Nazli Choucri, Professor of Political Science at MIT, discussed the connection between the cyberspace and international relations, with theCUBE co-hosts Dave Vellante and Jeff Kelly, live at the MIT ECIR Workshop today.

The conference is the result of a collaboration between MIT and Harvard. “It started by us proposing a research project” responding to a request form the Department of Defense Minerva program, Choucri explained. The proposal presented was funded for five years of research on the relationship of the cyberspace and international relations, geopolitics, etc. “Our job was to find ways of integrating both, but the wold out there integrated much faster than we had time to make the tools for the integration.” The current challenge is to determine the best way to close the gap.

“The cyber domain, the internet, the physical mechanisms are multiplying, are developing, users are expanding, and it’s very difficult to remember a time before the Internet,” Choucri said. Talking about specific threats and the recent spotlight of the undersea cables, she states she “was stunned when I discovered this part of our research, the undersea network. Few of us in the policy world, science world, think about them.”

Living in a world of nation states

Asked to comment on emerging threats, Choucri expalained “we live in the world of nation states.” We have always lived in the world where “identity is tied to a state,” citizenship. “Now we have a technology which enables just about every individual, or group, to participate and make decisions, take actions that may or may not be a good thing to do. What we are faced with, is that the state systems cannot exert as much control over their citizens.” States are faced with adversaries that are not countries, they are groups, individuals, adversaries who’s identity is not known. Besides the attribution problem, the new adversaries are also not accountable for their actions. The industry has “to come up with tools, techniques, ways to understand and mange such threats,” Choucri said.

“In the old days, we used to worry about nuclear threats, but not everybody in the world, certainly not two billion people, had the capacity of engaging in threatening behavior,” Choucri  explained.

The US and US government are in a difficult position according to Choucri, as they are the prime mover, the first among what became many. “Now there is no special privilege to be given to the US.” Yet without the US contribution “we wouldn’t be where we are now. ”

Asked why is a US model is unsustainable for governance, Choucri said “the way we should think about it, the state system is not going to go away. That in itself is part of what the cyber community wants, to make sure that other stakeholders can have a say and participate in the management of that system.” So far, the governance issues have been of a more organizational nature.

Commenting on the outcomes expected for the event, Choucri stated that “the outcome of today is to give us a vision, a map, a mapping of where we go from here in the real world, at the point in which ICANN is rethinking its position, and the international community is all attuned to the issue of internet security.”