Routledge Studies in Conflict, Security and Technology - Böcker

This volume explores the contemporary challenges to US national cybersecurity.Taking stock of the field, it features contributions by leading experts working at the intersection between academia and government and offers a unique overview of some of the latest debates about national cybersecurity. These contributions showcase the diversity of approaches and issues shaping contemporary understandings of cybersecurity in the West, such as deterrence and governance, cyber intelligence and big data, international cooperation, and public–private collaboration. The volume’s main contribution lies in its effort to settle the field around three main themes exploring the international politics, concepts, and organization of contemporary cybersecurity from a US perspective. Related to these themes, this volume pinpoints three pressing challenges US decision makers and their allies currently face as they attempt to govern cyberspace: maintaining international order, solving conceptual puzzles to harness the modern information environment, and coordinating the efforts of diverse partners.The volume will be of much interest to students of cybersecurity, defense studies, strategic studies, security studies, and IR in general.

This book documents and explains civil defence preparations for national cyber emergencies in conditions of both peace and war.The volume analyses the escalating sense of crisis around state-sponsored cyber attacks that has emerged since 2015, when the United States first declared a national emergency in cyberspace. It documents a shift in thinking in the USA, from cooperative resilience-oriented approaches at national level to more highly regulated, state-led civil defence initiatives. Although the American response has been mirrored in other countries, the shift is far from universal. Civil defence strategies have come into play but the global experience of that has not been consistent or even that successful. Containing contributions from well-placed scholars and practitioners, this volume reviews a selection of national experiences (from the USA, Australia, India, China, Estonia, and Finland) and a number of key thematic issues (information weapons, alliance coordination, and attack simulations). These demonstrate a disconnect between the deepening sense of vulnerability and the availability of viable solutions at the national level. Awareness of this gap may ultimately lead to more internationally oriented cooperation, but the trend for now appears to be more conflictual and rooted in a growing sense of insecurity.This book will be of much interest to students of cyber security, homeland security, disaster management, and international relations, as well as practitioners and policy-makers.

This book examines the European governance of emerging security technologies.The emergence of technologies such as drones, autonomous robotics, artificial intelligence, cyber and biotechnologies has stimulated worldwide debates on their use, risks and benefits in both the civilian and the security-related fields. This volume examines the concept of ‘governance’ as an analytical framework and tool to investigate how new and emerging security technologies are governed in practice within the European Union (EU), emphasising the relational configurations among different state and non-state actors. With reference to European governance, it addresses the complex interplay of power relations, interests and framings surrounding the development of policies and strategies for the use of new security technologies. The work examines varied conceptual tools to shed light on the way diverse technologies are embedded in EU policy frameworks. Each contribution identifies actors involved in the governance of a specific technology sector, their multilevel institutional and corporate configurations, and the conflicting forces, values, ethical and legal concerns, as well as security imperatives and economic interests.This book will be of much interest to students of science and technology studies, security studies and EU policy.Chapter 11 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

This book offers a multidisciplinary analysis of emerging technologies and their impact on the new international security environment across three levels of analysis.While recent technological developments, such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), robotics and automation, have the potential to transform international relations in positive ways, they also pose challenges to peace and security and raise new ethical, legal and political questions about the use of power and the role of humans in war and conflict. This book makes a contribution to these debates by considering emerging technologies across three levels of analysis: (1) the international system (systemic level) including the balance of power; (2) the state and its role in international affairs and how these technologies are redefining and challenging the state’s traditional roles; and (3) the relationship between the state and society, including how these technologies affect individuals and non-state actors. This provides specific insights at each of these levels and generates a better understanding of the connections between the international and the local when it comes to technological advance across time and spaceThe chapters examine the implications of these technologies for the balance of power, examining the strategies of the US, Russia, and China to harness AI, robotics and automation (and how their militaries and private corporations are responding); how smaller and less powerful states and non-state actors are adjusting; the political, ethical and legal implications of AI and automation; what these technologies mean for how war and power is understood and utilized in the 21st century; and how these technologies diffuse power away from the state to society, individuals and non-state actors. This volume will be of much interest to students of international security, science and technology studies, law, philosophy, and international relations.

