Abstract
Policy-makers involved in cybersecurity governance should pay close attention to the ‘generative metaphors’ they use to describe and understand new technologies. Generative metaphors structure our understanding of policy problems by imposing mental models of both the problem and possible solutions. As a result, they can also constrain ethical reasoning about new technologies, by uncritically carrying over assumptions about moral roles and obligations from an existing domain. The discussion of global governance of cybersecurity problems has to date been dominated by the metaphor of ‘cyber war’. In this paper, I argue that this metaphor diminishes possibilities for international collaboration in this area by limiting states to reactive policies of naming and shaming rather than proactive actions to address systemic features of cyberspace. We suggest that alternative metaphors—such as health, ecosystem, and architecture—can help expose the dominance of the war metaphor and provide a more collaborative and conceptually accurate frame for negotiations.
Highlights
The debate on the regulation of international ‘cyber warfare’ is a negotiation over the assignment of moral obligations
To illustrate how metaphors shape ethical reasoning, the following sections will discuss the roles and obligations suggested by four metaphors in cybersecurity governance, these are the metaphors of war, health, ecosystem and infrastructure
Conflict in the cyber domain is like kinetic conflicts in many ways, and I am not arguing that borrowing concepts or thinking in terms of conventional war will never be useful for regulating cyber conflict
Summary
The debate on the regulation of international ‘cyber warfare’ is a negotiation over the assignment of moral obligations. Slupska hacking group named the Shadow Brokers stole the vulnerability from the NSA and released it online, making the WannaCry attack possible. In this complex web of actors and cyber intrusions, whom do we blame for the billions of dollars of damage and impaired functionality in crucial services like hospitals? These might include the venue (UN GGE or elsewhere?), number of states (small circle of like-minded states or broad inclusiveness?) and the nature of stakeholders (private sectors and or NGOs representatives?) This group should consider an underlying and often overlooked question: which metaphors will structure the negotiating process?
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