What is Cyberspace in a strategic sense?
The disucssion in class this week focused on different philosophies of the role of government in cyberspace. The readings provided a few different perspectives on this role, but did not address the internet as strategic space. In Johnson and Post’s “Law and Borders” article , there is discussion of the Lex Mercatorium that I found particularly rsonant. The comparison talked about the role of law in commercial interactions, but not that of security. This is an area that I would like to learn more about.
Johnson and Post discuss the Merchant Law as an analogy for the rise of “Cyberspace law”:
Merchants could not resolve their disputes by taking them to the local noble, whose established feudal law mainly concerned land claims. Nor could the local lord easily establish meaningful rules for a sphere of activity he barely understood, executed in locations beyond his control. The result of this jurisdictional confusion, arising from a then-novel form of boundary-crossing communications, was the development of a new legal system—Lex Mercatoria.\74\ The people who cared most about and best understood their new creation formed and championed this new law, which did not destroy or replace existing law regarding more territorially-based transactions (e.g. transferring land ownership). Arguably, exactly the same type of phenomenon is developing in Cyberspace right now.\75\
Taking the example of that era a little bit further, I thought about the transition from the medieval system of international commerce to that of the early modern period. The rise of Mercantilism in the 16th century might have lessons for the development of cyberspace as a security environment.
The merchants moved in, developed themselves and became profitable. As their realm of interests expanded and the stakes in their interactions became higher, they looked to the state for protection, if they could not provide it themselves. At the same time, states, seeing this commercial power as vital to their own fiscal regime, put their hand in the cookie jar and facilitated security.
Although from a later era, the East India Company also provides a good example. The Company developed colonies around the world until it started becoming more “state-like” in its security administration, finally being taken over by the British Crown in 1858 after the Indian mutiny the year prior. In a similar vein, will the US government have to intercede in cyberspace because large internet companies are having difficulty providing for their own security in cyberspace? Or, perhaps more likely, will companies like Google and Yahoo become so proficient in promoting their own interests that they threaten the ability of the US government to be the primary “security guarantor” in cyberspace? If so, what will the state response be?
In reading for my other class this semester, I am starting to see some analogies between cyberspace and outer space in terms of how the US government views them as security environments. For each, there is a definite contradiction between defining both environments as international “commons” while at the same time viewing each as vital to national security, broadly defined. That will be the topic for next week’s discussion.