Emerging Cyber Technologies in the Maritime Domain: Challenges for Maritime Security and ‘Order at Sea’

Abstract

The global shipping and other commercial and economic activities are backbone for states’ political activities, sustainable socioeconomic development, and security. However, traditional concepts of security, order, state, power, warfare, and threat perception besides several others are in transition bringing drastic changes to the contemporary world. Technological advancements, considerable amount of research and development, and evolution of knowledge about different domains have affected all spheres of life, and besides opportunities, number of challenges too have emerged. Maritime realm is the one going through these changes quite vehemently, but this spatial dimension has gathered lesser focus in terms of academic activities, research and establishment of discourse related to its issues. Nevertheless, nature of threats in this domain is more non-traditional than traditional. These non-traditional challenges are also getting transformed and getting complex due to advancement of technology. Particularly, innovation in cyber technology has brought afore a plethora of opportunities in maritime realm, simultaneously for state and non-state actors being used for positive as well as negative purposes challenging ‘order at sea’. This paper is an endeavour to evaluate emerging cyber technologies potentially affecting safe navigation, and law and order within maritime domain. The research undertaken is relevant to contemporary issues which could bring important structural configuration in dealing with challenges of cyber technology advancement.