Ontological security,cyber technology,and states’ responses

Abstract

How do interactions in the cyber domain affect states’ ontological security and how do states respond to these challenges? These are pertinent questions given the increasing influence of cyber technologies on daily life, politics, and International Relations. Over the years, state actors have faced challenges in various spheres, including security, politics, economics, and culture. However, nowadays, cyber technologies enable the emergence of effective, efficient, and powerful alternatives to the current state-system practices. This creates fundamental challenges to states’ sense of self, identity, and home, calling into question states’ dominant and ingrained narratives regarding their roles in the international arena. I suggest that the scholarship of ontological security, although rarely used in this context, provides intriguing analytical tools to explore these questions. This scholarship focuses on the actors’ ability to maintain their sense of self, allowing researchers to explore how interactions in the cyber domain challenge states’ routines, narratives, and sense of home. Furthermore, using the scholarship of ontological security to study cyber technologies can also account for states’ responses, illuminating puzzling behavior that cannot be explained fully through other perspectives.

Keywords

Cyber ontological security International Relations constructivism cyber domain cyber technology

Introduction

The importance of cyber technologies in shaping various aspects of human activity and politics has been growing over the last two decades—a trend that has accelerated since the onset of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic.¹ While scholars pay close attention to the effects of cyber technologies on the physical security of state actors,² they focus less on how these technologies shape their ontological security and on how states address these challenges.³

Ontological security concerns actors’ ability to protect their identity and routines and, thus, to preserve their selves. Unlike physical security, which is about survival, ontological security is the security of being (Huysmans, 1998: 242–243; Roe, 2008: 784; Steele, 2008: 52). Actors that are ontologically secure can sustain their institutionalized routines and are successful in establishing stable identities that function to provide order, predictability, and certainty (Browning and Joenniemi, 2017; Kinnvall, 2004; Lupovici, 2012; Mitzen, 2006b; Steele, 2008; Zarakol, 2010).

Despite the richness of ontological security scholarship in International Relations (IRs) (Kinnvall and Mitzen, 2017), researchers rarely use it in exploring cyber technologies. However, I assert that this scholarship can significantly advance the study of cyber in two ways: First, it provides a useful lens to connect a number of related elements, such as narratives, routines, home, and emotions, allowing researchers to better capture challenges cyber technologies create for states.

Second, ontological security scholarship provides useful tools to analyze how states address these challenges. A few scholars have focused on how actors respond to ontological insecurity (Browning, 2018a: 338–340; Browning and Joenniemi, 2013: 496–497; Ejdus, 2018: 893; Flockhart, 2016: 815–816; Haugevik and Neumann, 2021: 713). Elaborating on these studies and on the specific mechanisms identified, I consider five strategies states use to respond to ontological insecurities related to cyber technologies. The first two are the interrelated mechanisms of re-establishing routines and strengthening biographical narratives (Browning, 2018a: 339; Flockhart, 2016; Mitzen, 2018: 397). Three additional strategies are the designation of home, avoidance, and change of identity (Browning, 2018b: 252; Hagström and Gustafsson, 2015: 10–11; Zarakol, 2010: 7–9), which, while acknowledged in the literature, have received little scholarly attention in reviews of state responses.

Exploring the impact of cyber technologies on states’ ontological security and their response to it is important. First, it elucidates how these technologies affect international politics. It allows researchers to identify and explain a number of puzzles: for example, the question of why the United States adopted a strategy of cyber deterrence in the early 2000s despite its questionable effectiveness; or why some states initiate programs of cyber/digital sovereignty even though this concept not only remains ambiguous (Creemers, 2020: 109; Lambach and Oppermann, 2022: 3; Roberts et al., 2021: 3; Zeng et al., 2017: 436), but can also be seen as an oxymoron (e.g. Celeste, 2021: 212; Mueller, 2020: 790–794); or why Estonia, unlike many other states, aims to establish “digital independence” and promotes the notion of E-Estonia?⁴ I argue that ontological security scholarship provides convincing accounts for these puzzles that go beyond those suggested by traditional approaches. Second, researchers using ontological security scholarship can address intriguing questions, such as how states can continue to serve as ontological security providers for individuals (and the nation), or what the implications are for the concept of a state’s “home” in the context of the cyber domain. Finally, studying cyber technologies through the lens of ontological security is a natural development of this scholarship, which emerged through the study of the challenges created by technology and modernity (e.g. Giddens, 1991) and globalization (Kinnvall, 2004).

While this article’s main focus is on how ontological security scholarship can contribute to the study of cyber, it carries important implications for the study of ontological security on two main fronts. The first is the nexus between ontological security and technology, more specifically, how technologies affect states’ sense of self and home and their narratives and routines. The second is the level of analysis, and especially the interconnections between individual, nation, state, and supranational levels. Studies have called for further elaboration of these interconnections (Steele, 2019: 324–325), which concern many of the intriguing questions cyber technologies raise, such as the status of the state. In modernity, as Zarakol (2017) asserts, states monopolized “the institutionalised provisions of ontological security” (p. 61); but cyber technologies call into question states’ ability to maintain this status. Connecting ontological security scholarship with cyber technologies not only demonstrates the richness and powerful nature of this scholarship, but also offers a timely, pertinent, and insightful research agenda.

The article proceeds as follows: In the first section, I present key aspects of ontological security. In the second section, I show how certain interconnecting aspects of ontological security are crucial to exploring how cyber technologies affect states and I provide a more nuanced understanding of the challenges they face. In the third section, I elaborate on how actors respond to ontological insecurity and use the related scholarship to illustrate and explain states’ responses to challenges concerning cyber technologies. I conclude by discussing broader implications and offer a promising research agenda for both ontological security scholarship and cyber studies.

