Almost everyone recognizes that cyberspace is a fact of daily life. Given its ubiquity, scale, and scope, cyberspace – including the Internet, the billions of computers it connects, its management, and the experience it enables – has become a central feature of the world we live in and has created a new reality for almost everyone and everywhere.

At the same time, information and communication systems – the foundations of all human societies and social interactions – are accorded rather limited attention in all major theories of international relations. Despite the centrality of all forms of information exchange – in all contexts and cultures, conditions or situations – content of communications, conduits, and forms of connectivity remain more marginal than is appropriate in world politics or in international relations more broadly defined.

Until recently cyberspace was considered largely a matter of low politics, a term used to denote background conditions and routine decisions and processes. By contrast, high politics concern national security, core institutions, and decision systems that are critical to the state, its interests and underlying values.

If the cumulative effects of normal activity shift the established dynamics of interaction, then the seemingly routine becomes increasingly politicized. Cyberspace is now a matter of high politics. We see many incidents of power and politics, conflict and competition, violence and war – all central features of world politics – increasingly manifested via cyber venues.

In addition, the fundamental differences between the characteristics of cyberspace (with the Internet at its core) and the traditional features of international relations often make it difficult to track changes in each domain individually, and almost impossible to do so at their intersection.