Why Cyberwarfare Needs to Be on Your Radar
Cyberwarfare is no longer a niche concern reserved for military servicemembers, intelligence agencies, defense contractors, or technologists working in secure facilities. It’s a very real and present threat - one that operates well below the threshold of conventional war and has the potential to negatively impact everyone - from civilians to businesses to government agencies. If you use the Internet at all or participate in the Connected Economy (spoiler: we all do), then it’s very likely that cyberwarfare is going to disrupt your life at some point in the near future.
What Is Cyberwarfare and What Makes It Different?
Technically, cyberwarfare refers to the use of digital operations by states or state-sponsored terrorists to disrupt, damage, or corrupt another nation’s information systems, critical infrastructure, or decision-making processes. Unlike traditional warfare, cyber operations rarely involve physical destruction at the outset (no one is storming the beaches). Instead, cyberwarfare is characterized by digital operations that target trust, functionality, and control, often rather subversively or covertly (we didn’t see it coming).
While there’s a whole debate in the defense world about whether or not cyber warrants its own domain designation, we can all agree that differences do exist between actions occurring in person and those taking place digitally.
Here are a few of the most notable ones:
In cyberwar, there’s no clearly defined physical battlefield. Attacks occur across multiple domains, which have effects in the cyber realm and the physical world.
There’s an extremely low cost of entry to the cyber fight. No big-ticket items like missiles and tanks required. This broadens our potential adversary list.
With acts of cyberwar, there’s no clear declaration of war - it’s just kind of undefined and unrelenting - creating a digital “fog of war” that just will not subside.
Figuring out the angle of attacks can be challenging, because acts of cyberwar can look like lots of things - crime, espionage, fanatic activism, or even technical glitches.
Plus, cyberwar is relatively new, so we don’t have a lot of data to go on, which makes it different from traditional warfare. The Sun Tzu for cyberwar has yet to be published.
Why Cyberwarfare Matters to You
Our nation has its share of adversaries, and the leadership in these nations do not wish us well. Thanks to technology, the barriers of engagement have been lowered. Attacking institutions, cities, and nations via cyber is much more accessible than traditional means of warfighting. This broadens the aperture of who can cause harm to our country, and necessitates more civilian awareness and involvement when it comes to defense and deterrence.
In the previous war, the Global War on Terror, less than 1% of Americans had any “skin in the game” when it came to fighting terrorism. I was the only student in my undergrad program who lost a loved one overseas, the only grad student whose spouse was deployed, and (repeatedly) the only employee at organizations who was part of a military family. The location and strategy of GWOT kept the realities of war far, far away from 99% of Americans - war was just something happening to other people, over there, far away from interrupting civilians' indulgence on fast food, reality TV shows, and meme consumption. GWOT caused no inconvenience to those who elected to not serve their nation in its time of need.
Cyberwarfare: Our reality
The ever-looming threats of cyberwar shatter the militarized buffer that traditional warfighting has offered generations since the outbreak of Vietnam. Civilians - regardless of their beliefs about war, military service, and international relations - will be potential casualties in the highly digitized wars of the future. They won’t be able to sit this one out. Technology has a funny way of democratizing lots of things - from information access to involuntary mobilization on the frontlines of cyberwar. One effective attack on our nation’s infrastructure may have civilians front and center in responding to adversarial aggression.
It’s critical that our society recognizes the necessity for a whole-of-nation approach to cyber defense and resilience. Waiting for the techno-Pearl Harbor to occur before we prioritize cyber capabilities is the wrong approach to safeguarding our future. We must not neglect the priorities of defending the cyber domain, for if we do, the unprotected digital realm will offer our adversaries easy access to destabilize and damage our country. Cyberwarfare isn’t a future problem for the geek squad to solve - it’s a looming threat that has the potential to impact all of us. Preparing for this uncertain future will help position us for sustainable success.