ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book provides a critical appraisal of cyber-doom rhetoric that addresses questions of why, how, and with what potential impacts such rhetoric is used in US cybersecurity discourse. It utilizes articulation to examine cyber-doom rhetoric, including its dominant metaphors of war and disaster and its use of hypothetical scenarios, as constitutive elements of the US Information-Age security imaginary. The book also provides a critical appraisal of the post-2016 debate in the United States over how to understand and talk about the Russian operations and what they portend for the future of international cyber conflict. It traces the emergence, persistence, and influence of cyber-doom rhetoric in US public discourse about threats to and through cyberspace. The book explores a number of broader historical and social conditions that have allowed for the emergence and persistence of cyber-doom rhetoric.
