberspace,’ which is published in the Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University’s Journal of Digital Forensic, Security and Law, and he is a contributor at Small Wars Journal. Mr Lancelot is currently researching cyberpolitics, cyberphilosophy, cyberdefense and the implicit bias in digital technology design and engineering of election administration technology. Jonathan is also a certified Apple computer administrator and has worked in the U.S. Senate and for the US Department of Defense.