A New Form of Political Interference: Fake News as Cyber War Under International Law – Sofia Mateu-Gelabert
Distinction, 2019-2020
Abstract
As the world becomes increasingly globalized, the ways we think about war and interference must change. No longer confined to soldiers on a battlefield, interference, defined as the use of different instruments to destabilize a society by influencing its decision-making, is occupying a virtual space, one that is hard to track and difficult to theorize. Currently, an outdated framework that does not account for digital warfare informs the way the international world prosecutes acts of aggression. This thesis uses an in-depth case study of the fake news published by Russian news website RT en Español on Venezuela to examine how fake news operates as a means of political interference, and ways to incorporate it into existing international law frameworks. I argue that fake news is a form of cyber warfare, and by understanding fake news in this way; we can rethink the laws of war to better account for technological changes. This paper aims to put cyber warfare into the context of current international criminal law, while acknowledging the difficulties that this interpretation poses. States have a moral responsibility to generations to come to get ahead of this growing threat and understand as thoroughly as possible the ways that cyber warfare functions, and what can be done to combat the threat that it poses.