This book investigates the goals and policy aspects of cyber security education in the light of escalating technical, social and geopolitical challenges.The past ten years have seen a tectonic shift in the significance of cyber security education. Once the preserve of small groups of dedicated educators and industry professionals, the subject is now on the frontlines of geopolitical confrontation and business strategy. Global shortages of talent have created pressures on corporate and national policy for workforce development. Cyber Security Education offers an updated approach to the subject as we enter the next decade of technological disruption and political threats. The contributors include scholars and education practitioners from leading research and education centres in Europe, North America and Australia. This book provides essential reference points for education policy on the new social terrain of security in cyberspace and aims to reposition global debates on what education for security in cyberspace can and should mean.This book will be of interest to students of cyber security, cyber education, international security and public policy generally, as well as practitioners and policy-makers.

This book investigates the goals and policy aspects of cyber security education in the light of escalating technical, social and geopolitical challenges.The past ten years have seen a tectonic shift in the significance of cyber security education. Once the preserve of small groups of dedicated educators and industry professionals, the subject is now on the frontlines of geopolitical confrontation and business strategy. Global shortages of talent have created pressures on corporate and national policy for workforce development. Cyber Security Education offers an updated approach to the subject as we enter the next decade of technological disruption and political threats. The contributors include scholars and education practitioners from leading research and education centres in Europe, North America and Australia. This book provides essential reference points for education policy on the new social terrain of security in cyberspace and aims to reposition global debates on what education for security in cyberspace can and should mean.This book will be of interest to students of cyber security, cyber education, international security and public policy generally, as well as practitioners and policy-makers.

This book examines the military characteristics and potential of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the new global revolution in military affairs.Offering an original perspective on the utilization, imagination, and politics of AI in the context of military development and weapons regulation, the work provides a comprehensive response to the question of how we might reflect on the AI revolution in warfare and what can be said about the ways in which this has been handled. In the first part of the book, AI is accommodated, both theoretically and empirically, in the strategic context of the 'Revolution in Military Affairs' (RMA). The book offers a novel understanding of autonomous weapons as multi-layered composite systems, pointing to a complex, non-linear interplay between evolutionary and revolutionary dynamics. In the second section, the book provides an impartial analysis of the related politics and operations of power, whereby increases in military budgets and R&D of the great powers are met and countered by advocacy networks and scientists campaigning for a ban on lethal autonomous weapons. As such, it moves beyond popular caricatures of ‘killer robots’ and points out some of the problems which result from over-reliance on such imagery.This book will be of much interest to students of strategic studies, critical security studies, arms control and disarmament, science and technology studies and general International Relations.

This book examines the military characteristics and potential of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the new global revolution in military affairs.Offering an original perspective on the utilization, imagination, and politics of AI in the context of military development and weapons regulation, the work provides a comprehensive response to the question of how we might reflect on the AI revolution in warfare and what can be said about the ways in which this has been handled. In the first part of the book, AI is accommodated, both theoretically and empirically, in the strategic context of the 'Revolution in Military Affairs' (RMA). The book offers a novel understanding of autonomous weapons as multi-layered composite systems, pointing to a complex, non-linear interplay between evolutionary and revolutionary dynamics. In the second section, the book provides an impartial analysis of the related politics and operations of power, whereby increases in military budgets and R&D of the great powers are met and countered by advocacy networks and scientists campaigning for a ban on lethal autonomous weapons. As such, it moves beyond popular caricatures of ‘killer robots’ and points out some of the problems which result from over-reliance on such imagery.This book will be of much interest to students of strategic studies, critical security studies, arms control and disarmament, science and technology studies and general International Relations.

