ABSTRACT
Although an early manifesto did not welcome governments into cyberspace (Barlow, 1996), it is questionable whether cyberspace has ever been truly civilian. The newcomers have not been governments with their claims of sovereignty and methods of enforcement, but civil societies. Already in the 1940s, computing power was utilized to calculate flight paths and trajectories, as well as to break the atom; the United States and the Soviet Union connected early warning sensors to computerized command and control stations and to fire and manoeuvre units in the 1950s; advancements of the US Department of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) experimental network paved way to civilian research and commercial utilization of increased connectivity. Digitalization in the 1980s and 1990s made a qualitative shift by improving the performance of all military functions – a tendency that signifies the anticipated utility of contemporary information and communications technologies (ICTs) and emerging technologies such as machine learning, artificial intelligence, and quantum computing.
