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      Introduction

      Studying Cyberspace Internationally

Why is it necessary to perceive cyberspace from a reflexive point of view? Since it is not a natural or social reality, but a shared system built over time by a multitude of actors, its hybrid nature – it possesses both a technological and a social aspect – does not enable us to use the usual benchmarks that social sciences use to study the social world. Moreover, cyberspace actors are talkative and doctrinaire and produce a host of fairly new strategic concepts (often of little value) that obscure the understanding of the situation¹. The effort to be reflexive seems all the more necessary. Understanding cyber therefore presumes an approach that takes into account its social and technological dimensions, as well as an ability to distance oneself from the various discourses of the actors, both indispensable conditions in order to make it an authentic object of study. The challenge of this book is specifically to try to contribute to this essential reflection, which is still in its infancy², and so we must therefore state for the reader the choices and perspectives that guide it.

The nine chapters of this volume provide a global and, therefore, original dimension of cyberspace. Indeed, it seemed to us to be beneficial to not limit its content, as is sometimes the case, to an irenic vision that only values the collaborative dimension or, conversely, to a cynical vision that reduces cyberspace to a conflictual space. In the spirit of our global perspective, we chose the title Conflicts, Crimes and Regulations in Cyberspace. This book is not directly part of the endless debate between the advocates of cyberwar (Calvo 2014) and those who reject this posture (Gartzke 2013). We note that there are confrontations in cyberspace, involving civilian and military actors, toward various ends that are not always short term. Today, the state of our knowledge strongly exceeds the apocalyptic prognoses of the 1990s and 2000s and this allows us to relativize the quantity and scope of confrontations between state actors, most of which are related to data theft activities, that is espionage (Valeriano and Maness 2018). Thus, we have chosen to describe them as “crimes” or “conflicts” in order to deliberately avoid the term “war”³, which seems excessive to us and immediately produces a securitization effect.

The 10 authors, whom we thank warmly⁴

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