The wild world of cyberwarfare demands a cold eye
“War is merely the continuation of policy by other means” – the famous words of the military tactician Carl von Clausewitz. It is of course dangerous to play around with quotations, but today we might add that alternative ‘digital’ forms of conflict are the continuation of war.
Hopefully the prospect of a Russian incursion into Ukraine – or worse still the country becoming the site of a full-blown proxy war – will recede, but fears have grown about alternative conflict in the form of coordinated cyber attacks.
It’s a wild world out there: White House cybersecurity chief Anne Neuberger began a European tour on Tuesday, warning of possible Russian cyberattacks. For its part, the discovery in 2010 of the Stuxnet worm shows the US is not against using digital intrusion techniques. North Korea apparently stole hundreds of millions of dollars worth of bitcoin last year.
European nations are far from unaware of the threat. Money is being poured into security and next-generation research, and a recent report in the Irish Examiner revealed Ireland took part in an EU-wide simulation of a cyber attack.
While it would be a mistake to replicate the paranoia of Cold War-era fears of nuclear destruction with a new anxiety about cascading digital dominoes, it would be foolish to deny the possibility of cyberattacks as war by other means.
There are two fundamental reasons why state actors are interested in cyber attacks, whether as attackers or defenders. Firstly, the stakes are lower, at least in terms of domestic opinion.
Michael Conway, managing director of security consultants Renaissance, puts it bluntly: “It’s a much more ‘acceptable’ form of war,” he said.
The second reason is that they work. In other words, the fact that electronic conflict lacks the downside of the ‘body bag factor’ does not mean there is an equivalent lessening of the severity of cyber attacks. So much of society is today reliant on networks that cyberattacks could be devastating rather than a nuisance.
“Actors can take out vital national infrastructure,” said Conway.
Indeed, even without state actors we have seen how essential services can be brought to their knees.
Last year’s Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack, for instance, was a relatively straightforward case of extortion, but the result was the main fuel artery of the east coast of US was shut down. Perhaps there are some systems that should not be digitised.
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