Myriam Dunn Cavelty
Biographic Data
| ID | 282807 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Myriam Dunn Cavelty |
| GIVEN NAMES | Myriam Dunn |
| FAMILY NAME | Cavelty |
| SIGNATURE | CAVELTY M D |
| AFFILIATIONS | ETH Zurich |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-3775-1284 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 31 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 208 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 29 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2007 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
Cyber conflict, talent, and the governance of vulnerability research in China
Software vulnerabilities are critical enablers of cyber conflict. In 2021, China enacted the Regulations on the Management of Security Vulnerabilities in Network Products (RMSV), requiring all newly discovered vulnerabilities to be reported to state authorities and prohibiting public disclosure before a patch is available. This article examines how, and with what effects, the RMSV and related measures have restructured China’s domestic vulnerabil…
The 2026 Bernard Brodie Prize
The 2025 Bernard Brodie Prize
The 2024 Bernard Brodie Prize
The evolution of cyberconflict studies
In our increasingly digital world, cyberconflict poses a significant challenge to global security, prompting the emergence of an academic field dedicated to its study. Understanding the trajectory, evolution and dominant characteristics of cyberconflict studies is vital for scholars and policy-makers alike. By means of a thorough analysis of articles from the 125 top political science and International Relations journals, we illuminate the field'…
Thank You to Reviewers
Making cyber security more resilient
How can a focus on socio-technical vulnerability and uncertainty make cyber security more resilient? In this article, we provide a conceptual discussion of how to increase cyber resilience. First, we show how cyber security and resilience thinking co-evolved through their connection to critical infrastructures, and how the ensuing dominant technical focus inevitably always falls short due to the diverse societal values that underpin their critica…
What we got wrong
Regulatory cybersecurity governance in the making
Over the last decades, cybersecurity has become a top priority for the European Union (EU). As a contribution to scholarship on the 'regulatory security state', we analyze how the European Union Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA), emerged and stabilized as the EU's key agency for cybersecurity. We use data from policy documents, secondary sources, and semi-structured interviews to show how ENISA struggled to become a relevant actor by carving out a…
Cyber Security Politics
War in Ukraine
Cyber Security Politics
What Can a Critical Cybersecurity Do
Cybersecurity has attracted significant political, social, and technological attention as contemporary societies have become increasingly reliant on computation. Today, at least within the Global North, there is an ever-pressing and omnipresent threat of the next 'cyber-attack' or the emergence of a new vulnerability in highly interconnected supply chains. However, such discursive positioning of threat and its resolution has typically reinforced,…
The Politics of Security and Technology in Switzerland
Technologies play crucial roles in security politics. In a recent push to understand the dynamic interplay between technologies and politics, IR scholars increasingly draw on reflexive research traditions. The aim is to understand the social and political practices that influence the shape, design and use of security technologies instead of assuming that technologies have linear, independent effects on politics. This SPSR debate draws on this new…
Hyper‐Securitization, Everyday Security Practice and Technification
This contribution to the SPSR debate about technology and security in Switzerland looks at how and by whom cyber‐security is constructed in Swiss security politics. Using three securitization logics as developed by reflexive Security Studies – hyper‐securitization, everyday security practices, and technification – it illustrates how Swiss actors have sorted out roles and responsibilities over the years. The article suggests that all three logics …
Politics and Science of Prevision
This book inquires into the use of prediction at the intersection of politics and academia, and reflects upon the implications of future-oriented policymaking across different fields. The volume focuses on the key intricacies and fallacies of prevision in a time of complexity, uncertainty and unpredictability. The first part of the book discusses different academic perspectives and contributions to future-oriented policymaking. The second part di…
Cyber security meets security politics
In the last decade, cyber incidents have become more expensive, more disruptive, and in many cases more political, with a new body of theoretically informed research emerging in parallel. This article provides the intellectual history to situate this literature in its broader evolutionary context. After identifying and discussing six drivers from the fields of technology, politics, and science that have been influential in the evolution of cyber …
The materiality of cyberthreats
