Statecraft in Cyberspace

By Catherine Lotrionte

Dr. Catherine Lotrionte is the Director of the Cyber Project in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, where she teaches and writes on international and national security law, international affairs and technology.  She has previously served as Counsel to the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board at the White House, legal counsel for the Joint Inquiry Committee of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and Assistant General Counsel at the CIA. 

Does the cyber domain call for a fundamentally different framework for achieving international order in the 21st century, requiring statesmen to critically rethink the art of statecraft?  Most likely not, for as in past eras when new technologies and global threats have arisen, statesmen are still occupied with the great issues of war and peace.  In the era of the Internet, statesmen must take careful heed of matters of war, which remains the most terrifying and destructive experience of mankind. 

The advent of the Internet led to a new critical domain where states conduct foreign and security policy, trade, and commerce.  As nations have done for centuries past in the domains of air, land, sea, and space, they will seek to maintain sovereignty, ensure security, and pursue international stability, while using power to achieve their goals.  Within the cyber domain, the technologically advanced states will utilize new cyber tools to achieve the goals of traditional statecraft.  Those tools include:

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