The Ethics of Cyber Attack: Pursuing Legitimate Security and the Common Good in Contemporary Conflict Scenarios

ABSTRACT

Cyber attack against Critical National Infrastructure is a developing capability in state arsenals. The onset of this new instrument in national security has implications for conflict thresholds and military ethics. To serve as a legitimate tool of policy, cyber attack must operate in accordance with moral concerns. To test the viability of cyber attack, this paper provides a new perspective on cyber ethics. Cyber attack is tested against the criteria of the common good. This involves identifying the four core components of the common good from a conflict perspective: respect for the person; social wellbeing; peace and security; and solidarity. The fate of these components is assessed in relation to the six key characteristics of cyber attack from a moral standpoint: security; the role or absence of violence; discrimination; proportionality; cyberharm; and the threshold of conflict. It is concluded that the common good must be incorporated into developing state cyber strategies.     

Understanding women at war: a mixed-methods exploration of leadership in non-state armed groups

ABSTRACT

Recent efforts aimed at understanding women’s contributions to nonstate armed groups have produced large-scale data sets on female combatants (Wood and Thomas 2017) and more limited data on women’s roles as supporters and leaders in armed groups (Henshaw 2016; 2017, Loken 2018). The present study aims to build on this literature by providing new data on the scope of women’s leadership in insurgent groups. While existing quantitative literature has focused mostly on the experience of female combatants, we argue that the presence of women in leadership roles is crucial to understanding how gender might influence the outcomes of insurgency. We introduce new data on over 200 insurgent groups active since World War II. While our analysis confirms earlier small-sample work demonstrating women’s presence in leadership roles, a qualitative analysis reveals that leadership is often gendered–revealing patterns of tokenization and tracking women to low-prestige leadership roles. At the same time, our findings challenge past research on jihadist organizations, showing limited expansion in the authority of women.