Cyber-warfare is here, and it’s real; and so the question arises: what, if anything, should we do about it? An obvious response would be to try to regulate it with the law. Presently, there is no international law whatsoever regarding informational warfare.
In the absence of law, one turns to ethics for guidance. Traditionally, there are three major traditions of thought about the ethics of war and peace: realism; just war theory; and pacifism.
The Ethics of Information Warfare (Law, Governance and Technology Series)
edited by Luciano Floridi and Mariarosaria Taddeo
Cyber-warfare is a cutting-edge topic in armed conflict. It can be defined, at least initially, as attempting to use the Internet, and related advanced computer technologies, to substantially harm the fundamental interests of a political community. And cyber-space has been referred to as “the fifth dimension of warfare,” after: land; water; air; and space. Yet, much confusion (or “fog”) surrounds cyber-warfare, both regarding its present realities and its future potential. How much damage can cyber-attacks actually do? Is it even appropriate to liken computer-based cyber-attacks to physical (“kinetic”) violence? Is “informational warfare”, as cyber-war is otherwise known, changing the very nature of political conflict in our time (indeed, for all time)?
Part I. Analysing Information Warfare
1. Fog in the Fifth Dimensaion: The Ethics of Cyber-War
by Brian Orend
1.2 The First Distinction: “Cyber-War-Skeptic” Vs. “Cyber-War-Salesman”
A cyber-war-skeptic would be someone, like Howard Schmidt, who declares that “there is no such thing as cyber-warfare.”
A cyber-war-salesman, on the other hand, would be someone who wildly exaggerates the threat of cyber-war, and the disruption to be suffered from such.