Ontological security

Aspects of ontological (in)security

Ontological security scholarship in IR can be divided into two main schools: the relational approach and the internal approach. Scholars who endorse the relational approach argue that actors attain ontological security through routinizing relations with significant others, as these interactions constitute an important aspect of an actor’s self and routines solve problems that are related to uncertainties (Mitzen, 2006a: 272–274; Mitzen, 2006b). For these scholars, an actor’s inability to sustain its routines with significant others creates a threat to its ontological security. Scholars of the internal approach suggest that ontological (in)security is experienced through self-narratives (Browning and Joenniemi, 2013; Delehanty and Steele, 2009; Kinnvall, 2004; Steele, 2008). For these scholars, ontological insecurity occurs when an actor is unable to tell coherent stories about itself or experiences a gap between its self-narrative and its behavior. These two approaches do not contradict but rather complement each other (Huysmans, 1998: 242–244; Kinnvall, 2004; Zarakol, 2010; see also Steele, 2008: 57–60).

In addition, ontological security and insecurity are closely related to emotions. Ontological security serves the important emotional function of “inoculating” actors “against the paralytic, deep fear of chaos” and concerns emotions of trust, pride, and hope (Mitzen, 2006b: 346–350; see also Giddens, 1991: 39, 66; Kinnvall, 2004: 746). Conversely, ontological insecurity produces and manifests emotions that actors want to avoid, prevent, or placate: these include frustration (e.g. Zarakol, 2010: 18), shame and humiliation (Giddens, 1991: 46, 65; Steele, 2008: 13, 54–55), anxiety (Berenskötter, 2020; Guzzini, 2012: 55–56; Mitzen, 2006b: 347, 351; Rumelili, 2015; Steele, 2008: 51), and nostalgia (Lupovici, 2016: 68–69).

Another key aspect of ontological insecurity is the sense of home. Scholars have noted that home is the place actors can be themselves and therefore be ontologically secure (Dupuis and Thorns, 1998: 30–31; Ejdus, 2017; Kinnvall, 2004; Mitzen, 2006a). According to Dupuis and Thorns (1998), home is a social and material environment. It provides ontological security through its being a site of constancy in which daily routines are performed and where people feel they control their lives, free from outside surveillance. The home offers a “secure base around which identities are constructed” (Dupuis and Thorns, 1998: 29), knowing that “there is a space in which it is possible to be one’s self provides the confidence necessary to assert one’s self” (Mitzen, 2006a: 274). The “home” can be based on different locales constructed as home (e.g. Dupuis and Thorns, 1998: 30–31; Ejdus, 2017: 25), including a person’s nation (Abramson, 2019; Skey, 2011). Regardless of what the home is, it becomes a crucial aspect of an actor’s narrative. “Sense of place” provides actors with “a psychological tie” between their biography and their locales (Browning, 2018a: 338; Ejdus, 2017: 25; Giddens, 1984: 367; Subotić, 2016: 612).

Home, therefore, is closely related to actors’ emotions and values (Bolton, 2021b: 276). As Berenskötter (2014) notes, “spaces gain meaning and come to matter because we associate significant experiences with them” (p. 277). As a result, home is related to nostalgia and also to trust. The home is a central place “characterized by great familiarity and to which the Self feels a strong emotional connection and which has ‘a character of trustworthiness’” (Berenskötter, 2014: 275). Actors who fail to have a home face ontological insecurity, as homelessness is characterized by impermanence and discontinuity. In cases where a sense of home is lost, actors need to ameliorate the situation and seek a new home (Browning, 2018a: 340; Kinnvall, 2004: 747; Kinnvall and Nesbitt-Larking, 2010: 1060; see also Abramson, 2019: 661).

The existing (limited) research on ontological security and cyber technologies

The emerging interpretative research on cyber (security)—on which my research relies—overlaps with the study of ontological security, including research on discourse, securitization, and the social construction of insecurity (Bendrath et al., 2007; Betz and Stevens, 2013; Christou, 2019; Deibert and Rohozinski, 2010; Dunn Cavelty, 2008; Hansen and Nissenbaum, 2009; Lacy and Prince, 2018; Lupovici, 2021; Stevens, 2016), liminality (Mälksoo, 2012), identity (Brinkerhoff, 2009), and sovereignty (Branch, 2021; Saco, 1999). The evolving research on emotions and cyber (McDermott, 2019) also overlaps with the study of ontological security. Scholars have connected cyber, uncertainty, and emotions, focusing specifically on emotions related to ontological insecurity, such as anxiety (Cheung-Blunden and Ju, 2016; Gomez and Villar, 2018). The cyber domain is unique in that cyber technology itself may become a platform to shape and spread emotions (Duncombe, 2019). Nonetheless, these studies on emotions and cyber have not linked these aspects to ontological security, and they focus on individuals’ emotions rather than on emotions at the societal level. Finally, a number of works have briefly mentioned that cyber technology connects with ontological security (Hansen and Nissenbaum, 2009: 1160; Stevens, 2016: 90) and others elaborate on more specific themes: self-image and the justification of surveillance (Ralston, 2014); collective memory and Wikipedia (Gustafsson, 2020); targeting an opponent’s ontological security needs and disinformation (Bolton, 2021a); (non-)traumas and the securitization of cyber-attacks (Whooley, 2021), and emotions and social networks (Kinnvall, 2019: 292; Solomon, 2018; Steele, 2019). These works provide useful points of departure for this research. However, my aim is to develop a more comprehensive framework than these, acknowledging various connections between ontological security and cyber technologies.

Cyber technologies and ontological (in)security

I suggest that this rich scholarship of ontological security, that connects various aspects of states’ sense of self, provides an insightful lens through which to think about the challenges cyber technologies pose for state actors. More specifically, I argue that these challenges are manifested in three areas.

First, cyber technologies challenge states’ ability to maintain their coherent narratives, routines, and sense of home. In this way, they relate directly to a state’s ontological insecurity and to the self as a referent object of security (see also Rumelili, 2020: 266).

