Stigmatizing cyber and information warfare: mission impossible?

Cyber weapons are emerging-technology weapons and have existed for a relatively short time. The norms associated with cyber warfare can be unraveled further by exploring the significance of norm evolution theory. Chemical and biological weapons and cyber weapons are both non-conventional weapons that share many of the same special characteristics with significant international security implications. In order to understand the diffuse nature of the cyber norms, and appreciate the importance of stigma fostering norms it is necessary to compare cyber norms with those of weapons of mass destruction. Developing a cyber stigma will face challenges arising from both differing perspectives as to future capability as well as the prospect for threat inflation. Cyber warfare—to include cyber-enabled information warfare—is still in its relative infancy, and there are multiple possibilities for how this new mode of warfare will evolve over the coming decades.