Who controls cyberspace?

Until recently, cyberspace was considered largely a matter of low politics. But over the last decade, it has begun to shape the high politics of national security and other core concerns of national governments, as evidenced by the Wikileaks release of US classified information and the social media-influenced Arab Spring. The field of international relations has not kept pace with this emerging significance of cyberspace. As the international system and the empowered non-state groups and individuals of cyberspace shape one another, the potential collisions of law, policy, and the practice of governance have barely even been identified. Before the international community can begin to minimize the negative consequences of those inevitable collisions, it needs to understand how and where cyberspace and international relations intersect and influence one another. The authors provide two complementary systems for analyzing those intersections and influence points.