Second, cyber technologies challenge the role of states as ontological security providers for people residing within their borders (Zarakol, 2017: 49). This is manifested most clearly when a states’ ability to be “home” for individuals (and for the nation) is challenged. States provide people with a secure place to perform routines and be themselves (Kinnvall, 2004: 762). States offer “an experienced space (giving meaning to the past) intertwined with an envisioned space (giving meaning to the future).” This gives meaning to “a community’s spatio-temporal situatedness and structures its orientation in the world” (Berenskötter, 2014: 264). In addition, states function to create order and predictability, making life intelligible for individuals (Huysmans, 1998: 242; Rumelili, 2020: 265).⁵ Traditionally, these functions allow states to provide ontological security for citizens. However, uncertainties created by cyber technologies make it harder for states to fulfill these roles.

Third, cyber technologies challenge the state’s ability to monopolize the role of institutionalized ontological security provider (Zarakol, 2017: 49). Scholars argue that individuals’ ontological security is traditionally attained though the (nation) state, which allows “vicariously identifying with broader communities” (Browning, 2018a: 339) and thus constituting a (nation’s) biographical narrative and individuals’ sense of belonging and existential continuity (Berenskötter, 2014: 264, 270; Bolton, 2021b: 276; Marlow, 2002: 255–256; Mitzen, 2006b: 352; Krolikowski, 2008: 128; Skey, 2013: 87). Cyber technologies challenge the state’s traditional role by advancing alternative means for individuals to attain their ontological security needs. These alternatives may offer a sense of community, continuity, and a way to interpret the world, and thus further erode the state as an ontological security provider, and especially its attempts to monopolize this role.

Cyber technologies affect state actors’ narratives and institutionalized routines

The control that states have over their physical borders, politics, and economy has long been challenged. Interactions in the cyber domain increase this pressure because of the scale, rapid evolution, and lower costs of transnational activity (Adamson, 2016: 25–27; Nye, 2011; Stevens, 2016: 86–93; but, see also Krasner, 2009: 179–210). Choucri and Clark state (2018),

The state has not yet developed theories or practices that will allow it to maintain control over its core values while preserving the vital character of cyberspace . . . cyberspace is evolving much faster than are the tools the state has to regulate it (p. 16).

These challenges are evident in security, politics, economics, and culture. The cyber domain enables the emergence of effective, efficient, and powerful alternatives to current state-system practices. Non-state actors can create platforms for international trade without relying on state currencies (Kobrin, 1997) (e.g. through applications that use blockchain technologies, Manski and Manski, 2018); recognize the territorial boundaries of political actors (e.g. through the spread of popular digital maps, Yaron, 2013); and possess big data, which, along with enabling the use of advanced technologies like artificial intelligence, allows them to improve their performance in various fields, including security. As Dunn Cavelty (2015) asserts regarding the interactions of states with non-state actors in cyberspace, “[I]t is the state that is trying to (re)establish its authority in a space cultivated by innovative practices of companies and consumers on the one hand and criminal actors on the other” (p. 96).

These challenges call into question the practice of sovereignty itself, and thus state identities and ingrained narratives. Given the existence of these challenges and the growing difficulties around the use of traditional tools to address them, states are finding it harder to organize their threat environment. In many cases, the common means states employ—such as regulation, security doctrines, and diplomatic practices—do not provide them with the control they used to have. This limits the actions states can take to fulfill their roles as states and to perform and preserve state routines. These routines refer both to interactions with significant others, such as enemies or friends,⁶ and to internal practices, such as rituals that help them further institutionalize their collective memory (Gustafsson, 2014: 73; Innes and Steele, 2016: 22–23).

States also find it difficult to continue to follow and perform traditional state roles, which challenge their ability to maintain a coherent narrative of the self. This weakens their ability to validate their selves vis-à-vis others, and in this way poses a threat to their ontological security. Among other effects, the involvement of non-state actors challenges states’ narrative of themselves as security providers. We see this not only when these actors serve as challengers, but also when states rely on non-state actors to promote their own security. Given the advanced technology required, states depend on non-state actors for both the production and operation of defensive and offensive cyber capabilities (e.g. Liebetrau and Christensen, 2021: 38–39; Maurer, 2018). While such actors serve state interests, their employment challenges the traditional view that state security is in the hands of the state. These situations ultimately challenge sovereignty and the monopoly on the use of force, eroding a constitutive element of state actors and thus further threatening the narrative of states as security providers.

A key example of this challenge is the formal declarations in the United States acknowledging the government’s limitations in providing security to citizens and to private firms and asking them to rely on third parties—cyber security firms—for their security in the cyber domain (Pellerin, 2015). The Department of Defense (2015) Cyber Strategy clearly refers to these issues:

The United States government has a limited and specific role to play in defending the nation against cyberattacks of significant consequence. The private sector owns and operates over ninety percent of all of the networks and infrastructure of cyberspace and is thus the first line of defense (p. 5).

In the traditional narrative, the state is the security provider. Even if states face fundamental challenges to providing security, they are expected to find a way to do so, especially in addressing external threats. Indeed, cyber challenges are more diverse, emerge rapidly, and are both domestic and international. However, as shown in the example above, states not only have inadequate capabilities to provide security, but publicly acknowledge this situation. In a similar way, some politicians warn against the limited ability of states to serve as “security providers” for individuals, as they rely too heavily on the private sector to protect information systems. For example, Emmanuel Macron (2019), President of France, asserted that private companies “can be your partner, but it’s the role of the state to manage these things.”

Many states are finding it more difficult to maintain these routines and narratives and thus to address their citizens’ ontological insecurity needs. These challenges limit states’ ability to provide individuals with a sense of order and predictability. Furthermore, cyber technologies offer individuals opportunities for re-identification. For example, studies have shown how individuals’ reliance on cyber means of communication can de- territorialize their identity and create a cosmopolitan identity (Brinkerhoff, 2009: 45; Hopper, 2007: 48–49). In this way, these technologies challenge individuals’ identification with and attachment to the state. Such practices create ontological insecurity for state actors, challenging the dominant hegemonic narratives that are significant for individuals’ identification (see Ferguson and Mansbach, 2004: 309–310). Individuals are less dependent on the state as a source of ontological security. The emergence of alternatives to the state in fulfilling this role fundamentally challenges states’ ability to serve as an institutionalized provider of ontological security and to monopolize this role.

