The Birth of Cyber as a National Security Agenda

The following dissertation studies the question how cyber security has become a national security agenda and discusses implications of the observed processes to current international security status quo. I divided the research into three parts. The first part embodies theoretical and methodological approach. The second part studies three distinct discourses related to cyber security, the techno-geek discourse, the crime-espionage discourse and the nation-defense discourse using the method of Michel Foucault about archaeology of knowledge. The third part then draws on these three discourses and discusses implications through lens of several theoretical perspectives. Namely through concepts taken from science and technology studies, from actor network theory and network assemblages. The critical point of the research is a distinct reading of these discourses. While techno-geeks are understood as a source of semiosis, hackers' capability and crypto-anarchy ideology influenced by cyberpunk subculture, the cyber-crime and espionage discourse is read as a source of evidence of the hackers' capability. The inspiration in popular subculture is combined with current efforts in development of liberating technologies against oppression by authorities, oppression recognized by the eyes of the crypto-anarchist..