ABSTRACT
The proliferation of martial rhetoric in connection with the release of thousands of pages of sensitive government documents by the Wikileaks organization underlines how easily words that have legal meanings can be indiscriminately applied to cyber events in ways that can confuse decision makers and strategists alike. This chapter presents somewhat different tact concerning the ability of the law of armed conflict (LOAC) to address cyber issues. It shows that very often the real difficulty with respect to the law and cyberwar is not because of any lack of "law," per se, but rather relates to the technical ability to determine the necessary facts which must be applied to the law to render legal judgments. Discomfort among cyberstrategists about reliance on existing LOAC norms is understandable. After all, most of the international agreements and practices of nation-states that comprise LOAC predate the cyber era. Indeed, many observers believe the need for a new legal regime designed for cyberwar is urgent.