Cyber technologies affect state actors’ ability to have a sense of home

As presented above, home is a social and material environment that provides actors ontological security by serving as a site of constancy, related to their emotions, where day-to-day routines are performed. It also serves as a crucial aspect of an actor’s narrative. Cyber technologies challenge these routines in a number of ways.

Ejdus (2018: 888) argues, “[F]or polities, to feel at home in international society provides them with a sense of place in the international order and therefore a certain degree of cognitive control over their regional and international environment.” This is the exact challenge cyber technologies create when the physical place of the state becomes uncertain. For example, Fischerkeller and Harknett (2017) assert,⁷

[T]he concept of state sovereignty and the explicit territorial boundaries associated with it facilitated the implementation of strategies of deterrence by allowing for the declaration of thresholds defined by internationally accepted land, air, and maritime boundaries that, if crossed, would lead to costly operational contact . . .

[However, in cyberspace] no territorial boundaries are recognized to reference as thresholds that should not be crossed. The absence of sovereignty in cyberspace puts into question the value of a strategy of deterrence, a strategy the effectiveness of which, in part, depends on the specification of such thresholds.

[In addition, a] strategy of deterrence seeks to avoid operational contact, whereas cyberspace participants are interconnected, and consequently, all operations in cyberspace always involve operational contact. (Fischerkeller and Harknett, 2017: 385–386, bold text is mine, italic in original text).

The challenge Fischerkeller and Harknett observe concerns the inability to have a space—that is, a clear sovereign “home”—to be protected. As noted above, the challenges to state sovereignty are a key source of ontological insecurity, limiting states’ ability to continue practicing their traditional routines. Furthermore, if a state has no clear sovereign home to defend, this means it has no clear deterred other through which to validate itself (see also Lupovici, 2016: 69–73). If we accept Fischerkeller and Harknett’s approach, this also means that people cannot have a safe home, which as mentioned above is another key source of ontological security. If everything is interconnected and operations always involve contact in a de-territorialized space, people will not find comfort in their (national) home because they are constantly monitored and a target of opponents’ operations.

Following this, cyber technologies may also challenge the ability of states to continue to be a national home for their citizens. While cyber technologies may reinforce state power (Ferguson and Mansbach, 2004: 301–306) and states have means to exert authority in the cyber domain (Choucri and Clark, 2018: 118–119), cyber technologies complicate states’ ability to maintain the borders that define the (national) home (Choucri and Clark, 2018: 12–13, 16; Ferguson and Mansbach, 2004: 283–300). Furthermore, practices and actors in the cyber domain, more than simply challenging states’ control over territories, fundamentally provide an alternative model to the territorial nation state system (Ferguson and Mansbach, 2004: 309–311; see also Lambach, 2020: 483).

The difficulty of maintaining a national home on the state level is also a challenge at the individual level. While individuals can find a “home” in various other ways and can develop new routines that do not rely on state actors (such as the home and routines established through their electronic devices), this provides only a partial solution to the challenges the national home faces. Most importantly, while the cyber domain fulfills some elements of home, it cannot fulfill them all—especially not the ability to be free from surveillance (Whitaker, 1999). States and non-state actors monitor most of individuals’ cyber practices; hence, privacy for most people does not exist regardless of their physical location (e.g. Mai, 2016; Zuboff, 2019 but see Els, 2017). The inability to have a safe home through which to construct identity is a source of ontological insecurity, and knowing that the state cannot solve this problem exacerbates this. Ironically, even states cannot be free of surveillance because of the electronic devices that governments and non-governmental actors operate to collect and monitor information and behavior (Segal, 2016).

Privacy is challenged not only through states’ limited ability to protect their citizens from international threats—as they have done for decades—but also through the loss of their legitimized monopoly on holding citizens’ private information. Through cyber technology, international non-state actors, such as Google or Facebook can collect, hold, and analyze information on individuals (from different countries) (Egloff, 2018; Maurer, 2018; Nye, 2011: 113–151). State actors are losing the hegemony in controlling the collection and analysis of data that they had in the past (Allen and Chan, 2017; Erdélyi and Goldsmith, 2018). These threats pose another sort of challenge for state actors: that is, in terms of protecting their citizens from privacy violations (e.g. Birnhack et al., 2014; Zarsky, 2016). More generally, the main challenge for state actors is to continue to independently provide security and protection to citizens as expected (Dunn Cavelty and Egloff, 2019: 48–50; Ferguson and Mansbach, 2004: 310). This challenge reinforces the importance of states’ narratives, about their roles, routines, and home, and clearly demonstrates the interconnections among these different sources of ontological security.

To put it differently, the challenges cyber technologies pose cannot be reduced to challenges to state sovereignty. Rather, they not only call into question a state’s established practices, roles, narratives, and routines, but more fundamentally challenge a state’s ability to serve as an ontological security provider for individuals and for the nation. These challenges, of course, do not mean that states will necessarily collapse, but rather mean that they need to adopt some measures aimed at addressing these ontological insecurities. This is the focus of the next section.

State responses to ontological insecurity in the cyber domain

While ontological security is more of a process than “a state of being” and while identities are not fixed but repeatedly reconstituted over time, scholars point to critical situations where actors take measures to placate ontological insecurity (Browning, 2018a: 340; Ejdus, 2018; 884; Haugevik and Neumann, 2021: 714). In this section, I consider and illustrate five specific strategies states use in response to ontological insecurities that are related to cyber technologies. The first two are strengthening narratives and re-establishing routines. These interrelated strategies are the most common strategies scholars emphasize (Browning, 2018a: 339, 2018b: 248; Flockhart, 2016; Mitzen, 2018: 397). In addition, I elaborate on the following three strategies: designation of home, avoidance, and change of identity.

