Cybersecurity and the Age of Privateering: A Historical Analogy

Policy literature on the insecurity of cyberspace frequently invokes comparisons to Cold War security strategy, thereby neglecting the fundamental differences between contemporary and Cold War security environments. This article develops an alternative viewpoint, exploring the analogy between cyberspace and another largely ungoverned space: the sea in the age of privateering. This comparison enables us to incorporate into cybersecurity thinking the complex interactions between state and non-state actors, including entities such as navies, mercantile companies, pirates, and privateers. The paper provides a short historical overview of privateering and cybersecurity and compares the two by identifying state actors, semi-state actors, and criminal actors in each historical context. The paper identifies the limitations of Cold War analogies and presents the analogy of privateering as a superior conceptual benchmark for future policy guidance on cybersecurity. The paper makes three main arguments. First, cyber actors are comparable to the actors of maritime warfare in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Second, the militarisation of cyberspace resembles the situation in the sixteenth century, when states transitioned from a reliance on privateers to dependence on professional navies. Third, as with privateering, the use of non-state actors by states in cyberspace has produced unintended harmful consequences; the emergence of a regime against privateering provides potentially fruitful lessons for international cooperation and the management of these consequences.