Abstract

The emergence of sophisticated cyber weapons such as Stuxnet and Flame, and widespread offensive cyber-operations revealed in documents leaked byEdward Snowden, pose challenges not only to international security and civilian infrastructure, but blur the distinction between violence and nonviolence, confusing the ethical discourse of cyber war and muting public discourse and resistance. Rethinking cyber war as destabilizing nonviolence reveals the moralambiguities and contested ontology of cyber weapons, heightens awareness of their conflicted linguistic representation and challenges the vantage point of “theresponsible actor” in justifying cyber war attacks. Such heightened awareness of the ontological and ethical complexity of cyber weapons makes room forreasoned public discourse and strategies of resistance to clandestine cyber war and to justified use arguments that defend cyber weapons as nonviolent