Critical security studies literature has only recently begun to take into account the influence of material aspects in the field of cybersecurity. This article traces securitization logics in popular visual culture to show how these representations make sense of technical incidents politically via material objects. Using a mix of discourse analysis and semiology, three types of threat representations are identified, showing a shift from depicting…
Cybersecurity Research Meets Science and Technology Studies
This article sets out to show how different understandings of technology as suggested by Science and Technology Studies (STS) help reveal different political facets of cybersecurity. Using cybersecurity research as empirical site, it is shown that two separate ways of understanding cybertechnologies are prevalent in society. The primary one sees cybertechnologies as apolitical, flawed, material objects that need to be fixed in order to create mor…
Europe's cyber-power
Power-struggles define many if not all aspects of cyber-politics. But how do they play out in the case of the European Union, who claims influence in European and global cyberspace? This article dissects different existing conceptualizations of cyber-power in order to understand where they come from, what they mean, and what they do. It then searches the European Union's cyber-security policy for different manifestations of that power. The aim of…
Routledge Handbook of Security Studies
A theory of actor-network for cyber-security
This article argues that some core tenets of Actor-Network Theory (ANT) can serve as heuristics for a better understanding of what the stakes of cyber-security are, how it operates, and how it fails. Despite the centrality of cyber-incidents in the cyber-security discourse, researchers have yet to understand their link to, and affects on politics. We close this gap by combining ANT insights with an empirical examination of a prominent cyber-incid…
International relations
While security is hardly discussed in philosophy (as Jonathan Herington, this volume, points out) and while theories of security are politely neglected in law (as Wouter Werner, this volume, shows), it is the preeminent concept in international relations. Courses on security studies are taught in almost all undergraduate/graduate programs in international relations around the globe. There is at least one security specialist (and often, many more)…
Resilience and (in)security
Diverse, sometimes even contradictory concepts and practices of resilience have proliferated into a wide range of security policies. In introducing this special issue, we problematize and critically discuss how these forms of resilience change environments, create subjects, link temporalities, and redefine relations of security and insecurity. We show the increased attention – scholarly as well as political – given to resilience in recent times a…
(In)visible Ghosts in the Machine and the Powers that Bind
This paper analyzes the formation and subsequent securitization of the digital protest movement Anonymous, highlighting the emergence of social antagonists from communication itself. In contrast to existing approaches that implicitly or explicitly conceptualize Othering (and securitization) as unidirectional process between (active) sender and (passive) receiver, an approach that is based on communication gives the “threat” a voice of its own. Th…
Resilience and (in)security
Diverse, sometimes even contradictory concepts and practices of resilience have proliferated into a wide range of security policies. In introducing this special issue, we problematize and critically discuss how these forms of resilience change environments, create subjects, link temporalities, and redefine relations of security and insecurity. We show the increased attention – scholarly as well as political – given to resilience in recent times a…
Cyber security meets security politics
In the last decade, cyber incidents have become more expensive, more disruptive, and in many cases more political, with a new body of theoretically informed research emerging in parallel. This article provides the intellectual history to situate this literature in its broader evolutionary context. After identifying and discussing six drivers from the fields of technology, politics, and science that have been influential in the evolution of cyber …
Cyber-Terror-Looming Threat or Phantom Menace? The Framing of the US Cyber-Threat Debate
For some years, experts and government officials have warned of cyber-terrorism as a looming threat to national security. However, if we define cyber-terror as an attack or series of attacks that is carried out by terrorists, that instills fear by effects that are destructive or disruptive, and that has a political, religious, or ideological motivation, then none of the disruptive cyber-incidents of the last years qualify as examples of cyber-ter…
Regulatory cybersecurity governance in the making
Over the last decades, cybersecurity has become a top priority for the European Union (EU). As a contribution to scholarship on the 'regulatory security state', we analyze how the European Union Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA), emerged and stabilized as the EU's key agency for cybersecurity. We use data from policy documents, secondary sources, and semi-structured interviews to show how ENISA struggled to become a relevant actor by carving out a…
National risk registers
