Why can’t we be friends? Challenges to international cyberwarfare cooperation efforts and the way ahead

In the past few years, there has been growing recognition of the importance of international cooperation concerning cyberwarfare norms. To this end, a number of international forums have been established, but as of now, they have had limited success. We recognize three major challenges to the success these forums: (1) the problem of trust, (2) varying threat perceptions, and (3) different definitions of state sovereignty. We analyze the existing disagreements between the U.S., Russia, and China, and show how a “bottom-up” solution like the Global Commission on the Stability of Cyberspace can facilitate reaching an agreement despite these differences.