Comment: could cyber warfare lead to real war?

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By Stewart Mitchell

Posted on 26 Jun 2007 at 10:42

According to Dr Lani Kass, director of the Air Force Cyberspace Task Force, the net is a strategic theatre of operations. "The domain is defined by the electromagnetic spectrum," she says. "It's a domain just like air, space, land and sea. It's a domain in and through which we deliver effects - fly and fight, attack and defend - and conduct operations to obtain our national interests. It allows us to help find, fix and finish the targets we're after."

Yet, despite such posturing, Nato doesn't currently define cyber attacks as a military action - leaving the victim without the protection of collective self-defence that traditional warfare would guarantee. The Council of Europe and International Telecommunications Union are both trying to structure agreements on what constitutes a cyber crime or an act of cyber war, but, with the stakes so high, a convention isn't expected to be signed until 2012. After any agreement, the consequences of a state caught sabotaging somebody else's network could be far more grave.

"Obviously, if what's happened here could be called an act of war under agreed convention, this would be more serious," says Clements. "If it was seen as a collective attack on a Nato member nation, that could spark a physical reaction."