Aiming at the measurement, comparison and ranking of all kinds of public dangers, ranging from natural hazards to industrial risks and political perils, the preparation of national risk registers stands out as a novel and increasingly popular Western security practice. This article focuses on these registers and the analytical power politics in which they are complicit. We argue, first, that positing science as an objective determinant of securit…
A theory of actor-network for cyber-security
This article argues that some core tenets of Actor-Network Theory (ANT) can serve as heuristics for a better understanding of what the stakes of cyber-security are, how it operates, and how it fails. Despite the centrality of cyber-incidents in the cyber-security discourse, researchers have yet to understand their link to, and affects on politics. We close this gap by combining ANT insights with an empirical examination of a prominent cyber-incid…
Cybersecurity Research Meets Science and Technology Studies
This article sets out to show how different understandings of technology as suggested by Science and Technology Studies (STS) help reveal different political facets of cybersecurity. Using cybersecurity research as empirical site, it is shown that two separate ways of understanding cybertechnologies are prevalent in society. The primary one sees cybertechnologies as apolitical, flawed, material objects that need to be fixed in order to create mor…
War in Ukraine
Europe's cyber-power
Power-struggles define many if not all aspects of cyber-politics. But how do they play out in the case of the European Union, who claims influence in European and global cyberspace? This article dissects different existing conceptualizations of cyber-power in order to understand where they come from, what they mean, and what they do. It then searches the European Union's cyber-security policy for different manifestations of that power. The aim of…
(In)visible Ghosts in the Machine and the Powers that Bind
This paper analyzes the formation and subsequent securitization of the digital protest movement Anonymous, highlighting the emergence of social antagonists from communication itself. In contrast to existing approaches that implicitly or explicitly conceptualize Othering (and securitization) as unidirectional process between (active) sender and (passive) receiver, an approach that is based on communication gives the “threat” a voice of its own. Th…
Postmodern Intelligence
Providing strategic warning to policymakers is a key function of governmental intelligence organizations. Today, globally networked challenges increasingly overshadow their historical state-centric counterparts so that warning has become considerably more difficult. It is recognized in parts of the intelligence community that many of the current problems for warning arise from continued reliance on analytic tools, methodologies and processes that…
Making cyber security more resilient
How can a focus on socio-technical vulnerability and uncertainty make cyber security more resilient? In this article, we provide a conceptual discussion of how to increase cyber resilience. First, we show how cyber security and resilience thinking co-evolved through their connection to critical infrastructures, and how the ensuing dominant technical focus inevitably always falls short due to the diverse societal values that underpin their critica…
The materiality of cyberthreats
Critical security studies literature has only recently begun to take into account the influence of material aspects in the field of cybersecurity. This article traces securitization logics in popular visual culture to show how these representations make sense of technical incidents politically via material objects. Using a mix of discourse analysis and semiology, three types of threat representations are identified, showing a shift from depicting…
The evolution of cyberconflict studies
In our increasingly digital world, cyberconflict poses a significant challenge to global security, prompting the emergence of an academic field dedicated to its study. Understanding the trajectory, evolution and dominant characteristics of cyberconflict studies is vital for scholars and policy-makers alike. By means of a thorough analysis of articles from the 125 top political science and International Relations journals, we illuminate the field'…
What we got wrong
What Can a Critical Cybersecurity Do
Cybersecurity has attracted significant political, social, and technological attention as contemporary societies have become increasingly reliant on computation. Today, at least within the Global North, there is an ever-pressing and omnipresent threat of the next 'cyber-attack' or the emergence of a new vulnerability in highly interconnected supply chains. However, such discursive positioning of threat and its resolution has typically reinforced,…
The Politics of Security and Technology in Switzerland
Technologies play crucial roles in security politics. In a recent push to understand the dynamic interplay between technologies and politics, IR scholars increasingly draw on reflexive research traditions. The aim is to understand the social and political practices that influence the shape, design and use of security technologies instead of assuming that technologies have linear, independent effects on politics. This SPSR debate draws on this new…
The formation of in-formation by the US military
