Parties in the armed conflict: third states --- Guillaume, to add to the complexity: how about third states which are involved by the mere nature of how internet works? Say servers in a third country (and it is usually more than one country) hosts command-and-control for a botnet - or hosts many bots? Or, an IT infrastructure of an institution in a third country served as a spring board to penetrate into the systems of the attacked country?

Are these third party involved? Should have they done due diligence and prevent this? Can we make a parallel with allowing one's airspace to be used by a third country's fighter jet or missiles to fly through? And, can we be sure that this third country didn't know about being used - and that it hasn't actually allowed it tacitly, or even assisted?

Source author: Vladimir Radunovic vladar@diplomacy.edu