Cyberspace: Malevolent Actors, Criminal Opportunities and Strategic Competition

Phil Williams and Dighton Fiddner, Editors

The e emergence and evolution of cyberspace have contributed to globalization, the creation of a new global commons, the rapid spread of knowledge and ideas, the development of global markets for local products, and the empowerment of individuals and small groups. Yet, cyberspace also creates new opportunities for criminality, provides new avenues for terrorist recruitment, and adds a new playing field upon which geopolitical rivalry among great and not-so-great powers plays itself out. The dependence of societies on cyberspace also creates new vulnerabilities. At the same time that cyberspace has brought new potential and promise, it has also become a domain in which malevolent actors pursue selfish interests, spy, steal, extort, bully, and stalk.

What makes this development all the more problematic is that cyberspace is constantly evolving. Accordingly, this book has three parts: the first focuses on cyberspace itself; the second on some of the major forms of malevolence or threats that have become one of cyberspace’s defining characteristics; and the third on possible responses to these threats. Each section focuses on conceptual and analytic issues as well as the implications for policy and strategy.

A publication of the US Army War College Strategic Studies Institute SSI.