Europe's cyber-power

ABSTRACT

Power-struggles define many if not all aspects of cyber-politics. But how do they play out in the case of the European Union, who claims influence in European and global cyberspace? This article dissects different existing conceptualizations of cyber-power in order to understand where they come from, what they mean, and what they do. It then searches the European Union's cyber-security policy for different manifestations of that power. The aim of the article is twofold: One the one hand, it does groundwork for a more academic approach to questions of cyber-power, by presenting possible frameworks for analysis and by identifying issues and challenges for such an undertaking. On the other, it takes discussions about Europe's cyber-power a step further, by offering alternative readings of cyber-power in a specific European context, thereby stimulating a broader discussion beyond the question of how much cyber-power the EU has and focus rather on the kind of cyber-power it has.

KEYWORDS:

• Cyberspace
• cyber-power
• cyber-strategy
• cyber-security
• European Union

ORCID

Myriam Dunn Cavelty http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3775-1284

Notes

1 It is a deliberately narrow focus on cyber-power that does not include similar and arguably related concepts such as information power or discussion about the international political economy of communication/information/knowledge more generally (see for example Strange, 1988).

2 That said, discussions about the link between information and power reach back much further than a focus on just ‘cyber-power’ as a concept would suggest. Before it became a common custom to link cyber as a prefix to other (well-established) concepts, other concepts, like information power, were in use. They usually are broader in reach and often signify power over the media environment in general, often during military operations (see, for example, Gortler, 1995. In general, on the cyber-prefix and changes in concepts, see Dunn Cavelty & Suter, 2012). Due to space restraints, I cannot engage in this larger discussion.

3 Of course, there are differences in the existing definitions. But those differences are marginal when compared to the commonalities.

4 However, long before 2007, the EU also started focusing on specific forms of cyber-crime that were not directly related to these areas, namely child abuse online.

5 The 2007 Estonia case refers to a series of cyber-attacks on Estonian digital infrastructure in the aftermath of the removal of a statue of a World War II-era Soviet soldier from a park.

6 An additional priority is to develop ‘the industrial and technological resources for cyber security, including promoting a Single Market for cyber security products’.

7 My thanks to one of the anonymous reviewers for suggesting this point.