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SUMMARY
INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................... 618
I. MAPPING THE LAW OF WAR ONTO CYBER CONFLICT ................................... 622
A. Threshold Questions ................................................................................... 622
1. What Is the Purpose of the Cyber Operation? .................................. 622
2. Who Is the Perpetrator? ...................................................................... 624
3. What Are the Consequences or Intended Consequences of the Cyber Operation? ................................................................................. 625
4. Is There an Ongoing Armed Conflict to Which the Cyber Operation Is Connected? ..................................................................... 627
B. Applying the Law of War to Cyber Conflicts Generally .......................... 627
1. Jus ad Bellum ........................................................................................ 628
2. Jus in Bello ............................................................................................ 629
a. Distinction ...................................................................................... 630
b. Proportionality ............................................................................... 631
II. THE LAW OF WAR IMPLICATIONS OF THE PRIVATE SECTOR'S ROLE IN CYBER CONFLICT ................................................................................................ 632
A. The Obama Administration 's Public-Private Partnership Plan .............. 634
B. Scholarly Proposals to Protect the Private Sector .................................... 637
C. The Law of War and the Private Sector's Role in Cyber Conflict ........... 637
1. Erosion of the State's Monopoly on the Use of Force ..................... 638
2. Erosion of the Standard of Imputation .............................................. 639
CONCLUSION ................................................................................................................... 640
Introduction
On June 1, 2011, Google Inc., the world's leading search engine and a major email services provider, announced on its blog that hackers in Jinan, China, had accessed the personal email accounts of "hundreds of users including, among others, senior U.S. government officials, Chinese political activists, officials in several Asian countries (predominantly South Korea), military personnel and journalists."1 The hack was a spear-phishing campaign, meaning it targeted specific individuals with carefully crafted emails deployed to trick users into disclosing personal information like email account passwords,2 and it had been noticed as early as February by an independent blogger who helped tip off Google/
The following day Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called Google's allegation "very serious" and announced an investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.4 Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei deemed Google's claim "a complete fabrication out of ulterior motives."5 An editorial in the Global Times, a Chinese nationalist newspaper, elaborated, calling Google "snotty-nosed" and disgruntled about its poor market position in China.6
The incident was the second major hack that Google had traced back to China. In January 2010, the company announced that a "cyber attack" originating from China had tried to steal the...