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Introduction
Studying Cyberspace Internationally

Why is it necessary to perceive cyberspace from a reflexive point of view? Since it is not a natural or social reality, but a shared system built over time by a multitude of actors, its hybrid nature – it possesses both a technological and a social aspect – does not enable us to use the usual benchmarks that social sciences use to study the social world. Moreover, cyberspace actors are talkative and doctrinaire and produce a host of fairly new strategic concepts (often of little value) that obscure the understanding of the situation¹. The effort to be reflexive seems all the more necessary. Understanding cyber therefore presumes an approach that takes into account its social and technological dimensions, as well as an ability to distance oneself from the various discourses of the actors, both indispensable conditions in order to make it an authentic object of study. The challenge of this book is specifically to try to contribute to this essential reflection, which is still in its infancy², and so we must therefore state for the reader the choices and perspectives that guide it.

The nine chapters of this volume provide a global and, therefore, original dimension of cyberspace. Indeed, it seemed to us to be beneficial to not limit its content, as is sometimes the case, to an irenic vision that only values the collaborative dimension or, conversely, to a cynical vision that reduces cyberspace to a conflictual space. In the spirit of our global perspective, we chose the title Conflicts, Crimes and Regulations in Cyberspace. This book is not directly part of the endless debate between the advocates of cyberwar (Calvo 2014) and those who reject this posture (Gartzke 2013). We note that there are confrontations in cyberspace, involving civilian and military actors, toward various ends that are not always short term. Today, the state of our knowledge strongly exceeds the apocalyptic prognoses of the 1990s and 2000s and this allows us to relativize the quantity and scope of confrontations between state actors, most of which are related to data theft activities, that is espionage (Valeriano and Maness 2018). Thus, we have chosen to describe them as “crimes” or “conflicts” in order to deliberately avoid the term “war”³, which seems excessive to us and immediately produces a securitization effect.

The 10 authors, whom we thank warmly⁴ for their contributions, were each asked to provide a clear definition of what they meant by cyberspace in their text. This is, of course, important since, in this field, diversity prevails; thus, in 2018, the NATO Cooperative Cyber Defense Center of Excellence (CCD COE) in Tallinn identified 29 definitions of cyberspace (Bigelow 2018). We have chosen to adopt the 2006 US definition from the National Military Strategy for Cyberspace Operations since it seems neutral: “[...] an operational domain characterized by the use of electronics and the electromagnetic spectrum to create, store, modify and exchange information via networked information systems and associated physical infrastructures”⁵. The authors gathered here, whether jurists or political scientists, also adhere to the perspective of studying the cyberspace object as a sociotechnical system, that is to say, as a set of social units in dynamic interactions, organized around information and communication technologies, which orientates toward science and technology studies (STS)⁶.

Finally, this book is clearly part of an internationalist perspective⁷, since its authors believe that the study of cyberspace cannot be confined to the limits of a single country, due to the distributed nature of the system structuring cyberspace and the constant mobility of data. This observation does not, however, invalidate the possibility of studying public cyber policies (see Chapter 2). Adopting this international approach, we make it clear that we will not revisit the theoretical debate on whether cyberspace is a component of the international system or whether it constitutes its own autonomous system⁸. In the research paradigm that we have described, we here highlight international cyberspace issues (see Chapters 1 and 8) as well as two countries, the United States (see Chapters 1, 2, 6 and 9) and France (see Chapters 3, 5 and 8). The diversity of cyber actors – state, non-state and individual – is evoked in every chapter of the book, but the chosen approach highlights the first two.

Conflicts, Crimes and Regulations in Cyberspace focuses, on the one hand, on the actors of cyber states, also known as cyber bureaucracies, in Chapters 2, 8 and 9, and, on the other hand, on the tools of cyber states, namely, norms (national and international law), in Chapters 4, 5 and 7, as well as the strategic concepts used by the different actors (cybersecurity, cyberdefense and digital sovereignty⁹). Our approach here is therefore that of the “meso-” level, which is rare, as international approaches to cyber in the academic literature of the Anglosphere rather tend to take into account “macro-” entities (states, international organizations, etc.). Thus, this book intends to contribute to the global academic debate on cyber issues.

References

Balzacq, T. and Cavelty, M.D. (2016). A theory of actor network for cyber-security. European Journal of International Security, 1–2, 176–198.

Bigelow, B. (2018). The topography of cyberspace and its consequences for operations. 10th International Conference on Cyber Conflict. NATO CCD COE Publications, Tallinn.

Calvo, A. (2014). Cyberwar is war: A critique of “hacking can reduce real-world violence”. Small Wars Journal, June [Online]. Available at: www.smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/cyberwar-is-war [Accessed 18 June 2020].

Cavelty, M.D. (2018). Cybersecurity research meets science and technology studies. Politics and Governance, 6(2), 22–30.

Gartzke, E. (2013). The myth of cyberwar: Bringing war in cyberspace back down to earth. International Security, 38(2), 41–73.

Gorwa, R. and Smeets, M. (2019). Cyber Conflict in Political Science: A Review of Methods and Literature. ISA, Toronto.

Kuehl, D.T. (2009). From cyberspace to cyberpower: Defining the problem. In Cyberpower and National Security, Kramer, F.D., Starr, S.H., Wentz, L. (eds). National Defense University Press, Washington.

Laurent, S.-Y. (2021). Ce que le cyber (ne) fait (pas) aux relations internationales. Études Internationales.

Loiseau, H. and Waldispuehl, E. (2017). Cyberespace et science politique, de la méthode au terrain, du virtuel au réel. Presses de l’Université de Québec, Quebec City.

Loiseau, H., Ventre, D., Aden, H. (2021). Cybersecurity in Humanities and Social Sciences: A Research Methods Approach. ISTE Ltd, London, and Wiley, New York.

Musso, R.P. (2010). Le Web : nouveau territoire et vieux concepts. Annales des Mines. Réalités industrielles, 4, 75–83.

Reardon, R. and Choucri, N. (2012). The Role of Cyberspace in International Relations: A View of the Literature. ISA, San Diego.

Türk, P. and Vallar, C. (2017). La Souveraineté numérique. Le concept, les enjeux. Mare & Martin, Paris.

Valeriano, B. and Maness, R.C. (2018). How we stopped worrying about cyber doom and started collecting data. Politics and Governance, 6(5), 781–799.

1 Introduction written by Sébastien-Yves LAURENT.

2 1 See Musso (2010).

3 2 This makes it all the more important to highlight the role of pioneers Loiseau and Waldispuehl (2017) and Loiseau et al. (2021).

4 3 For context in the literature, see Gorwa and Smeets (2019).

5 4 The coordinator also wishes to thank Michel Courty for his work in structuring the manuscript.

6 5 Quoted by Kuehl (2009).

7 6 See two particularly successful examples, Balzacq and Cavelty (2016) and Cavelty (2018).

8 7 See Reardon and Choucri (2012).

9 8 See Laurent (2021).

10 9 See Turk and Vallar (2017).