Letter from the editors.

• Position: Editorial

Cyber is a hot issue right now. But it is no passing fad. Cyber is pervasive in the news, policy discussions, and education, and there will be implications for almost everything--from security to governance to communications. While there has been a great deal written about cyber issues in recent years, experts are only beginning to wrestle with the essential questions and understand their ramifications.

Cyber realities are changing faster than many policymakers and academics can keep up with. New technologies are constantly being introduced and new norms are regularly being developed that affect how states and organizations operate. This new normal is defying conventional wisdom and challenging the basic assumptions of prominent international relations theories. The Cyber Issue is an attempt to cut through the noise and offer sober analysis on the most critical problems.

The research and opinions found in these pages were developed against a contentious backdrop of high-profile news stories. Fears were high that outside powers and individuals could influence the U.S. presidential election, heated debates continued over the right balance between security and privacy, and hackers targeted global businesses and media outlets and disrupted Internet service in countries around the world, from the United States to Liberia.

The Cyber Issue features leaders in the field who have written articles that both break new ground and will serve as foundational studies for the examination of cyber issues moving forward. In our peer-reviewed articles, Heather Brooke, the professor and award-winning journalist, goes inside the digital revolution. She argues that while technology can make governments more transparent and strengthen democracy, it can also increase surveillance and threaten democracy. Oxford's Philip N. Howard and his coauthors investigate whether social media use helps or harms civic engagement. It is commonly believed that social media conversations about politics are brief and lack substance, but they find evidence

Stanford's Herbert Lin writes the definitive account of the attribution problem. The difficulty of quickly and correctly identifying the perpetrators of cyber attacks has been one of the biggest concerns about cyber threats, and this article puts together the best expertise on all aspects of attribution. Benjamin Dean, a former cyber fellow at Columbia SIPA, writes an overdue evaluation of national cybersecurity strategies. And the...