Narrative and routines

One key strategy to maximize ontological security is to construct a strong narrative and thus allow the actor to retell a coherent story of its self (Flockhart, 2016: 816). Actors can re-establish their narratives based on securitizing subjectivity (e.g. through articulating exclusion) or through some moves of de-securitization (e.g. securitizing other threats) (Browning and Joenniemi, 2013: 496–497). Scholars have pointed to specific means, such as the use of memory infrastructures (Gustafsson, 2014: 73–74), popular culture (Press-Barnathan, 2019: 453), and state branding (Browning, 2015: 199–200). Actors can also narrate emotions to defend the self (Kinnvall, 2019: 286; Lupovici, 2016: 71–72; Rumelili, 2021: 1028; Steele, 2008: 51, 64; see also Huysmans, 1998: 242–243), and, as Mälksoo suggests, rely on rituals to manage their emotions. Likewise, performing rituals can address ontological insecurities by enhancing group identity (Mälksoo, 2021: 60, 62).

Given that the inability to keep up routines with significant others is a main source of ontological insecurity (see Gustafsson, 2016: 619), re-establishing these routines is another way for actors to decrease anxiety, uphold a stable cognitive environment, and enhance their ontological security (Flockhart, 2016: 816; Mitzen, 2018: 396–397). In fact, as Gustafsson (2016) notes, routines

make life orderly and predictable, meaning that we are less anxious about that which is routinized, but routines do not eliminate anxiety altogether . . . Even though routines can help to manage anxiety, levels of anxiety can at times become greater than our routines can handle (p. 619).

This echoes the idea of combining responses based on re-establishing both routines and narratives (see Flockhart, 2016: 815–816). As Mitzen (2018: 397) notes, these two strategies “which, despite being different phenomena analytically, are almost always found together in practice.”

The rhetoric and practices of cyber deterrence in the United States demonstrates the use of these measures in response to ontological insecurity created by interactions in the cyber domain. Until a shift in 2018, the US cyber deterrence strategy had been developed in various official documents, which established the need to rely on this strategy and the ability to do so. A key theme was that the United States preserves the right to retaliate with all the means it holds against a cyber-attack (Department of Defense, 2011: 2, 2013: 32, 41–42; see also in the work of Healey, 2019; and in the work of Wilner, 2020). However, this reliance on cyber deterrence strategy, especially in the early 2000s, is somewhat puzzling given that many experts warned against it, suggesting that deterrence would be ineffective in the cyber domain (Arquilla, 2003: 210–13; Harknett, 1996; Libicki, 2007: 271–272, but see Nye, 2017). Furthermore, issuing deterrent threats cannot be dismissed as cheap talk. Given the cult of reputation and practitioners’ worry about resolve, a defender would find it costly to not execute a deterrent threat or retaliate in case the undesired attack was made by the putative challenger (e.g. Kertzer, 2016; Tang, 2005).

However, if we read the reliance on cyber deterrence in the 2000s through the lens of ontological security, we see that practicing deterrence in the cyber domain allowed the United States to exert control over this domain, making it equivalent to the already known, kinetic domains. This would mitigate the deep uncertainties surrounding the cyber domain. By attempting to deter, the state reassures domestic audiences that it is still a deterrer actor and, more broadly, a security provider. Practicing deterrence not only alludes to and validates the American identity of deterrer (see Lupovici, 2016: 88–118), but also signals that the state is still practicing the same routines, and therefore, the cyber domain does not challenge the American identity. In this respect, statements on deterrence target not only international (i.e. putative challengers) but also domestic audiences by re-telling the narrative that they are (still) a deterrer actor. The United States thus maintains its role as deterrer and protects its sense of self. Addressing new challenges with traditional tools also increases predictability and decreases uncertainty and anxiety. The US narrative on practicing deterrence reduces the tension between how the collective actor sees itself (i.e. as security provider or deterrer actor) and reality; creating continuity with past practices reassures the domestic public that nothing significant has changed (see also Branch, 2021: 45, 47). In this spirit, Demchak and Dombrowski (2011) clearly refer to ontological security needs—without using this term—justifying reliance on cyber sovereignty by suggesting that “with the establishment of borders in cyberspace, everything we know about deterrence, wars, conflict, international norms, and security will make sense again” (p. 54, my emphasis). It should also be noted that scholars continue to challenge the effectiveness of cyber deterrence strategy (e.g. Kreps and Schneider, 2019), and indeed, the difficulty of successfully employing it has contributed to a shifting away from it since 2018 (Healey, 2019; Wilner, 2020: 266–267, but see Whyte, 2020: 10). Nonetheless, different mechanisms that aim to address ontological insecurity may also account for this shift, such as concerns regarding having a home. As discussed above, this challenge further complicates the ability to practice cyber deterrence.

Designation of home

Since home is a key part of the self, addressing challenges that concern home and re-constructing the home is important in placating challenges. As Browning (2018b) asserts “attempts to enhance ontological security also frequently seek to locate the subject in space and more specifically to designate a particular place as ‘home’” (p. 252, my emphasis). The designation of home provides the actors with the ability to make order and thus eliminate uncertainties and gain control and predictability.

As Huysmans (1998) explains, one way states make order and deal with “those ‘elements’ which are ambivalent and cannot be classified,” is by eliminating them, through securitization (p. 242). Croft (2012) further explains that the securitizing move allows us to “collapse inside/outside boundaries, to change spatial imaginings, so that areas previously considered neutral, or even ignored, can be rendered threatening, and in this way can communicate the new identity realities” (p. 248). While, both Huysmans and Croft originally refer to immigrants (or “Other” ethnic groups), securitizing the cyber domain may serve similar functions of ontological security that the state aims to provide, thus making the cyber a familiar and known “territory.”