This book examines the European governance of emerging security technologies.The emergence of technologies such as drones, autonomous robotics, artificial intelligence, cyber and biotechnologies has stimulated worldwide debates on their use, risks and benefits in both the civilian and the security-related fields. This volume examines the concept of ‘governance’ as an analytical framework and tool to investigate how new and emerging security technologies are governed in practice within the European Union (EU), emphasising the relational configurations among different state and non-state actors. With reference to European governance, it addresses the complex interplay of power relations, interests and framings surrounding the development of policies and strategies for the use of new security technologies. The work examines varied conceptual tools to shed light on the way diverse technologies are embedded in EU policy frameworks. Each contribution identifies actors involved in the governance of a specific technology sector, their multilevel institutional and corporate configurations, and the conflicting forces, values, ethical and legal concerns, as well as security imperatives and economic interests.This book will be of much interest to students of science and technology studies, security studies and EU policy.Chapter 11 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

This book offers a multidisciplinary analysis of emerging technologies and their impact on the new international security environment across three levels of analysis.While recent technological developments, such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), robotics and automation, have the potential to transform international relations in positive ways, they also pose challenges to peace and security and raise new ethical, legal and political questions about the use of power and the role of humans in war and conflict. This book makes a contribution to these debates by considering emerging technologies across three levels of analysis: (1) the international system (systemic level) including the balance of power; (2) the state and its role in international affairs and how these technologies are redefining and challenging the state’s traditional roles; and (3) the relationship between the state and society, including how these technologies affect individuals and non-state actors. This provides specific insights at each of these levels and generates a better understanding of the connections between the international and the local when it comes to technological advance across time and spaceThe chapters examine the implications of these technologies for the balance of power, examining the strategies of the US, Russia, and China to harness AI, robotics and automation (and how their militaries and private corporations are responding); how smaller and less powerful states and non-state actors are adjusting; the political, ethical and legal implications of AI and automation; what these technologies mean for how war and power is understood and utilized in the 21st century; and how these technologies diffuse power away from the state to society, individuals and non-state actors. This volume will be of much interest to students of international security, science and technology studies, law, philosophy, and international relations.

This book investigates the intersection of terrorism, digital technologies and cyberspace. The evolving field of cyber-terrorism research is dominated by single-perspective, technological, political, or sociological texts. In contrast, Terrorism Online uses a multi-disciplinary framework to provide a broader introduction to debates and developments that have largely been conducted in isolation. Drawing together key academics from a range of disciplinary fields, including Computer Science, Engineering, Social Psychology, International Relations, Law and Politics, the volume focuses on three broad themes: 1) how – and why – do terrorists engage with the Internet, digital technologies and cyberspace?; 2) what threat do these various activities pose, and to whom?; 3) how might these activities be prevented, deterred or addressed? Exploring these themes, the book engages with a range of contemporary case studies and different forms of terrorism: from lone-actor terrorists and protest activities associated with ‘hacktivist’ groups to state-based terrorism. Through the book’s engagement with questions of law, politics, technology and beyond, the volume offers a holistic approach to cyberterrorism which provides a unique and invaluable contribution to this subject matter. This book will be of great interest to students of cybersecurity, security studies, terrorism and International Relations.

This book is a multi-disciplinary analysis of cyber warfare, featuring contributions by leading experts from a mixture of academic and professional backgrounds.Cyber warfare, meaning interstate cyber aggression, is an increasingly important emerging phenomenon in international relations, with state-orchestrated (or apparently state-orchestrated) computer network attacks occurring in Estonia (2007), Georgia (2008) and Iran (2010). This method of waging warfare – given its potential to, for example, make planes fall from the sky or cause nuclear power plants to melt down – has the capacity to be as devastating as any conventional means of conducting armed conflict. Every state in the world now has a cyber-defence programme and over 120 states also have a cyber-attack programme. While the amount of literature on cyber warfare is growing within disciplines, our understanding of the subject has been limited by a lack of cross-disciplinary engagement. In response, this book, drawn from the fields of computer science, military strategy, international law, political science and military ethics, provides a critical overview of cyber warfare for those approaching the topic from whatever angle. Chapters consider the emergence of the phenomena of cyber warfare in international affairs; what cyber-attacks are from a technological standpoint; the extent to which cyber-attacks can be attributed to state actors; the strategic value and danger posed by cyber conflict; the legal regulation of cyber-attacks, both as international uses of force and as part of an on-going armed conflict, and the ethical implications of cyber warfare.This book will be of great interest to students of cyber warfare, cyber security, military ethics, international law, security studies and IR in general.

