01636nas a2200085   4500000000100000008004100001245004300042856005900085520140600144       2013                            d00aEthics, Cybersecurity and the Military  uhttps://espace.curtin.edu.au/handle/20.500.11937/896473 aIn this paper I examine the issue of cybersecurity in the context of the conventionally understood ends of the military. I start out by demonstrating that the use of military capabilities to deal with cyberthreats creates a number of headaches for conventional ethical approaches to conflict, especially just war theory. I describe a number of cases that give us cause to question the validity of cyberweapons as a legitimate military capability. And I argue that the current development of cyberweapons, and their emerging use, is a significant challenge for conventional military ethics. Then I describe three specific moral problems for the military when it comes to using cyberweapons. First is the ‘threshold’ problem which is the concern that cyber weapons will lower the threshold for resorting to war. Second is the ‘collateral harm’ problem which is the concern that cyberweapons increase the likelihood of civilians being deliberately targeted and/or becoming victims of disproportionate attacks on dual-use infrastructure. Third is the ‘accountability’ problem because of the difficulty of holding accountable military personnel or their governments for the use or misuse of a weapons system. Next I argue that conceptions of the military as an institution whose sole purpose is to ‘kill people and break things’ acts to compound the moral problems as I outline them above.