ABSTRACT
This chapter examines cyber attacks and international law on the use of force and non-intervention. It argues that, in the context of cyber attacks, the threshold distinction between the non-use of force and non-intervention principles highlights the law’s ontologically constrained view of violence. International law on the use of force and non-intervention subscribes to a particular view of the state and violence. International law’s modern discourse on the containment of interstate violence revolves around the use of force doctrine. The chapter demonstrates that the law’s ontologically constrained view of violence is evident in the dominant approaches to the application of these doctrines to cyber attacks. The ‘target approach’ is concerned primarily with the target of the cyber attack in determining whether or not it would amount to a use of force. The tendency to view non-material cyber attacks as forms of non-violence through the lens of the non-intervention principle is problematic.
