‘New Security’ in Cyberspace: Emerging Intersection between Military and Civilian Contingencies

Abstract

From the outset, the emergent national and transnational networks of automated, inter‐connected information systems were expected to create beneficial communities. Unfortunately, unpleasant contingencies more like those of turbulent urban environments have emerged in the undesired challenges to individual and group security from these spreading global and critical networks. The ‘netted’ nations of the West are acting more like global neighbouring cities in their increasingly similar social burdens and competition for resources seeping across real and virtual borders. At the same time, with the rise of both wider global networks and highly‐Webbed military technology, the global military community is developing new, broader notions of the contingencies for which they must be prepared. In this process, on‐going since the Gulf War of 1991, millions of defense research and acquisition budget dollars have been, and continue to be, aimed at solutions for these newly perceived broadening responsibilities.The surprising result is a growing intersection between the capabilities being sought and developed in the most modern of militaries, the services of the US, and the emerging needs of the wider civilian community in meeting new contingencies. This article discusses this growing intersection in meeting internet‐borne societal threats or in applying internet‐enabled responses to intentional or unintentional social disruptions. While these trends are largely seen, today, in the US military and society, they portend similar possible developments around the globe. Not only is the US currently defining the dominant notions of a ‘modern’ military, it is also the incubator nation for global notions of a computerized society