Cybersecurity and the Age of Privateering: A Historical Analogy

Working Paper No.1 (March 2015)

Cyber actors are comparable to the actors of maritime warfare in the 16th and 17th centuries. The militarisation of cyberspace resembles the situation in this previous context, in which states transitioned from a reliance on privateers to dependence on professional navies. As with privateering, the use of non-state actors by states in cyberspace has produced unintended harmful consequences.

 

Florian Egloff is a DPhil student at DPIR

 

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