Cyberspace Law: Clausewitz fog on war and cyber maneuver in the modern information environment

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Cyberspace Law
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Task 1: Clausewitz fog on war in the modern enterprise information environment
Introduction
The advent of cyber war has sparked a heated argument among philosophers regarding whether
the timeless Clausewitzian principles remain true in the twenty first century. Indeed, uncertainty,
violence as well as rationality accurately indicate the nature of cyber warfare. Nonetheless, the
numerous defining aspects as well as approaches through which this warfare style is undertaken
has definitively transformed the aspect of the war. Indeed, the application of cyber war is still in
its infancy (Kott, Swami, and West, 2016). Therefore, each day government and well as non-
governmental actors are using various cyber forces for different reasons. As a result, these cyber
forces are in most cases encouraging criminalities as they are in most cases exploitative which
have become active in threatening cyber security infrastructure. Despite the fact that all the
activities of actors operating under this domain are pertinent, this part discuss the effects
developed by governments.
According to Carl von Clausewitz definition of war as “an act of force to force the enemy to do
another person’s will, whose intent is for political mileage” (Levy, 2017, p. 451). Indeed, this
assertion is relevant in the contemporary world like it was conceived more than three decades
ago. Regardless of whether one is describing war between nations, acts of terrorism or civil war
revolutions the common base is the political inspiration and its objective nature. Therefore,
Clausewitz argue that the nature of this enduring nature of war is uncertain, rational and violent.
For many years’ wars have exemplified these objective personalities where nations fight
violently both on the land and sea to secure political goals like change of regime. Even though
the battlefield landscape has transformed over time the objective nature of the war has remained
constant that uncertain, violent and rational (Kumar, 2017). In this sense, physical force has been

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the ultimate arbitrator as well as a means to influence the will of another. That means that so as
to secure one’s superiority the enemy has to be rendered powerless. Indeed, this is the real target
of warfare. Despite the fact that Clausewitz was conversant with the physical force utility, the
scholar acknowledged that it is not always a necessity for the enemy to be destroyed physically
(Fowler, 2018, p. 219). Clausewitz postulated that often conflicts cannot be resolved short of the
enemy powerlessness. According to Clausewitz the target of disarming the enemy is in most
cases not countered in reality and does not need to be realized as a condition of peace.
The creation of doubt and insecurity using the perception of overpowering strengths intensifies
the possibility of an opponent suing of peace before destruction. Ultimately, this idea is practical
to the strategic certainty of cyber warfare because it does not render the opponent powerless.
However, it creates insecurity and doubt which plays a significant role in weakening their will.
Therefore, Clausewitz recommends that the use of violent physical force is an approach of
imposing one’s will on an opponent. Nonetheless, political policy determines the manner in
which it is applied and the extent to which it is employed. According to Wallace, (2018) the
rational policy plays a pivotal part to the objective nature of war which also shapes the subjective
nature of the war. Towards the end of the twentieth and early twenty first century, technology
has experienced a great revolution which has influenced the character of war experienced
through the inception of space, air and cyber domains. Although operations within the
cyberspace domain remain relatively not yet mature, its integrated application has dramatically
influenced the way in which war are fought (Giacomello, 2018, p. 1132). Cyber technologies
have improved control and command, target solutions, battlefield communication and logical
ability.

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Also, the integrated application of cyber technology offers synergistic influence for systems
running on other domains. In the present cyber age, technologies allow attacks at supersonic
speeds and negates any barricades imposed by distance. In this sense, forces can be equipped
with very little resources like a personal computer (Hughes, and Colarik, 2016, p. 21). The
technologies of cyber warfare as well as those for cyber security are economically accessible to
all which means that a group or a state can equip itself with the least amount of resources
through technical means and human skills to harm the mighty.
Some of the decision-making for cyber friction issues include decision-making mechanism for
cyber-physical systems (CPS) embedded computers. The primary objective of cyber-physical
systems architecture is to acquire the maximum value from a huge system by understanding its
subsystems interact and interface. The idea was also supported by Moore’s law which stated that
the costs associated with a single embedded computer equipment comprised of communication,
processing and sensing capacities declined to zero (Valeriano, Jensen, and Maness, 2018).
Therefore, it is financially feasible to compactly deploy networks with numerous sensor readings
from the physical world to compute quantities and make decisions from them. Indeed, such a
compact network provide a better resolution of the physical world which is appropriate for
detecting the occurrence of events which is of dominant significance for various unseen
applications. The presence of a broad-based architectural elements which support
communication, processing and sensing abilities make the execution of CPS a practical solution.
In conclusion the emergence of the cyber domain has had a profound impact on the forthcoming
war planning. The current capacity of cyber is pervaded and almost each instrument used to
wage and control war. In my view, information systems, communication as well as conventional
weapons rely on reliable, resilient and assured network accessibility. Such inherent