The Militarization of the Civilian Internet

Posted: September 21st, 2017

By Alexander Klimburg

Alexander Klimburg is the Director of the Cyber Policy and Resilience Program at The Hague Centre for Strategic Studies. He is also an associate of the Science, Technology and Public Policy Program and Cyber Security Project at the Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center, a nonresident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council, and an associate fellow at the Austrian Institute of European and Security Policy. Previously, Klimburg worked in Vienna as senior adviser at the Austrian Institute of International Affairs and has been closely involved in a number of European cybersecurity policy initiatives.

Military and intelligence professionals around the world view cyberspace differently. In the West, it is thought of as a facilitating factor that can be leverage for espionage, disruption, and sabotage. In China and Russia, where the priority is the ruling regimes continuing hold on power, cyberspace is thought of as a mode of internal subjugation and external influence – where information control, not data integrity, is the currency of state power.

The Cipher Brief’s Levi Maxey spoke with Alexander Klimburg, the Director of the Cyber Policy and Resilience Program at The Hague Centre for Strategic Studies, about the direction cyber conflict is taking, and why Western countries should not be baited into a cyber-enabled information war against adversaries that would seek to interfere in democratic elections by sowing fear, confusion, and disinformation.

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