The Civilian Soldiers of Cyberwarfare

Abstract

Extending in the other direction from Chapter 4, Chapter 5 examines films that question what happens when the densely generated networks that the military has used to completely abstract war into distanced data points begin to be repurposed by civilian users and turned back upon the American State War Machine as a means to combat and expose that very military machinery. Recent films, such as Blackhat, Snowden and The Fifth Estate, present civilian protagonists that effectively hijack the secret and dense military networks and expose that normally top secret information to the public in heroic fashion. With this shift, the contemporary war film begins to blend with the political thriller and the biopic, wherein there is little “traditional combat” and the focus of the film is on conspiracy and the exposure of Gilles Deleuze’s notion of Societies of Control. These films then address one of the key components of an Internet-enabled State War Machine that is shifted toward an increasingly globalized enemy (terrorists, other hackers, etc.): information and data, and the protection/privatization thereof, are just as important to military infrastructure and effectiveness as soldier-to-soldier combat. The civilian protagonists within the discussed films are the necessarily aware and active machinic users of the Internet, which presents a healthier alternative to the docile and unaware civilian Internet user.