The ambiguities of spaces and their duality is the focus of Berenskötter. Following Bollnow, Berenskötter suggests that “space contains both gradual transitions and sharp borders, which allows the world to be ordered through clearly delineated and recognizable features and, at the same time, to be infinite and open for exploration and discovery.” However, this also provides an opportunity to use the ambiguity for exploration and to redefine the borders—and thus the home (Berenskötter, 2014: 276). Redefining borders allows us to (re)designate the home, and thus allows experiences and explorations of the self that strengthen and secure it in a known locale.

The issue of state cyber/digital sovereignty provides interesting examples of attempts to address ontological security challenges by designating the home. As noted above, part of the challenges created by cyber technologies concern uncertainties about spaces and territories that threaten the state’s self. As Zarakol (2017: 48) asserts, “Without ontological security, the self cannot know where it begins and ends, and what is essential to the body (and its survival).” From this perspective, the challenge is not just a disruption of sovereignty, but rather of the self. As Skey further argues, “the nation is so consistently represented and, in many cases, experienced, as a bounded and coherent socio-political and territorial entity.” This allows “such a large, abstract, idealized ‘entity’ [to] feel like ‘home’” (Skey, 2013: 88). However, the “territory” of the cyber is less tangible and characterized by liminality (Mälksoo, 2012).

The Chinese and European redefinitions of sovereignty in the cyber domain are intriguing, demonstrating how they attempt to address ontological insecurity through the designation of home. Not only do states diverge in whether and how they define sovereignty in this domain (Lambach and Oppermann, 2022: 2; Zeng et al., 2017: 440), but the meaning of this concept is ambiguous (Creemers, 2020: 109; Roberts et al., 2021: 3, 4; Zeng et al., 2017: 436). Moreover, the concept of cyber/digital sovereignty can be seen as an oxymoron. As Celeste explains, “the adjective digital is associated with virtual, un-territorial space, sovereignty is associated with the idea of territory” (Celeste, 2021: 212; see also Fischerkeller and Harknett, 2017: 386; Mueller, 2020: 790–794). All of this means that the language surrounding cyber sovereignty is highly important, and thus, enunciators can use it to socially construct the home. This is manifested, for example, in China’s policy and discourse. According to the Chinese view, the “internet should be governed according to the same principles as other fields of international relations” (Zeng et al., 2017: 434). While, indeed, governing the Internet may serve different domestic and international political goals, securitizing the cyber can also be seen as related to the government’s attempt to designate it as part of China’s “home” and territories. By securitizing the cyber, uncertainty can be addressed and order created. As Miao and Han (2022) argue, “[T]he cyber society is fraught with risks and uncertainty, so it is the government’s duty to act like a guardian” (p. 585). In addition, this securitizing move is aimed to preserve values and “order.” As Miao and Han (2022) suggest, “[T]he Chinese state has legitimized its cyber governance in the name of ‘moral goodness’ and ‘social orderliness” (p. 585).⁸ Securitizing the cyber domain not only made this domain part of Chinese sovereignty, but also strengthened China’s sense of self. Securitization, as Croft maintains (2012), “reconstructs identities, both of the Self and Others, and also reconstructs spatial imagining” (p. 92).

Cyber sovereignty cannot be seen simply as an attempt to exert power and control. As noted above, not only is the concept of cyber sovereignty ambiguous and an oxymoron, but the Chinese government itself acknowledges its limited ability to control this space and the need for assistance from individuals, businesses, and industrial organizations to address cyber security (Miao and Han, 2022: 586). While this may be a problem from the perspective of domestic politics and from a physical security approach that sees sovereignty as related to state survival, it aptly fits ontological security views.

In a similar way, European discourse around digital sovereignty provides a middle ground between the “techno-libertarian” US model and Chinese and Russian views of Internet sovereignty (Lambach and Oppermann, 2022: 2). As such, it seems an attempt to address ontological insecurity though the designation of home. Lambach and Oppermann, while not using the concept of ontological security, refer to two distinct ontological security needs this concept serves in the context of the European Union (EU).⁹ One concerns the ability to strengthen the role of security provider, “protecting state and society from security threats that come from outside interference and control” (Lambach and Oppermann, 2022: 9). The second is the protection of the European self and values (Roberts et al., 2021: 3) through preserving Europe’s “unique way of life which is posited as distinct from that of the United States and China” (Celeste, 2021: 211, 220; Lambach and Oppermann, 2022: 9). As stated by Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission (2020), “Digital sovereignty is not just an economic concept. We are a Union of values”. Furthermore, digital sovereignty allows the manifestation of European values and agency, as put by Věra Jourová, the Vice President of the European Commission: it “is a reflection of a European ambition that we must be an agent, not an object of this revolution . . . and we have to do it in a European way.” According to her, “In order for Europe to be truly sovereign we need tools to act and uphold European values” (European Commission, 2022). From this perspective, this not only becomes part of the European narrative, but is also used to disassociate Europe from other actors.

Furthermore, the ambiguity surrounding digital sovereignty and its various meanings and interpretations (Roberts et al., 2021: 3, 4) not only allows users to justify various policies and political agendas (Lambach and Oppermann, 2022: 3, 7), but also serves ontological security needs. In this respect, it is the ambiguity that helps to re-establish the borders and the home and to designate the unknown domain as part of that home. More precise or strictly defined territories and locales might lead to political struggles over the definition, or might put different narratives or the state’s sense of self into question. Ambiguity, in this regard, helps to protect the self. In this way, enunciators can use narratives to construct the cyber domain as part of traditional spaces to deny the challenge of cyber technologies, thus making the cyber domain part of the sovereign state (e.g. Demchak and Dombrowski, 2011; see also in Finnemore and Hollis, 2016: 460–461; and in Mueller, 2020: 782–788). Building such narratives allows state actors to construct the cyber domain as a controlled and predictable environment, at least to the extent of traditional military challenges. As Lambach (2020: 483) observes, “States assert their authority over cyberspace by translating familiar territorial logics to this ‘undiscovered country’ (see also Branch, 2021).

