Cyber War Inc.: The Law of War Implications of the Private Sector's Role in Cyber Conflict

"20 Soon thereafter, the State Department acknowledged Administration initiatives to create "shadow" Internet and mobile-phone systems that could be used to support dissidents in countries facing communications crackdowns from oppressive regimes.21 By June 22- just three weeks after Google reported the latest hack against it- China apparently felt compelled to clarify that the country was not at cyber war with the United States.22 When the Pentagon officially released the unclassified version of its cyber strategy document in mid-July, it was sanitized of the bellicose posturing that accompanied the leak of the full, classified strategy document just six weeks earlier.25 The growing onslaught of cyber operations against U.S. companies and the escalating cyber-war rhetoric between the United States and China point up key complexities in the already fuzzy realm of "cyber war": What role does or should the private sector play in cyber conflict and what are the rules regulating private sector conduct? Because cyber conflict is a new, largely untested, and secretive domain,24 there is great debate about what law of war rules, if any, regulate it. Rather, the United States is viewed as the "number one source of cyber threats" in the world.148 More importantly to developing sound law of war rules, however, is that a relaxed standard of imputation would likely confound the main underlying purpose of attribution, which is to properly identify the perpetrator and make sure that counterstrikes are directed at the right actors. [...]the technical side of attribution develops to a point that instills confidence,149 the best course is to maintain a stricter standard for imputation.