Cyber Realism and Just War, Wheaton Center for Faith, Politics, and Economics Colloquium
Although much of contemporary scholarship on cyberwar has investigated whether and to what extent cyberwar will (or will not) have a role in the future of warfare, many ethical questions remain either unanswered or insufficiently so. What is at stake, as with any new technological advancement, is the potential that cyberwars will undermine our ethical thinking, invite abuse, and potentially lead to an increase of human suffering. Unlike other technological innovations, the risk is not that the new technology is more deadly (nuclear weapons) or blurs traditional just war categories in order to gain more precision in others (drones). Rather, cyberwar’s defensive vulnerabilities are overemphasized, while the offensive risks are underemphasized. That is, we have come think of only “Cyber-Pearl Harbors”—to use the words of Leon Panetta—while simultaneously characterizing our offensive capabilities as always a just response in the escalation of coercive force by the state.
This paper advances the argument that whatever the critcisms of cyberwar, not only is it warfighting, but also that the just war tradition is more than adequate for dealing with the novel challenges unique to cyber. It also advances caution for two risks on the horizon to which military and strategic ethicists must remain attentive. The first is legalist-atrophy from an myopically technical approach which seeks ever granular definitions, categories, and procedure. The second is a mirror, wherein overly optimistic analyses of cyberwar invite moral hazard—creating conditions that increase human suffering and risk escalating physical violence when none would other have occurred. In short, rather than focusing our moral anlysis on the quite modern jus ad bellum-jus in bello distinctions, we should remember that the just war tradition is about the prudential, just ordering of statecraft writ large. In this vein, the main categories of the just war tradition are more akin to principles of thinking, not formal laws.