Acts of war have historically been rather easy to discern; they usually involve military violence against an adversary. But in the contemporary world, that ease of identification has been lost, as nominal antagonists deploy cyber weapons and space weapons, in domains where no clear definitions of acts of war yet exist. No rules or laws apply to those domains, with the lone exception of international laws regarding nuclear weapons in space. Countries have weaponized space, adding more, and more advanced,munitions to areas outside Earth’s atmosphere. Meanwhile, they hav eincreasingly utilized digital capabilities to breach sovereign borders, enter once-top secret databases and target critical infrastructure with “sleeper codes” that await asignal to deploy their destructive power. Without clear definitions of acts of war in these domains and without rules, laws and a greements as to what rises to the level of war, governments must deal with conflicts without a clear understanding of: what constitutes an act of war in any given arena; who is liable for attacks online and in space; and what enforcements and responses could be applied in any given conflict in those domains.
Governments are edging closer and closer to open warfare (albeit not defined as war) with the potential for destructive consequences in outer-space and cyber-space.