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Global CyberPolitics

What is Cyber International Relations?

CyberIR@MIT is a dynamic, interactive knowledge and networking system focused on the evolving, diverse, and complex interconnections of cyberspace and the global or world system. It is constructed around interactive knowledge resources and supported by a set of functionalities associated with research, policy, and practice.

It is anchored in a multidimensional ontology. As an interactive knowledge system, it supports an evolving, quality-controlled database that includes submissions by users and provides search options over the entire knowledge base’s component-domains (or topics), consisting of detailed knowledge-profiles of actors, actions, problems, and solution strategies.

It was initially framed as an experiment during the MIT–Harvard collaboration on Explorations in Cyber International Relations (ECIR). Supported to serve as a forum for quality-controlled content and materials generated throughout the research project. The overall design is derived from GSSD [gssd.mit.edu]

Mission

The mission of Cyber International Relations is to reduce barriers to our understanding of how cyberspace affects the global system of state and non-state actors, and how the global system and its various components affect cyberspace. The objectives are three-fold:

  1. Conceptual & Scientific:
    1. Develop a quality-controlled ontology & knowledge base
    2. Capture diverse methods, perspectives, and approaches
    3. Facilitate access to cutting-edge research
  1. Participation & Communication:
    1. Support integrated perspectives on “virtual” and “real” dynamics
    2. Enable distribution of knowledge contributions
    3. Enhance knowledge-sharing with diverse options for search & retrieval
  1. Policy & Decision:
    1. Enhance analytical and computational methods for decision-making
    2. Explore policy alternatives for security & “virtual” and “real” international stability
    3. Identify trade-offs, choices, and opportunity costs. 

Vision

The vision for CyberIR@MIT, is shaped by the research for Cyberpolitics in International Relations (Choucri, 2012). The operational approach to the knowledge system is influenced by the Global System for Sustainable Development (GSSD), (see also Choucri et al, 2007), developed earlier and focused on challenges of system sustainability.

CyberIR@MIT, gradually evolved into a knowledge-based system of human interactions in cyberspace and the world order or global system, all embedded in the overarching natural system.

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