Uncivil and Post-Western Cyber Westphalia: Changing interstate power relations of the cybered age

Cyberspace is becoming bordered and moving away from westernized civil society control. Governments and major organizations are building a “Cyber Westphalia” of bordered national jurisdictions, forming in pieces across nations. Furthermore, the world has entered into the era of ‘cybered conflict’ among states and non-state organizations. As the centers of economic and demographic power move to Asia, rising non-westernized states are contesting the western notions of an unbordered, civil society led global cyberspace directly, as well as inevitably western control of the rest of the international economic system. That the challenge happened in less than a generation is, in large part, due to these western societies whose key actors were captured by a tri-part convergence during the formative ‘frontier era’ of cyberspace. Three cognitive frames guided western approaches to the growing global substrate: unrealistic optimism in early utopian cyber visions, security-blind IT capital goods business models, and western societies’ deeply institutionalized hubris about the permanency and moral superiority of their Cold War legacy control of the international system. Time is running out for scholars and practitioners to consider, debate, and consense on alternatives that can rescue some remnant of the free and open cyberspace created by the West for its own tolerant cultural preferences, transparent legal regimes, and comparative well-being.