428 CHAPTER ElEvEn ■ TransnaTional issues
the structure was too hierarchical, making command and control of a nuclear coun-
terstrike problematic: What if the president and his cabinet were killed in a first strike?
What if they were not killed, but their ability to communicate to the military in control
of a U.S. counterstrike was disrupted?
The Internet’s networked structure offered a solution. Unlike in a hierarchy, when
a node in a network is destroyed, “traffic” (in this case, commands) can instantly reroute
around the compromised node. Networks, as a form of communication, are extremely
resilient to damage. Once computing hardware technology became sufficiently inex-
pensive for house holds to own in the early 1980s, the number of nodes that could be
connected in an “internet” increased dramatically. From there, the development of the
Internet was exponential. As more and more personal computer users began to link to
the Net, the value of the Net increased, providing incentives for additional house holds
to buy computers and devices to access the Net. Entrepreneurs began to offer “content”
in the form of text, and later, music, video files, and applications or “apps.” The evolu-
tion of the Internet also made it pos si ble to implement electronic or “e- commerce.” The
rapid evolution of the Internet and e- commerce also created a lucrative potential for
criminal activity. Anyone with a computer and access to the Internet can vandalize or
steal. Identity and credit card fraud remain common hazards of e- commerce, as does
the compromise of sensitive personal data like credit scores and social security numbers.
Thus, two categories of cyber crime, or netcrime, have become major transnational issues:
(1) cyber vandalism and (2) cyber theft.
Cyber vandalism is most often associated with “hackers,” who delight in compro-
mising state or corporate information and communications networks or stealing pri-
vate information. Cyber vandalism tends to be transnational because there is a great
deal of variation in the degree to which access to the Internet is monitored and con-
trolled around the world. Two kinds of states do a good job of policing access to the
Internet: (1) advanced- industrial states with major e- commerce stakes, and (2) author-
itarian governments anxious to surveil their citizens and control public access to extra-
state sources of information. Thus, many of the perpetrators of netcrime prefer to base
themselves in urban areas in the developing world with weak state capacity to monitor
their be hav ior. Cyber vandalism remains a serious prob lem because the viruses hackers
create often propagate well beyond initial targets and can threaten power grids and
emergency ser vices. Every year, cyber vandals cause millions of dollars of lost revenue
in the form of remediation costs.
Even more serious is cyber theft. In cyber theft, banking and financial networks
can be attacked and large sums of money can be stolen, though this remains rare. More
prevalent, and more costly, is corporate espionage. Estimates of the threat vary, largely
because companies prefer not to report it for fear of stockholder lawsuits. But it is esti-
mated that the yearly losses from Chinese cyber espionage and theft are between $800
million and $1 billion in intellectual property value. While many states, including the