This volume explores the contemporary challenges to US national cybersecurity.Taking stock of the field, it features contributions by leading experts working at the intersection between academia and government and offers a unique overview of some of the latest debates about national cybersecurity. These contributions showcase the diversity of approaches and issues shaping contemporary understandings of cybersecurity in the West, such as deterrence and governance, cyber intelligence and big data, international cooperation, and public–private collaboration. The volume’s main contribution lies in its effort to settle the field around three main themes exploring the international politics, concepts, and organization of contemporary cybersecurity from a US perspective. Related to these themes, this volume pinpoints three pressing challenges US decision makers and their allies currently face as they attempt to govern cyberspace: maintaining international order, solving conceptual puzzles to harness the modern information environment, and coordinating the efforts of diverse partners.The volume will be of much interest to students of cybersecurity, defense studies, strategic studies, security studies, and IR in general.

This book examines the United States military’s use of concepts from non-linear science, such as chaos and complexity theory, in its efforts to theorise information-age warfare.Over the past three decades, the US defence community has shown an increasing interest in learning lessons from the non-linear sciences. Theories, strategies, and doctrines of warfare that have guided the conduct of US forces in recent conflicts have been substantially influenced by ideas borrowed from non-linear science, including manoeuvre warfare, network-centric warfare, and counterinsurgency. This book accounts for the uses that the US military has made of non-linear science by examining the long-standing historical relationship between the natural sciences and Western militaries. It identifies concepts and metaphors borrowed from natural science as a key formative factor behind the development of military theory, strategy, and doctrine. In doing so, Nonlinear Science and Warfare not only improves our understanding of the relationship between military professional identity, professional military education, and changes in technology, but also provides important insights into the evolving nature of conflict in the Information Age.This book will be of much interest to students of strategic studies, military science, US foreign policy, technology and war, and security studies.

This book examines the role of cyber-doom rhetoric in the U.S. cybersecurity debate.For more than two decades, fear of "cyber-doom" scenarios—i.e. cyberattacks against critical infrastructure resulting in catastrophic physical, social, and economic impacts—has been a persistent feature of the U.S. cybersecurity debate. This is despite the fact that no cyberattack has come close to realizing such impacts. This book argues that such scenarios are part of a broader rhetoric of cyber-doom within the U.S. cybersecurity debate, and takes a multidisciplinary approach that draws on research in history, sociology, communication, psychology, and political science. It identifies a number of variations of cyber-doom rhetoric, then places them into a larger historical context, assesses how realistic the fears expressed in such rhetoric are, and finally draws out the policy implications of relying on these fears to structure our response to cybersecurity challenges. The United States faces very real cybersecurity challenges that are, nonetheless, much less dramatic than what is implied in the rhetoric. This book argues that relying on cyber-doom rhetoric to frame our thinking about such threats is counterproductive, and encourages us to develop ways of thinking and speaking about cybersecurity beyond cyber-doom.This book will be of much interest to students of cybersecurity, foreign policy, public administration, national security, and international relations in general.

