ABSTRACT
This chapter shows that cyber-doom and its associated rhetorical tactics suffer from several cognitive distortions, including metaphorical idolatry, two variations of probability neglect, and externalization of responsibility for our actions. Cyber-doom rhetoric relies on a number of tactics, including historical metaphors and analogies, use of fiction, hypothetical scenarios, conflation, projection, and more to reinforce the twin, master metaphors of war and disaster used to frame cyber conflict. The danger in framing cyber conflict primarily with metaphors to war and disaster and reinforcing them through the use of doom scenarios is that these tactics tend to promote misdiagnosis of problems, biased ways of thinking, and counterproductive responses. Thus, metaphorical language in particular, and rhetoric more generally, serve as a window into the dominant systems of meaning that power human understanding and, ultimately, actions. Metaphors work not only as cognitive but also normative “structuring devices”.