Avoidance

Through avoidance, actors practice selective exposure to information, thus preventing access to information that may threaten their identity and ignoring challenging narratives (Lupovici, 2012: 818–819; Mitzen, 2018: 398–403; Zarakol, 2010: 7–9). However, avoidance does not necessarily mean a passive response. Actors can use active measures to restrict access to information that may create the challenge, to find supportive and consistent information, or to intentionally create ambiguity to limit their experience of the threat (see also, Cohen, 2001: 23; Giddens, 1991: 188; Northrup, 1989: 64–65). While measures of avoidance can overlap with other kinds of responses (e.g. using narratives), the key point is that they do not aim to resolve the challenge but rather provide the actors with the means to deny the challenge and prevent the experiencing of it (see also Haugevik and Neumann, 2021: 714–716).

Cyber technologies are especially interesting in this context because they provide various opportunities for state actors to conceal information. A number of scholars have started to discuss the implications of the secrecy around cyber-attacks (e.g. Egloff, 2020) and, most importantly, the ability to keep silent about the attacks, relying on the plausible deniability cyber-attacks provide. Deniability, in fact, is a spectrum that concerns different audiences. From this perspective, the question is not just whether the challenger aims to conceal the attack or whether a victim is aware of the attack (Cormac and Aldrich, 2018: 479–480), but, more importantly, to what extent it is in the hands of the victim to decide whether to disclose this information or not (Carson, 2018: 3–6, 55–56).

Whooley has taken these assertions further, pointing to the implications of these decisions for actors’ ontological security. According to Whooley, unlike kinetic attacks, which leave observable traces, cyber-attacks are difficult to observe. Therefore, experiencing such attacks does not create collective traumas and does not challenge states’ ontological security (Whooley, 2021: 49–50).¹⁰ As he explains, securitizing the self seems to require a collective trauma:

This is precisely the problem: anxiety without vision is lost on voters and policymakers not directly focused on the issue of cybersecurity. Because the cyber realm is largely opaque to the outside world and because individuals, corporations, public utilities, hospitals, or governments who suffer from cyber attacks often hide these attacks out of shame, embarrassment, or for security concerns no trauma is effectively transmitted and thus no concerted popular response is generated. (Whooley, 2021: 49, my emphasis)

Put differently, cyber-attacks are not easily securitized and do not create a collective trauma; therefore, while physical insecurity may still be experienced, it does not pose a challenge to ontological security. In such cases, the actor blocks information about the attack and how it challenges or might challenge the self. From this perspective, addressing cyber-attacks allows actors means of denial that prevent experiencing ontological insecurity. For example, this prevents the humiliation associated with inability to protect. As Carson (2018) argues, “The backstage insulates actors from the humiliation and damage to the performance that would result if mistakes or costume challenges were on the frontstage” (p. 14).

Identity adjustment/identity change

Actors may try to change their identity to prevent the clash and dissonance created by ontological insecurity (Flockhart, 2016: 811). Identity change is a very difficult process in itself because of actors’ limited ability to shift narratives and routines (e.g. Lupovici, 2012). As Mitzen suggests, rigid attachment to routines prevents the flexibility that actors need to learn and adapt their routines, roles, and identities. In contrast, when actors are more flexible in their attachment to routines and have a healthy basic trust, they can learn and change (Mitzen, 2006b: 350).

A change in identity may involve different mechanisms: for example, it overlaps with dynamics of asecuritization. Browning and Joenniemi (2013) suggest that “asecuritisation implies embracing a different ontological perspective that abandons a differential logic of identity and therefore has no reason to engage in negating action in constituting the self” (p. 497). Likewise, Hagström and Gustafsson (2015) show that while identity change is not easy, some important dynamics and actors increase the chances of change, such as identity entrepreneurs and their use of emotions to interpret external events and traumas (pp. 8, 10–11). Scholars, building on the existential understanding of ontological security, have suggested that we need to think of ontological security as “security of becoming,” not just of “security of being” (Berenskötter, 2020: 274). This approach provides a tool to explore how anxiety, rather than simply paralyzing actors and resulting in empowering mechanisms that protect stability and constancy, may also give actors opportunities to reflect and change (Berenskötter, 2020: 283–286; Rumelili, 2020: 269).

Scholars have also started to explore identity change dynamics relating to the cyber domain as a response to ontological security challenges, even if the source of insecurity lies outside this domain. One key example is Estonia’s seeking to attain digital independence and, in this way, to redefine itself and distance itself from its Russian past. Savchenko (2019) points to E-Estonia’s goal of

conceptually annexing the country to Scandinavia, Denmark, and Finland, while severing it from any connection to its Russian past . . . Even more complicated was the attempt to simultaneously place Estonia on the European side of the new cyberfrontier while also presenting it as friendly (and cybersafe) to any kind of businessperson and capital from any part of the globe, including Russia (pp. 220–221).

In other words, while Savchenko emphasizes material elements behind this “branding,” she also alludes to the ontological dissonance Estonia faced after the end of the Cold War—that is, over the question of whether it is a Western or a Baltic and Eastern country. This was evident not only in the domestic narrative, but also in how others conceived it and interacted with it (see also Aronczyk, 2013: 140–142; Feldman, 2000). By framing its technological achievements as an indication of its Europeanness, Estonian politicians aligned themselves with Northern Europe and distanced themselves from the Soviet Union (Budnitsky, 2022: 1926). As Toomas Ilves (1997), then Estonian Foreign Minister, claimed, “[S]omething ‘nordic’ in the Estonian character accounted for their supposedly natural predisposition for ICTs [information and telecommunication technologies]” (in Budnitsky, 2022: 1926).

Put differently, E-Estonia has been constituted as part of Estonian identity. For this reason, as Van Ooijen (2020) argues, the cyber-attacks of 2007 “were connected to the survival of the Estonian ‘Self’-identity as ‘E-Estonia,’ with digital modernity serving as a factor for differentiating between Western Estonia and its Soviet past” (p. 26).