This article explores the role of perception management as a doctrinal concept in the construction and deconstruction of threats. Threat construction involves a continual, reciprocal and constitutive relationship between the attribution of meaning and practice. It takes place in an environment changed by the multiple forces of the so-called information revolution, in which discursive links are forged between technology and victory as well as betw…
Hyper‐Securitization, Everyday Security Practice and Technification
This contribution to the SPSR debate about technology and security in Switzerland looks at how and by whom cyber‐security is constructed in Swiss security politics. Using three securitization logics as developed by reflexive Security Studies – hyper‐securitization, everyday security practices, and technification – it illustrates how Swiss actors have sorted out roles and responsibilities over the years. The article suggests that all three logics …
Cyber-Terror-Looming Threat or Phantom Menace? The Framing of the US Cyber-Threat Debate
For some years, experts and government officials have warned of cyber-terrorism as a looming threat to national security. However, if we define cyber-terror as an attack or series of attacks that is carried out by terrorists, that instills fear by effects that are destructive or disruptive, and that has a political, religious, or ideological motivation, then none of the disruptive cyber-incidents of the last years qualify as examples of cyber-ter…
The Routledge Handbook of Security Studies
Postmodern Intelligence
Providing strategic warning to policymakers is a key function of governmental intelligence organizations. Today, globally networked challenges increasingly overshadow their historical state-centric counterparts so that warning has become considerably more difficult. It is recognized in parts of the intelligence community that many of the current problems for warning arise from continued reliance on analytic tools, methodologies and processes that…
The formation of in-formation by the US military
This article explores the role of perception management as a doctrinal concept in the construction and deconstruction of threats. Threat construction involves a continual, reciprocal and constitutive relationship between the attribution of meaning and practice. It takes place in an environment changed by the multiple forces of the so-called information revolution, in which discursive links are forged between technology and victory as well as betw…
National risk registers
Aiming at the measurement, comparison and ranking of all kinds of public dangers, ranging from natural hazards to industrial risks and political perils, the preparation of national risk registers stands out as a novel and increasingly popular Western security practice. This article focuses on these registers and the analytical power politics in which they are complicit. We argue, first, that positing science as an objective determinant of securit…
From Cyber-Bombs to Political Fallout
The link between cyberspace and national security is often presented as an unquestionable and uncontested “truth.” However, there is nothing natural or given about this link: It had to be forged, argued, and accepted in the (security) political process. This article explores the constitutive effects of different threat representations in the broader cyber-security discourse. In contrast to previous work on the topic, the focus is not solely on di…
International relations
While security is hardly discussed in philosophy (as Jonathan Herington, this volume, points out) and while theories of security are politely neglected in law (as Wouter Werner, this volume, shows), it is the preeminent concept in international relations. Courses on security studies are taught in almost all undergraduate/graduate programs in international relations around the globe. There is at least one security specialist (and often, many more)…
Resilience and (in)security
Diverse, sometimes even contradictory concepts and practices of resilience have proliferated into a wide range of security policies. In introducing this special issue, we problematize and critically discuss how these forms of resilience change environments, create subjects, link temporalities, and redefine relations of security and insecurity. We show the increased attention – scholarly as well as political – given to resilience in recent times a…
(In)visible Ghosts in the Machine and the Powers that Bind
This paper analyzes the formation and subsequent securitization of the digital protest movement Anonymous, highlighting the emergence of social antagonists from communication itself. In contrast to existing approaches that implicitly or explicitly conceptualize Othering (and securitization) as unidirectional process between (active) sender and (passive) receiver, an approach that is based on communication gives the “threat” a voice of its own. Th…
Routledge Handbook of Security Studies
A theory of actor-network for cyber-security
This article argues that some core tenets of Actor-Network Theory (ANT) can serve as heuristics for a better understanding of what the stakes of cyber-security are, how it operates, and how it fails. Despite the centrality of cyber-incidents in the cyber-security discourse, researchers have yet to understand their link to, and affects on politics. We close this gap by combining ANT insights with an empirical examination of a prominent cyber-incid…
