Cyberspace and War: 2011 through the Prism of 1911
David Betz
Department of War Studies
King's College London
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Cyberspace is without doubt one of the most eye-catching terms in public discourse today. Strong claims have been made both for and against its wider impact. On the one hand are those who claim that connectivity 'changes everything', perhaps even the way that humans think--our basic human nature; while on the other hand there are those who claim that it changes nothing, it merely enables us to do things we have always done in somewhat different ways. Understanding cyberspace and war means exploring the vast terrain between these poles of opinion, charting a course between the millennial and the trivial. It means recognizing the complexities of military cyberpower, as H.G. Wells did those of airpower a hundred years ago, as a potentially terrible but ultimately limited weapon, 'neither unthinkable nor blessed.'
David J Betz is Senior Lecturer in the Department of War Studies, King's College London, and academic director of their War in the Modern World on-line Master's degree program. He is also Senior Fellow of the Foreign Policy Research Institute, and head of the King's College Insurgency Research Group, in which capacity he has advised the British Army and American armies on stabilization and counterinsurgency doctrine, force structure and organization, and strategic communications. His main research interests are insurgency and counterinsurgency, information warfare and cyberspace, propaganda, and civil-military relations and strategy. He has recently conducted fieldwork in Afghanistan and just finished a monograph on Cyberspace and the State for the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS). His work has appeared in the Journal of Strategic Studies, Orbis, Armed Forces and Society, Contemporary Security Policy and the RUSI Journal.
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