Hack Backs: How Indigenous Australian laws of war can apply in cyberspace

Abstract

<p>The Laws of Yesterday's Wars was launched at the Australian National University on 13 April 2022 by Air Commodore Patrick Keane AM CSC, Professor Tim McCormack FAAL and Samuel White. In part one of this series, Samuel White outlines how Indigenous Australian laws of wars can be relevant to a modern type of warfare - cyber.</p>

<p>Ambellin Kwaymullina once wrote <a href="https://research-repository.uwa.edu.au/en/publications/aboriginal-nations-the-australian-nation-state-and-indigenous-int">'Australia is a continent, not a country.</a>' As Kwaymullina writes, First Nations in Australia had international laws for trade and migration. The customs and norms for operating in this interconnected continent were shattered with British colonisation, with the <a href="https://www.textpublishing.com.au/books/sand-talk">fragments only starting to be combined</a>. However, these are not lessons from the past. Modern military strategists are beginning to grabble with an issue of interconnected nations - an issue that was the everyday life of First Nations: that is, <a href="https://theforge.defence.gov.au/publications/mental-models-part-ii-cooperation-competition-and-conflict">the spectrum of competition</a>.</p>