Back to the Future: The Moral Economies of Cyber Conflict

1. Back to the Future: The Moral Economies of Cyber Conflict Roger Hurwitz

2. Purpose • This talk discusses several assemblies of logics, practices, constraints and contexts that shape conflicts in and over cyberspace • Its aims to provide conceptual bases for policies dealing with conflicts • Whose resolution could require (threats of) force • Whose resolution might come through negotiations and/or development of mutually recognized norms; or • Which might be part of ongoing struggles to transform the international system

3. Terms in the Title: Back to the Future • In the late 1990s, some observers believed cyberspace -- the Internet & especially World Wide Web, changed everything, save US hegemony, as manifested in • Net centric warfare • Globalization of production and distribution • A global commons, unprecedented flow of knowledge and ideas, both scientific and political • Today that future is much less certain the technological optimism more measured • Domination through informatization of war, besides raising legal and moral problems, is threatened by exploits, malware, etc. – the IEDs of net-centric warfare; • Globalization creates vulnerable supply chains • By enabling the rapid diffusion of innovation, through licit and illicit means, cyberspace enables growth of serious economic rivalry to the United States; • The global commons in cyberspace also supports recruitment, coordination and support of politically extreme and terrorist movements, undermining stability of states. • So the good future is not going to happen just because the technology is cool. • We are more aware that the computer systems, networks, cyberspace are means of both communication and control, reflecting the character of computers as universal machines (Darash) • Need to think about conflict in managing, governing and planning for cyberspace.

4. Terms in the Title: Moral Economies • Used by cultural anthropologists to describe economic activities in pre-modern societies, lacking institutionally differentiated economic sphere • Economic activities are embedded in other societal practices and constrained by social norms • Some political economists use the term to indicate that modern economic activities are also based on unquestioned (ideological )assumptions & normatively constrained. • Used here to suggest that motives and actions in cyber conflicts might be constrained by beliefs, norms, other considerations apart from self-interested power seeking • Motives and constraints may not be the same for parties in conflict • Parties’ motivations, self-understandings and rationales might change when their actions meet resistance

5. Three Moral Economies • Adversarial • Zero-sum games • Mixed interests games where players lack any regard for one another • Competitive cooperation • Generalized reciprocity • Interest in system maintenance but • Individual deviation from norms to even the score or gain advantage • Self-legislation • Struggle for autonomy and identity • Emphasis on procedure rather than on definition of the good

6. Adversarial • Hobbes’s state of nature • Possessive individualism = I want more than you have both in material goods and security • Results in security dilemmas and arms race • Stability is produced through mutual coercion • Schmitt • Us v. Them • State arises during emergency to bind friends against their enemies • Possibly the initial position of military and security agencies • Cyberspace space seen as a domain, despite being man made (W. Lynn) and domains are to be dominated • But maybe a domain that cannot or ought not be dominated, • So perhaps try for norms limiting action (K. Alexander, at CSIS), at least among coalition of willing; • Logic: as projected social costs of cyber encounters rise, the game can turn from a Prisoner’s Dilemma into a Chicken game (A. Friedman) – a less preferred result • Adversarial is the first and final position of assorted terrorists

7. Adversarial Cases • Russia vs. Georgia, 2008 • Cyber attack coordinated with military attack either by Russian government or outsourced to organized hactivists • Goals in support of military defeat and demoralization of Georgia • disruption of Georgian military responses to Russian troops • Disruption of government contact with populations through broadcast and telecommunications • Effect on general population limited because of low Internet penetration • Russian(s) attack on Estonia, 2007 • Popular response among Russian computer savy, sanctioned by government • Comparable to demonstrations at Western embassies during Cold War • Similar though smaller attacks by hactivists on sites of governments in conflict • Damaging because of Estonia’s high dependence on Internet • Limited in actual damage because • Some Estonian preparation for attacks • Help from NATO allies • Planning called for attacks of limited duration • Reputation • Beyond actual damage caused • Taken as wake up call on cyberwar, especially by US and NATO allies

8. Competitive Cooperation • Adam Smith’s market • Willingness to produce for others is part of moral sentiment = benevolence that is activated when turned to one’s advantage (Rothschild on Smith) • Dynamic tension in Smith’s view between moral sentiment which recognizes the need for trust to maintain the market and self-interest which seeks advantage at other’s expense • E.g., Smith noted producer cartels would try to raise market prices above fair prices • Advocated intervention by state when this occurred • Cyber enabled Industrial espionage • Computer networks, vulnerability of hosts and online storage of science and technology information enable illicit acquisition of intellectual property at unprecedented levels • US is principal target of such espionage • US officials believe it is jeopardizing its innovative edge and hence its ability to compete in world markets

9. Competitive Cooperation • Contrasting moral visions • US: Industrial espionage is theft, perpetrators should be put on notice and sanctioned if such behavior continues • China (the alleged culprit) • Denies responsibility and claims it is also a victim of cyber crime • Emphasizes it is a developing country and characterizes US technological hegemony, as a threat to its information security. • Suggests an implicit rationale that China has a right to play catch up in part by exploiting cyber vulnerability. Almost a just righting of historic wrongs (Similar to the explicit special pleading it has done for keeping its currency low) • International context • China’s self assertion as economic power and demand to be treated as a respected equal coupled with decline of US as hegemonic actor • For some observers these trends mark a transformation in the international political system from empire, mark by spates of post-colonial and sub-national wars to sovereignties, where states have sole control of issues within their respective territories

10. Self legislation & State authority • New media – Internet and cell phones are tools for creation of new political identities in opposition to state • Conciousness raising, organization and command (these functions of communication already in Marx & Engels, 1848) • Political group formed through talking together and not dependent on existing prepolitical ethnic, religious or linguistic community • Political theory roots: autonomy (Kant), self-determination (Hegel), procedural justice (Habermas); post-modernism (note the pomo button on the first Mosaic browser) • Iranian election protests, June, 2009 • Opposition groups use Twitter and other cyberspace media to organize and publicize protests against Ahmadinejad’s “victory” in presidential election • Iranian government violently suppresses protests, arrests protesters and disrupts use of media. • US government supports protesters’ use of the media through distribution of anonymizing software. • Learning from Iran: Honduran military shuts off the cell phone switch in Tegucigalpa during its coup in late June, 2009

11. Why did the opposition fail? • The role of Twitter and the other media inside Iran has been exaggerated • Too short a time frame • Success of high risk activism -- facing violent response -- might depend on long standing interpersonal relations among other dissidents • Face to face relationships • Not formed through Facebook friendships (Gladwell) • Arguably successful high risk activism requires hierarchical organization, discipline and centralized leadership, • In networks leadership is diffuse, • Organization is flat • Discipline is weak (Gladwell).

12. A Moral Economy of the State with respect to Cyberspace • If the Internet is unlikely to birth new effective political identities, is it left just to the state to do that? • Paradoxically, the clash of values in cyberspace and the globalization it supports might contribute to a fear among people that causes them to seek protection in states with certain boundaries. • The state far from disappearing may be about to come into its own: the privileges of citizenship, the protection of card-holding residency rights, will be wielded as political trumps. Intolerant demagogues in established democracies will demand “tests” – of knowledge, of language, of attitude to determine whether desperate newcomers are deserving of British or French or Dutch identity (T. Judt, NYReview, 3/25/2010) • Such logic supports states’ attempts to establish boundaries in cyberspace, filter contents and seek greater representation online of national culture • China White paper on Internet (June, 2010) call for Internet with more Chinese characteristics