The Evolving Face of Cyber Conflict and International Law:  A Futurespective

in person symposium

June 15 - 17, 2022

It’s been a little less than a quarter century since the Morris Worm shook the quixotic orthodoxies about the innate trustworthiness of digital interconnectivity and exposed the soft underbelly of what would shortly explode across the globe – the Internet.  Since that time, criminals, non-state actors, and states have leveraged the inherent insecurities and vulnerabilities of cyberspace at an ever-increasing rate and with ever-more harmful impact.  Data theft, ransomware attacks, and critical infrastructure disruptions, to name a few, are now near daily occurrences.  Notwithstanding the immense societal risks these activities present, a growing number of states have fully embraced cyber tools and operations as staples in their toolkits of both statecraft and warfare.  

At the same time, until recently states have remained relatively silent on their views of how international law regulates their cyber activities.  That has begun to change, however, with an increasing number of states making official pronouncements of their opinio juris, either independently or through established multilateral processes like the UNGGE and OEWG.  While this is a positive trend, it has also highlighted several disparate views on critical issues and the difficulty in achieving anything more than limited clarity and consensus.  What can we discern from these state pronouncements?  What is the present state of the law governing state cyber activities, and where is it headed?  That is the focus of this symposium.

IN PARTNERSHIP WITH:

Lieber Institute, West Point

The Federmann Cyber Security Research Center – Cyber Law Program, Hebrew University

S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSiS)

NATO Cooperative Cyber Defense Centre of Excellence

Sponsors:

Dentons - Diamond Level 

Mayer Brown - Gold Level

Debevoise & Plimpton - Silver Level

Skadden - Silver Level 

Texas National Security Review - Silver Level

Law & Forensics - Symposium Supporter

X Cyber Group Ltd. - Symposium Supporter

Speakers

• Michael Adams, Zoom
• Mariana Salazar Albornoz, InterAmerican Juridical Committee- OAS
• Lieutenant Colonel Ronald Alcala, Lieber Institute
• Catherine Amirfar, Debevoise & Plimpton
• Karine Bannelier, Université Grenoble Alpes
• Tess Bridgeman, NYU Reiss Center on Law and Security 
• Professor Sarah Cleveland, Columbia Law School
• Michael Diakiwski, Palo Alto Networks
• Heather Harrison Dinniss, Swedish Defense University 
• Dan Efrony, Federmann Cybersecurity Center
• Brian Egan, Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP
• Professor Kristen Eichensehr, University of Virginia Law School
• Veronia R. Glick, Mayer Brown
• Lt. Col. Davide Giovanneli, NATO CCDCOE
• Ryan Goodman, NYU Law
• Colonel Pete Hayden, Staff Judge Advocate, US Cyber Command
• Professor Mohamed Helal, Ohio State University Moritz College of Law
• Professor Duncan Hollis, Temple Law School
• Professor Eric Talbot Jensen, BYU Law School
• Darin Johnson, Howard University School of Law
• Professor Rain Liivoja, University of Queensland Law School 
• Professor Asaf Lubin, Maurer School of Law
• Liina Lumiste, NATO CCDCOE
• Dr. Kubo Macák, International Committee of the Red Cross
• Professor Marko Milanovic, University of Nottingham School of Law
• Tal Mimran, Federmann Cybersecurity Research Center
• Elina Noor, Asia Society Policy Institute
• Ori Pomson, University of Cambridge Faculty of Law
• Phil Robbins, General Counsel, X Cyber Group
• Professor Przemyslaw Roguski, Jagiellonian University in Kraków
• Monica Ruiz, Microsoft
• David Sanger, New York Times
• Professor Michael Schmitt, Lieber Institute, West Point
• Annita Larisa Sciacovelli, Professor of International Law, University of Bari and Consultant, UniBa/BVTECH  
• Scott Shackelford, Indiana University Maurer School of Law 
• Lt. Gen. Jack Shanahan, USAF (Ret.), CNAS
• Yuval Shany, Federmann Cybersecurity Research Center
• Talita de Souza Dias, University of Oxford
• Alissa Starzak, Cloudflare
• Arun Mohan Sukumar, Fletcher School, Tufts University
• Wieteke Theeuwen, International Law Division at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands 
• Eneken Tikk, Cyber Policy Institute 
• Heli Tiirmaa-Klaar, Digital Society Institute
• Jennifer Trahan, NYU Center for Global Affairs
• Professor Nicolas Tsagourias, University of Sheffield 
• Tsvetelina van Benthem, Oxford University 
• Marguerite Walter, US Department of State
• Professor Sean Watts, Lieber Institute, West Point
• TJ White, Vice Admiral (Retired), US Navy 
• Thomas Wingfield, RAND Corp. 
• Danielle Yeow Ping Lin, Centre of Excellence for National Security 
• Lixin Zhu - Associate Professor, Xi’an Jiaotong University

 

Video recordings 

See below for conference and dinner ceremony video recordings.