ABSTRACT
The above quotes are exemplary for the tone and timbre of forewarnings concerned with a ‘new’ kind of threat to the national security and to the very foundations of developed societies. The most frequent label bestowed upon this phenomenon is that of cyber-threats, a rather vague notion signifying the malicious use of information and communication technologies (ICT) either as a target or as a tool by a wide range of malevolent actors. This book is about what I would like to call the ‘cyber-threat story’; the story of how and why cyberthreats came to be considered one of the quintessential security threats of modern times in the United States. I focus on the political process that moves threats onto the political agenda, removes threats from the agenda, or alters the face of threats on the political agenda – a political process that I label ‘threat politics’. In particular, this study analyses the use of threat frames: specific interpretive schemata about what counts as threat or risk, how to respond to this threat, and who is responsible for dealing with it. Cyber-threat frames reveal a great deal about the character of the actors involved in the construction of the threat and also about how security is defined and ultimately practiced in relation to the threat.