Conclusion

The scholarship of ontological security clarifies aspects of cyber technologies, providing a useful lens through which to consider the challenges interactions in the cyber domain may create for states. This article shows how these interactions challenge states’ routines, narratives, and sense of home. Likewise, it elaborates on the interconnections of ontological insecurity between different levels of analysis, for example, between the state and individuals. It also explores how states respond to these challenges through strategies of strengthening narratives and routines, designating homes, avoidance, and changing their identity.

A key theme common to the challenges discussed above is that they divert from challenges to physical security or sovereignty and point instead to challenges to states’ sense of self, their ontological security, and their ability to continue to serve as ontological security providers. The modern state not only provides ontological security to individuals (Krolikowski, 2008: 126; Marlow, 2002: 242–243), but also aims to monopolize this role (Zarakol, 2017: 60–61). This opens up a wide area for further research. For example, a number of scholars have shown that social media platforms help individuals deal with ontological insecurity through being part of a wider community, collective rituals, and “affective circulations” (Browning, 2018a: 342, 2018b: 244; Solomon, 2018: 951; Steele, 2019: 325). Likewise, algorithms expose individuals to content that reaffirms their world views, creating bubbles that validate their sense of self and connect them to collectives (Pariser, 2011: 222; Sunstein, 2017: 114–132), thus contributing to their ontological security. However, these social platforms, by providing ontological security for individuals, not only compete with states in this role but also threaten states’ attempt to monopolize it. Furthermore, in the long term, accumulations of such dynamics may result in states’ “losing their position as the primary OSP [ontological security providers]” for society (Zarakol, 2017: 62). The replacement of states as the main ontological security providers has a significant impact on the current world order. Alternatively, an existential reading of ontological security reveals different potential long-term dynamics that would allow states to address the ontological insecurity that cyber technologies create by reconstructing their self and shifting their identity and routines. This requires that states adapt, but also that individuals change their expectations and conceptions of what states are.

Elaborating on the connections between ontological security scholarship and cyber technologies, the article also illuminates two issues that advance the study of ontological security.

First, it demonstrates the great potential of studying the connection between ontological security and technology,¹¹ given that technology is significant in actors’ narratives, routines, and emotions, and even in shaping actors’ “homes.” Elaborating on the opportunities technologies create for actors’ ontological security as well as the challenges and responses to them opens a wide area for future research to compare various actors and technologies in different periods. This may include studies of older technologies. For example, researchers could examine nuclear technologies, including the attachment to them and how they are related to validation of the self, and use existing studies on related issues, such as emotions and identity.¹² Other questions are related to ontological security and emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence and the Internet of things (IoT). While no current related studies are framed through this scholarship, some overlap with it. For example, Liebetrau and Christensen (2021) discuss how “the increasing pervasiveness of IoT and 5G network means that even mundane artefacts . . . may be both agents and objects of security, which blur the boundaries between human and non-human agency” (Liebetrau and Christensen, 2021: 37). Another source of insecurity, caused by the blurring of boundaries between human and non-human, also relates to ontological security and the threat to the self (Coker, 2018). These technologies may challenge states’ ability to provide ontological security, eventually leading to situations where “ontological security needs of a given populace may be met by other institutions besides those commanded by political authority” (Zarakol, 2017: 49).

A second promising way the study of cyber technologies and ontological security helps to advance the scholarship of ontological security is to open it to other levels of analysis, including the supranational level (e.g. the ontological insecurity of a number of states or of humanity) (see also Wendt and Duvall, 2008: 620–621). For example, as noted above, technologies of artificial intelligence may challenge humanity’s ontological security. Studying at the supranational level carries a number of further contributions: transnational dynamics and narratives affect the ontological insecurity of states, especially in the context of technological challenges. For example, states learn the implications of technologies from each other and they share and construct similar concerns about the challenges posed by technologies (Adler, 1992; Deibert and Crete-Nishihata, 2012: 350–352; Finnemore and Hollis, 2016; Raymond, 2019: 203–235). Furthermore, supranational collective actors, such as the EU, also engage directly in providing ontological security. Although they may not claim a monopoly on this role, they engage in providing ontological security to the collective actor, defending its values and narrative and maintaining its routines (Della Sala, 2018: 276; Dingott Alkopher, 2018: 323, 325; Mitzen, 2018). For example, as discussed above, the EU’s narrative of digital sovereignty aims to address the ontological security concerns of the collective supranational actor. Studying the supranational level also opens up interactions among different levels of analysis—among individuals, states, and supranational actors. The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is an excellent illustration of states’ responses to cyber technology challenges. Challenges to individuals’ privacy also threaten state actors, whose role is limited in providing security, including ontological security, to their citizens. The European states could respond to these challenges at the supranational level by building a joint narrative of cyber insecurity and performing joint (meta)securitization moves through the EU (Christou, 2019). Providing ontological security at the supranational level thus may enhance the ontological security of states and individuals. As Browning puts it, actors, such as the EU, may provide ontological security “for anyone for whom the institution performs an ontological security function” (Browning, 2018c: 109).

Taking all these issues together suggests that since ontological security scholarship promises to advance the understanding of cyber, it may well contribute to the study of other technologies. This opens up exciting areas for research and for advancement of ontological security studies. Given the increasing close connections of individuals and states with technologies and the challenges and opportunities these connections create, the importance and promise of such a research agenda are great.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The article greatly benefited from comments received at the ISA annual meeting in 2021. The author is also grateful to Roy Horesh for his research assistance and to Galia Press-Barnathan, Gallia Lindenstrauss, the anonymous reviewers and the editors for the insightful feedback.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article: This research was supported by the Israel Science Foundation (grant No. 2151/20).

ORCID iD

Amir Lupovici

Notes

Author biography

Amir Lupovici is a senior lecturer in the Department of Political Science at Tel Aviv University. He is the author of The Power of Deterrence: Emotions, Identity and American and Israeli Wars of Resolve (Cambridge University Press, 2016). His publications have appeared in International Studies Quarterly, Review of International Studies, Contemporary Security Policy, International Studies Review, International Studies Perspectives, and Foreign Policy Analysis.

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