This book explores the changing tactics, technologies and terrains of twenty-first century war.It argues that the world in 2049 is unlikely to look like the climate change/artificial intelligence (AI) dystopia depicted in Blade Runner 2049, but nor will it be a world where conflict and war has been transformed by a ‘civilising process’ that eradicates violence and conflict from the human condition. 2049 is also the year that the US Department of Defense has suggested China will become a world-shaping military power. All states will be engaged in ‘arms races’ across a variety of new tools and technologies—from drones, robotics, AI and quantum computing—that will transform politics, economy, society and war.Drawing on thinkers such as Zygmunt Bauman and Paul Virilio, the book suggests that future war will be shaped by three broad tendencies that include a broad range of tactics, technologies and trends; the impure, the granular and the machinic. Through discussions of cybersecurity, urban war, robotics, AI, climate change, science fiction and new strategic concepts, it examines how these tendencies might evolve in the different geopolitical futures and types of war ahead of us. The book provides a thought-provoking and distinctive framework through which to think about the changing character of war. It concludes that for all the novel and dangerous challenges ahead, the futuristic possibilities of warfare will likely continue to be shaped by problems familiar to students of international relations and the history of war—albeit problems that will play out in geopolitical and technological contexts that we have never encountered before.This book will be of much interest to students of critical war studies, security studies, science and technology studies, and International Relations in general.

This book explores the changing tactics, technologies and terrains of twenty-first century war.It argues that the world in 2049 is unlikely to look like the climate change/artificial intelligence (AI) dystopia depicted in Blade Runner 2049, but nor will it be a world where conflict and war has been transformed by a ‘civilising process’ that eradicates violence and conflict from the human condition. 2049 is also the year that the US Department of Defense has suggested China will become a world-shaping military power. All states will be engaged in ‘arms races’ across a variety of new tools and technologies—from drones, robotics, AI and quantum computing—that will transform politics, economy, society and war.Drawing on thinkers such as Zygmunt Bauman and Paul Virilio, the book suggests that future war will be shaped by three broad tendencies that include a broad range of tactics, technologies and trends; the impure, the granular and the machinic. Through discussions of cybersecurity, urban war, robotics, AI, climate change, science fiction and new strategic concepts, it examines how these tendencies might evolve in the different geopolitical futures and types of war ahead of us. The book provides a thought-provoking and distinctive framework through which to think about the changing character of war. It concludes that for all the novel and dangerous challenges ahead, the futuristic possibilities of warfare will likely continue to be shaped by problems familiar to students of international relations and the history of war—albeit problems that will play out in geopolitical and technological contexts that we have never encountered before.This book will be of much interest to students of critical war studies, security studies, science and technology studies, and International Relations in general.

This book documents and explains civil defence preparations for national cyber emergencies in conditions of both peace and war.The volume analyses the escalating sense of crisis around state-sponsored cyber attacks that has emerged since 2015, when the United States first declared a national emergency in cyberspace. It documents a shift in thinking in the USA, from cooperative resilience-oriented approaches at national level to more highly regulated, state-led civil defence initiatives. Although the American response has been mirrored in other countries, the shift is far from universal. Civil defence strategies have come into play but the global experience of that has not been consistent or even that successful. Containing contributions from well-placed scholars and practitioners, this volume reviews a selection of national experiences (from the USA, Australia, India, China, Estonia, and Finland) and a number of key thematic issues (information weapons, alliance coordination, and attack simulations). These demonstrate a disconnect between the deepening sense of vulnerability and the availability of viable solutions at the national level. Awareness of this gap may ultimately lead to more internationally oriented cooperation, but the trend for now appears to be more conflictual and rooted in a growing sense of insecurity.This book will be of much interest to students of cyber security, homeland security, disaster management, and international relations, as well as practitioners and policy-makers.

