4 The Cyber-IR System: Integrating Cyberspace and International Relations

So far we have introduced and reviewed briefly the layers of the Internet, the core of cyberspace (chapter 2) and the levels of analysis, a conventional view of the international system (chapter 3) as two different systems of interaction. Both levels and layers are human constructs. But their defining properties reinforce the propensity to consider them as two separate, possibly parallel systems. Given their increasing convergence, even interpenetration—in the sense that cyberspace has become an integral aspect of international relations, and world politics fuses into the cyber arena—the challenge at hand is to capture the interconnections between the two systems and, to the extent relevant, the mutual penetration across their respective components.