This chapter inquires into the way the most prominent figure in the cyberwar discourse, Michael Schmitt, constructs his authority in his presentations. It concludes that these presentations entail a kind of map-drawing: the first part of the chapter shows how Schmitt relates to ‘time’ by positioning himself as well as the Tallinn Manual within the past, present and future of international legal thinking. The second part of the chapter shows how he constructs a spatial map of the field within which he functions and discursively relates to several ‘others’: nonlawyers; other(s) (lawyers) who, in his view, misinterpret international law as well as those he refers to as “pure academics”; third, the group of experts involved in the composition of the Manual; and finally, himself in the third person. Following the construal of all these links, what is left at the heart of the discursive map is Schmitt himself, holding the key to legal knowledge as well as functioning as gatekeeper for those he considers suitable to partake in the cyberwar debate.

Chapter 5 summarises the inevitable conflict thesis, a major theory on the contemporary significance of military necessity. It becomes necessary for proponents of this thesis to establish that both military necessity and humanity demand some acts and condemn the others. They endeavour to show how, with respect to any given belligerent act, the framers choose to let humanity trump military necessity, let military necessity trump humanity, or find some middle ground between them, and posit an IHL rule accordingly. They insist that every IHL rule embodies this compromise and that neither military necessity nor humanity pleas are consequently admissible vis-à-vis unqualified rules.