This book examines the newly emergent field of military design thinking, how it has been developed inside and outside of military doctrine, and the paradigms that underlie its key thinkers and methodologies.From the emergence of its initial methodologies in the late 1990s, military design thinking’s development rapidly accelerated in the mid-2000s in response to perceived failures of existing military doctrine and practice to adapt to the wars of the early 21st century. To establish a foundation for exploring the significance of the challenge military design thinking presented to dominant approaches to warfare, the early chapters in the book examine the ontology and epistemology of military doctrine, which is defined as a written expression of a military’s institutional belief system regarding how to wage war. They also explain how attempts to incorporate military design thinking into doctrine ultimately led to its assimilation into this belief system, requiring military design thinkers to continue to explore and develop the field outside of doctrine. Since the mid-2010s, non-doctrinal military design methodologies have become increasingly prominent within several Western militaries, including the US, Canada, UK, Australia, and several European militaries. Later chapters offer an exploration of the paradigms underlying non-doctrinal as well as doctrinal design methodologies. This book highlights how the field has evolved, shows how military design thinking differs from its ‘civilian’ equivalents developed in fields such as commerce and business management, and discusses how it may evolve in the near future.This book will be of much interest to students of military studies, security studies, and international relations, as well as to military professionals.

This edited volume explores how artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming international conflict in cyberspace.Over the past three decades, cyberspace developed into a crucial frontier and issue of international conflict. However, scholarly work on the relationship between AI and conflict in cyberspace has been produced along somewhat rigid disciplinary boundaries and an even more rigid sociotechnical divide – wherein technical and social scholarship are seldomly brought into a conversation. This is the first volume to address these themes through a comprehensive and cross-disciplinary approach. With the intent of exploring the question ‘what is at stake with the use of automation in international conflict in cyberspace through AI?’, the chapters in the volume focus on three broad themes, namely: (1) technical and operational, (2) strategic and geopolitical and (3) normative and legal. These also constitute the three parts in which the chapters of this volume are organised, although these thematic sections should not be considered as an analytical or a disciplinary demarcation.This book will be of much interest to students of cyber-conflict, AI, security studies and International Relations.The Open Access version of this book is available for free in PDF format as Open Access from the individual product page at www.routledge.com. It has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

This edited volume explores how artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming international conflict in cyberspace.Over the past three decades, cyberspace developed into a crucial frontier and issue of international conflict. However, scholarly work on the relationship between AI and conflict in cyberspace has been produced along somewhat rigid disciplinary boundaries and an even more rigid sociotechnical divide – wherein technical and social scholarship are seldomly brought into a conversation. This is the first volume to address these themes through a comprehensive and cross-disciplinary approach. With the intent of exploring the question ‘what is at stake with the use of automation in international conflict in cyberspace through AI?’, the chapters in the volume focus on three broad themes, namely: (1) technical and operational, (2) strategic and geopolitical and (3) normative and legal. These also constitute the three parts in which the chapters of this volume are organised, although these thematic sections should not be considered as an analytical or a disciplinary demarcation.This book will be of much interest to students of cyber-conflict, AI, security studies and International Relations.The Open Access version of this book is available for free in PDF format as Open Access from the individual product page at www.routledge.com. It has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

This book explains the history and development of the military design movement, featuring case studies from key modern militaries.Written by a practitioner, the work shows how modern militaries think and arrange actions in time and space for security affairs, and why designers are disrupting, challenging, and reconceptualizing everything previously upheld as sacred on the battlefield. It is the first book to thoroughly explain what military design is, where it came from, and how it works at deep, philosophically grounded levels, and why it is potentially the most controversial development in generations of war fighters. The work explains the tangled origins of commercial design and that of designing modern warfare, the rise of various design movements, and how today’s military forces largely hold to a Newtonian stylization built upon mimicry of natural science infused with earlier medieval and religious inspirations. Why does our species conceptualize war as such, and how do military institutions erect barriers that become so powerful that efforts to design further innovation require entirely novel constructs outside the orthodoxy? The book explains design stories from the Israel Defense Force, the US Army, the US Marine Corps, the Canadian Armed Forces, and the Australian Defence Force for the first time, and includes the theory, doctrine, organizational culture, and key actors involved. Ultimately, this book is about how small communities of practice are challenging the foundations of modern defence thinking.This book will be of much interest to students of military and strategic studies, defence studies, and security studies, as well as design educators and military professionals.

