The first is that sovereignty is a cornerstone of international law and international relations. Of course, we need to distinguish, in this regard, between sovereignty, which is typically used as a general concept that connotes independence, and “territorial sovereignty”, which is an international legal rule. States will sometimes point to the need to protect their sovereignty, referring broadly to their political will and autonomy, without necessarily referring to a legal rule. The two meanings are sometimes conflated, and we need to be very careful when drawing legal conclusions. A second, and related point, is that States undoubtedly have sovereign interests in protecting cyber infrastructure and data located in their territory. However, States may also have legitimate sovereign interests with respect to data outside their territory. For example, as governments store more and more of their data by using cloud services provided by third parties, whose servers are located abroad, how do we describe the interest that they have in relation to that data? Would the interest in protecting the data not be a sovereign interest in this case as well? Or, alternatively, when a State conducts a criminal investigation and needs to access data located abroad from its own territory, under what circumstances does it need to request the consent of the territorial State? Of course, there are no easy answers to these questions, and some of them are currently being discussed, such as in the context of the protocol to the Budapest Cybercrime Convention currently being negotiated to address this very topic. These questions reflect an inherent tension between States’ legitimate interest and the concept of territorial sovereignty, as we understand it in the physical world. In practice, States occasionally do conduct cyber activities that transit through, and target, networks and computers located in other States, for example for national defense, cyber-security, or law enforcement purposes. Under existing international law, it is not clear whether these types of actions are violations of the rule of territorial sovereignty, or perhaps that our understanding of territorial sovereignty in cyberspace is substantively different from its meaning in the physical world. Another matter closely related to the issue of sovereignty is that of non-intervention. Traditionally, this concept has been understood as having a high threshold. It has been taken to mean that State A cannot take actions to “coerce” State B in pursuing a course of action, or refraining from a course of action, in matters pertaining to State B’s core internal affairs, such as its economic or foreign policy choices. Its traditional application has focused on military intervention and support to armed groups seeking the overthrow of the regime in another State. This could presumably also relate to support given to armed groups in the cyber domain, such as providing information regarding cyber vulnerabilities of the State. A more recent issue that has come to the fore relates to interference in national elections. We concur with the various positions expressed in this regard, such as that which was presented by former U.S. State Department Legal Adviser Brian J. Egan, and more recently 6/9