Like a spy novel starting out, “On a dark and stormy night”, and ending with everybody dead, research into cyber warfare and transnational conflict is filled with over used clichés and the hype of a summer blockbuster movie. The concepts of conflict, war, death, dying, destruction, and nation state destabilization run rough on the sensibilities of citizens. The questions of cyber warfare tear into the ethics and cultural sensitivities of a technological society.
How long has cyber warfare existed? Where did cyber warfare come from? Is what we see in the mass media cyber warfare or perhaps some other form of conflict? There is only so much you can find in a literature heavily balanced towards national secrets, and then recently unceremoniously exposed on to the world stage. What is cyber warfare, who are the combatants, why should somebody be concerned about it, and is it just a passing fad.
That’s what we’ll talk about.