Given the enormous uncertainties involved, the new cyber dimensions of security must be high on every government s agenda.

Cyber war and cyber espionage are largely associated with states, while cyber crime and cyber terrorism are mostly associated with non state actors. The highest costs currently stem from espionage and crime but, over the next decade or so, cyber war and cyber terrorism may become greater threats than they are today.

Cyber Insecurity

Cyber Café

Cyber crime

China s Cyber Warriors

Given that security is a traditional function of the state, some observers believe that growing insecurity will lead to a greater role for governments in cyberspace. Indeed, accounts of cyber war may be exaggerated, but cyber espionage is rampant, and more than 30 governments are reputed to have developed offensive capabilities and doctrines for the use of cyber weapons.

Cyber War and Peace

For example, a taxation and regulatory exchange would help countries to tackle tax avoidance and harmonize corporate taxation, while promoting information sharing and cooperation. Likewise, a cyber security data sharing platform could prove vital to understanding, preventing, and responding to cyber attacks.

Can Cyber Warfare Be Deterred?

The US accuses China of using cyber espionage to steal intellectual property on an unprecedented scale. Among other public sources, it could point to a study by the cyber security firm Mandiant, which traced many such attacks to a People s Liberation Army facility in Shanghai.

Nonetheless, it may be possible to identify behaviors like cyber crime that are illegal in many domestic jurisdictions. Trying to limit all intrusions would be impossible, but one could start with cyber crime and cyber terrorism involving non state parties.

Every village in Africa now has a cyber cafe.

Will Governmental Folly Now Allow for a Cyber Crisis?

Cyber activists want to meet with the Supreme Leader.

We called the project CyArk, which stands for Cyber Archive.

But the most politically sensitive topic for China has little to do with cyber security or the South China Sea. It is China s ongoing crackdown on civil liberties and human rights.

1. Have emergency warning networks regarding cyber vulnerabilities, threats and incidents.

In America, you have the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act.

Let's shift to a different kind of sea, the cyber sea.

The US is most concerned about cyber security and the protection of intellectual property and infrastructure. Authoritarian governments are more concerned about information security the ability to control what is available on the Internet in order to maintain political and social stability.

Rarely hear about cyber hedonism, for example, how people are becoming passive.

Until recently, cyber security was largely the domain of a small community of computer experts. When the Internet was created in the 1970s, its members formed a virtual village everyone knew one another, and together they designed an open system, paying little attention to security.

A similar tension exists in the effort to create international Internet governance norms. While authoritarian countries like China and Russia seek information security, including the kind of overt censorship that would be prohibited in countries like the United States, Western democracies pursue cyber security.

China deploys tens of thousands of cyber police to block Web sites, patrol cyber cafes, monitor the use of cellular telephones, and track down Internet activists. But the threat to the new global commons comes not from what China does domestically. Rather, it comes from the way in which the know how that China has gained in fashioning domestic cyber oversight is proving invaluable to it in its efforts to engage in cyber intrusion across its frontiers.

Cyber weapons have this peculiar feature they can be used without leaving traces.

And this coordination may become even trickier with the introduction of cyber weapons.

A large coalition of technology companies and civil society organizations recently sent a letter to President Barack Obama arguing against backdoors. In addition to undermining every American s cyber security and the nation s economic security, the signers argued, introducing new vulnerabilities to weaken encrypted products in the US would also undermine human rights and information security around the globe.

Finally, there is the global level. The spread of infectious disease, global trade and finance, climate change, nuclear non proliferation, counterterrorism, and cyber security are just some of the issues that require broad international cooperation and global governance.

Nonetheless, at the end of the conference, there was still no consensus on global cyber governance. Many governments continued to advocate traditional United Nations voting procedures for making global decisions, and defend their right to control domestic cyber activities.

In that context, the Subcommittee requested ESCAP to finance and organize seminars and training workshops on cyber law to facilitate the sharing of experiences in the development of cyber laws and to promote the importance of harmonizing the laws.

Cyber threats and potential cyber warfare illustrate the increased vulnerabilities and loss of control in modern societies. Governments have mainly been concerned about hacker attacks on their own bureaucracy s information technology infrastructure, but there are social vulnerabilities well beyond government computers.

However, this episode reveals the growing anxiety in the Western world regarding these emerging cyber weapons.

We often hear about cyber activism, how people are getting more active because of the Internet.

(i) Conference services (ROE) maintenance and servicing of a publicly accessible environmental library and cyber café.

But we can shape our future cyber world in a way that keeps our data safe, reestablishes trust online, and welcomes in billions of new participants. Ensuring security will require that the Internet s many stakeholders establish some kind of governance system.

First, both cyber security and financial stability are extremely complex topics with which government regulators can hardly keep up. Industry remuneration for experts is far in excess of any public sector salary, and the best minds are continually bid away.

An unknown attacker may also be deterred by cyber security measures. If firewalls are strong, or redundancy and resilience allow quick recovery, or the prospect of a self enforcing response ( an electric fence ) seems possible, an attack becomes less attractive.

It is likely to take longer to conclude agreements on contentious issues such as cyber intrusions for purposes like espionage and preparing the battlefield. Nonetheless, the inability to envisage an overall cyber arms control agreement need not prevent progress on some issues now.

A Cyber Café, providing independent Internet access and 30 personal computers, will be located in the Plaza.

So cyber weapons are dangerous by nature, but in addition, they're emerging in a much more unstable environment.

CAMBRIDGE Last month, the Netherlands hosted the Global Conference on Cyberspace 2015, which brought together nearly 2,000 government officials, academics, industry representatives, and others. I chaired a panel on cyber peace and security that included a Microsoft vice president and two foreign ministers.

China's public security organs are also active members of Asia's Cyber Crime Technology Information Network System (CTINS), which utilizes Internet facilities for the immediate exchange or collection of information about computer based offences against children, detection and evidence gathering technologies, and pertinent legislation.

Moreover, the agreements foresee cooperation on cyber security, terrorism, satellite communications, and maritime security, which are also key elements of the Lisbon Treaty. Likewise, the joint expeditionary forces established under the treaties could lead to the eventual creation of a wider structure, as they already contemplate bilateral cooperation with NATO, the European Union, the United Nations, or other operations.

Cyber learning is also important. As states and organizations come to understand better the importance of the Internet to their economic wellbeing, cost benefit calculations of the utility of cyber warfare may change, just as learning over time altered the understanding of the costs of nuclear warfare.