IB Digital Society 4.6C Conflicts, War, Laws, Regulations, and Policies Notes

4.6C Conflicts, War, Laws, Regulations, and Policies

1. This sub-topic has two parts. First, how digital systems change conflict and warfare. Then how laws, regulations, and policies try to govern the technology.
2. The organising concept is power. Digital tools change who can fight and who makes the rules. Systems matters too: one tool, like an autonomous drone or a platform law, ripples across a whole society.
3. Keep the halves apart: impacts (already here, e.g. a cyberattack or new platform regulation) versus implications (escalation, harm to civilians, rules that arrive too late).
4. Content topics: AI and robots and autonomous technologies reach the battlefield, networks and media carry cyberattacks and propaganda, and values and ethics run throughout because life and liberty are at stake.

The Digital Front

1. Cyberwarfare uses attacks on computer systems to disrupt, damage, or spy on an opponent, often targeting the infrastructure a society depends on.
2. A cyberattack can shut off power or disrupt water and banking, from anywhere and at low cost.
3. The attribution problem: it is often hard to prove who launched an attack, which makes deterrence and accountability difficult and blurs the line between war and crime, states and hidden proxies.
4. Concepts: through power a small actor can strike a much larger one; through systems an attack on one network cascades across dependent services.
5. Impacts vs implications: real disruption and a new arena of conflict; harder problems are attribution, vulnerable civilian infrastructure, and an arms race in offensive and defensive tools.

Autonomous and AI-Enabled Weapons