Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

The Virtual Absence of Malice: Cyber Security and Threat Politics

2009; Oxford University Press; Volume: 11; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1111/j.1468-2486.2009.00857.x

1521-9488

Ronald J. Deibert,

Cybersecurity and Cyber Warfare Studies

Myriam Dunn Cavelty's new book, Cyber-Security and Threat Politics: US Efforts to Secure the Information Age, provides a theoretically informed analysis of the social construction of cyber-security threats in the context of US national security policy. As Cavelty notes, the topic of cyber-security has gone through many ebbs and flows over the years. During the 1990s, prior to 9/11, the concept was ranked extraordinarily high, with haunting prognostications of an electronic Pearl Harbor. Similar fears arose leading up to the year 2000, with the so-called Y2K crisis. Both threats reflected the growing recognition of our dependence on technological systems and the possibility of systems crash. After 9/11, cyber-security fears receded relative to more physical ones, like biological terrorism, although the issue has continued to morph and evolve. Cavelty's starting point is the so-called Copenhagen School of securitization (Buzan, Waever, and de Wilde 1997), which is within the social constructivist family of IR theorizing. According to this school, threats to national security are not defined in accordance with rational calculations, but are socially constructed from discourses that arise from and are shaped and promoted by policy communities. Socially constructed threats define the “object” of security (that which is to be protected), the agency or source of the threat, and the policy responses that flow from it, none of which is a priori self-evident. Cavelty adds some helpful conceptual elements to the Copenhagen School, such as threat frames and policy windows, which provide some additional theoretical depth, before embarking on her analysis of the US cyber-security threat frame. The theoretical parts of the book are very clearly written, easy to understand, and refreshingly self-conscious. It is clear that Cavelty aims not to proselytize her approach but rather assess it pragmatically as a tool. For that reason alone, the book is a useful primer on securitization theory (although because of its empirical focus on cyber-security it is likely not to be read as a general interest theoretical book).