Cybersecurity Research Meets Science and Technology Studies
This article sets out to show how different understandings of technology as suggested by Science and Technology Studies (STS) help reveal different political facets of cybersecurity. Using cybersecurity research as empirical site, it is shown that two separate ways of understanding cybertechnologies are prevalent in society. The primary one sees cybertechnologies as apolitical, flawed, material objects that need to be fixed in order to create mor…
Europe's cyber-power
Power-struggles define many if not all aspects of cyber-politics. But how do they play out in the case of the European Union, who claims influence in European and global cyberspace? This article dissects different existing conceptualizations of cyber-power in order to understand where they come from, what they mean, and what they do. It then searches the European Union's cyber-security policy for different manifestations of that power. The aim of…
Cyber security meets security politics
In the last decade, cyber incidents have become more expensive, more disruptive, and in many cases more political, with a new body of theoretically informed research emerging in parallel. This article provides the intellectual history to situate this literature in its broader evolutionary context. After identifying and discussing six drivers from the fields of technology, politics, and science that have been influential in the evolution of cyber …
The materiality of cyberthreats
Critical security studies literature has only recently begun to take into account the influence of material aspects in the field of cybersecurity. This article traces securitization logics in popular visual culture to show how these representations make sense of technical incidents politically via material objects. Using a mix of discourse analysis and semiology, three types of threat representations are identified, showing a shift from depicting…
Politics and Science of Prevision
This book inquires into the use of prediction at the intersection of politics and academia, and reflects upon the implications of future-oriented policymaking across different fields. The volume focuses on the key intricacies and fallacies of prevision in a time of complexity, uncertainty and unpredictability. The first part of the book discusses different academic perspectives and contributions to future-oriented policymaking. The second part di…
The Politics of Security and Technology in Switzerland
Technologies play crucial roles in security politics. In a recent push to understand the dynamic interplay between technologies and politics, IR scholars increasingly draw on reflexive research traditions. The aim is to understand the social and political practices that influence the shape, design and use of security technologies instead of assuming that technologies have linear, independent effects on politics. This SPSR debate draws on this new…
Hyper‐Securitization, Everyday Security Practice and Technification
This contribution to the SPSR debate about technology and security in Switzerland looks at how and by whom cyber‐security is constructed in Swiss security politics. Using three securitization logics as developed by reflexive Security Studies – hyper‐securitization, everyday security practices, and technification – it illustrates how Swiss actors have sorted out roles and responsibilities over the years. The article suggests that all three logics …
Cyber Security Politics
War in Ukraine
Cyber Security Politics
What Can a Critical Cybersecurity Do
Cybersecurity has attracted significant political, social, and technological attention as contemporary societies have become increasingly reliant on computation. Today, at least within the Global North, there is an ever-pressing and omnipresent threat of the next 'cyber-attack' or the emergence of a new vulnerability in highly interconnected supply chains. However, such discursive positioning of threat and its resolution has typically reinforced,…
Making cyber security more resilient
How can a focus on socio-technical vulnerability and uncertainty make cyber security more resilient? In this article, we provide a conceptual discussion of how to increase cyber resilience. First, we show how cyber security and resilience thinking co-evolved through their connection to critical infrastructures, and how the ensuing dominant technical focus inevitably always falls short due to the diverse societal values that underpin their critica…
What we got wrong
Regulatory cybersecurity governance in the making
Over the last decades, cybersecurity has become a top priority for the European Union (EU). As a contribution to scholarship on the 'regulatory security state', we analyze how the European Union Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA), emerged and stabilized as the EU's key agency for cybersecurity. We use data from policy documents, secondary sources, and semi-structured interviews to show how ENISA struggled to become a relevant actor by carving out a…
Political science (21 works) · Politics (18 works) · Sociology (18 works) · Computer Science (17 works) · Law (16 works) · Cybersecurity and Cyber Warfare Studies (15 works) · Computer security (11 works) · Epistemology (10 works) · Global Security and Public Health (10 works) · Law (9 works)