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Is Cyber War Legal: A Four Hundred Year Retrospective

Scott Shapiro, Yale University

As cyber-attacks have become increasingly common (e.g., STUXNET, DNC hack, NotPetya), lawyers have struggled to determine how these 21st Century weapons fit into the traditional laws of war. Despite the enormous amount of attention paid to cyber-conflict over the past decade, the legal community is more confused than ever. Put bluntly, we are still very far away from agreeing on whether cyberwar is legal and, if so, under which circumstances. In this talk, I try to answer these questions by situating current debates within the long history of international law. The modern laws of war have changed dramatically from their initial formulations in the seventeenth century. By seeing how the right of war has evolved over the last four hundred years, I show how cyber conflicts fit into this evolution and the conditions under which states may use cyberweapons to disrupt the digital networks of their adversaries.

View the full Enigma 2021 program at https://www.usenix.org/conference/enigma2021/program