This book explains the history and development of the military design movement, featuring case studies from key modern militaries.Written by a practitioner, the work shows how modern militaries think and arrange actions in time and space for security affairs, and why designers are disrupting, challenging, and reconceptualizing everything previously upheld as sacred on the battlefield. It is the first book to thoroughly explain what military design is, where it came from, and how it works at deep, philosophically grounded levels, and why it is potentially the most controversial development in generations of war fighters. The work explains the tangled origins of commercial design and that of designing modern warfare, the rise of various design movements, and how today’s military forces largely hold to a Newtonian stylization built upon mimicry of natural science infused with earlier medieval and religious inspirations. Why does our species conceptualize war as such, and how do military institutions erect barriers that become so powerful that efforts to design further innovation require entirely novel constructs outside the orthodoxy? The book explains design stories from the Israel Defense Force, the US Army, the US Marine Corps, the Canadian Armed Forces, and the Australian Defence Force for the first time, and includes the theory, doctrine, organizational culture, and key actors involved. Ultimately, this book is about how small communities of practice are challenging the foundations of modern defence thinking.This book will be of much interest to students of military and strategic studies, defence studies, and security studies, as well as design educators and military professionals.

This book outlines the concept of Fifth Generation Warfare (5GW) and demonstrates its relevance for understanding contemporary conflicts.Non-kinetic modes of attack and war waged by groups or non-state actors at the societal level has been termed 5GW. This book discusses the theory of generational warfare and explores the key ideas of 5GW, such as secrecy, the manipulation of proxies, the manipulation of identity and culture (including disinformation and big data), and the use of psychological warfare. These techniques are used to achieve strategic objectives, such as inducing desired behaviour and controlling human terrain, without resorting to overt war or overt violence. The text expands the debate on 5GW by exploring emerging technologies and how they could be used for maliciously shaping human society and even for maliciously changing the genetic makeup of a population for the purpose of unprecedented social control. The work closes with comments on the possibility of a Sixth Generation of Warfare, which targets technical systems to possibly collapse a society through strategic sabotage. Overall, the book demonstrates the relevance of 5GW for understanding contemporary conflicts, from the Arab Spring to the war in Ukraine, in terms of the need for dominating the human domain.This book will be of interest to students of security and technology, defence studies and International Relations.

This book outlines the concept of Fifth Generation Warfare (5GW) and demonstrates its relevance for understanding contemporary conflicts.Non-kinetic modes of attack and war waged by groups or non-state actors at the societal level has been termed 5GW. This book discusses the theory of generational warfare and explores the key ideas of 5GW, such as secrecy, the manipulation of proxies, the manipulation of identity and culture (including disinformation and big data), and the use of psychological warfare. These techniques are used to achieve strategic objectives, such as inducing desired behaviour and controlling human terrain, without resorting to overt war or overt violence. The text expands the debate on 5GW by exploring emerging technologies and how they could be used for maliciously shaping human society and even for maliciously changing the genetic makeup of a population for the purpose of unprecedented social control. The work closes with comments on the possibility of a Sixth Generation of Warfare, which targets technical systems to possibly collapse a society through strategic sabotage. Overall, the book demonstrates the relevance of 5GW for understanding contemporary conflicts, from the Arab Spring to the war in Ukraine, in terms of the need for dominating the human domain.This book will be of interest to students of security and technology, defence studies and International Relations.

This book analyses how digital transformation disrupts established patterns of world politics, moving International Relations (IR) increasingly towards Digital International Relations.This volume examines technological, agential and ordering processes that explain this fundamental change. The contributors trace how digital disruption changes the international world we live in, ranging from security to economics, from human rights advocacy to deep fakes, and from diplomacy to international law. The book makes two sets of contributions. First, it shows that the ongoing digital revolution profoundly changes every major dimension of international politics. Second, focusing on the interplay of technology, agency and order, it provides a framework for explaining these changes. The book also provides a map for adjusting the study of international politics to studying International Relations, making a case for upgrading, augmenting and rewiring the discipline. Theory follows practice in International Relations, but if the discipline wants to be able to meaningfully analyse the present and come up with plausible scenarios for the future, it must not lag too far behind major transformations of the world that it studies. This book facilitates that theoretical journey.This book will be of much interest to students of cyber-politics, politics and technology, and International Relations.

This book analyses how digital transformation disrupts established patterns of world politics, moving International Relations (IR) increasingly towards Digital International Relations.This volume examines technological, agential and ordering processes that explain this fundamental change. The contributors trace how digital disruption changes the international world we live in, ranging from security to economics, from human rights advocacy to deep fakes, and from diplomacy to international law. The book makes two sets of contributions. First, it shows that the ongoing digital revolution profoundly changes every major dimension of international politics. Second, focusing on the interplay of technology, agency and order, it provides a framework for explaining these changes. The book also provides a map for adjusting the study of international politics to studying International Relations, making a case for upgrading, augmenting and rewiring the discipline. Theory follows practice in International Relations, but if the discipline wants to be able to meaningfully analyse the present and come up with plausible scenarios for the future, it must not lag too far behind major transformations of the world that it studies. This book facilitates that theoretical journey.This book will be of much interest to students of cyber-politics, politics and technology, and International Relations.

This book argues that cybersecurity’s informational ontology offers empirical challenges, and introduces a new interdisciplinary theoretical and conceptual framework of ‘entropic security’.Cyber-attacks have been growing exponentially in number and sophistication; ranging from those conducted by non-state actors to state-backed cyber-attacks. Accordingly, cybersecurity now constitutes an integral part of public, private, and academic discourses on contemporary (in)security. Yet, because its emergence as a novel security field occurred after many long-established frameworks had already been developed, cybersecurity has been repeatedly scrutinised for its compatibility with conventional security theories, concepts, and understandings, particularly with that of military security. This book, however, argues that cybersecurity differs profoundly from many other security sectors because of the ontological nature of ‘information’ that sits at the heart of this field. Through this new framework, the book investigates three key empirical challenges in cybersecurity that are co-produced by its informational ontology: (1) the disordered nature of cybersecurity and its tendency towards increasing insecurity as a manifestation of the intrinsic uncertainties in information systems; (2) the unpredictable and unintended consequences resulting from autonomous cyber-attacks that challenge human control of cybersecurity environments; and (3) the persistent harms engendered by ‘mundane’ cyber threats that do not fit within conventional understandings of existentiality in security theories. Through a detailed analysis of cybersecurity discourses and practices in the USA (2003-present), the book goes on to show how these complex cybersecurity challenges are better analysed and theorised through the new information-theoretic notion of ‘entropic security’.This book will be of much interest to students of cyber-security, critical security studies, science and technology studies and International Relations in general.

This book offers an interdisciplinary insight into the key debates around information warfare in the digital age and argues that transnational cooperation can mitigate the threat.States and societies are increasingly vulnerable to cyber-enabled information operations. From efforts to divide nations, undermine public policy, manipulate elections, and generate social discord, malign actors use the online realm to wreak havoc on our offline lives. The book explores the digital disinformation dilemma that confronts liberal democracies, reflecting on shared socio-political challenges and solutions to contemporary information operations amongst the Five Eyes states and beyond. The work aims to generate a holistic human-centric perspective on the challenges of digital (dis)information operations through interdisciplinary insight into shared challenges and solutions to contemporary information warfare. Together, these perspectives enable us to more effectively identify opportunities to address the challenge and increase the potential to enrich international collaborative efforts to safeguard liberal democracies from threats to their information environments.This book will be of much interest to students of information warfare, intelligence studies, foreign policy and International Relations.Chapter 1 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.