The Modern War Institute at West Point hosted a multi-disciplinary panel to discuss how the war in Ukraine is—or is not—changing core assumptions about conflict in the cyber domain. In many ways, the war in Ukraine appears to undermine assumptions about the changing nature of warfare, as the most decisive elements have played out on land rather than in new technological domains. To what extent have actors coordinated cyber operations with other kinetic and non-kinetic military operations? Have they been successful at either the tactical or strategic level? Do cyber operations play an important role in modern large-scale combat operations? Experts from the Army Cyber Institute and their research partners discussed these questions and more, using a unique dataset they created that identifies Russian, Ukrainian, and third-party actors during the ongoing war in Ukraine.

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In ancient China, the general Sun Tzu counseled that “all warfare is based on deception.” Could that still be the case millennia later—after an industrial and then a digital revolution have left contemporary battlefields awash with intelligence sensors and digital technology that can offer commanders unprecedented levels of situational awareness? Advancement in thermal imaging can highlight targets concealed to the naked eye, while near constant real-time observation from constellations of satellites and seemingly ubiquitous unmanned vehicles can inhibit maneuver, deliver precision strikes, and provide timely indications and warning. Voluminous twitter threads and uploads of data, metadata, and even curated datasets provide a surprisingly granular understanding of the battlespace, and internet platforms like Google Maps can indicate traffic congestion along main motorways caused by an invasion. This may lead some to consider the fog of war practically dispelled, and, as a consequence, military deception a tool of a bygone, less transparent, and less sensor-laden era. But analyzing recent Ukrainian victories would correct this erroneous point of view. In early September the Ukrainian military accomplished the most major feat of arms in the Russo-Ukrainian war (thus far) with deception at its foundation. Some principles are timeless.

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In the early 2010s, mass protests and riots ripped through the Middle East and North Africa as the Arab Spring gathered support. Longtime authoritarians like Zine El Abidine Ben Ali of Tunisia, Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, Muammar Gaddafi of Libya, and Bashar al-Assad of Syria all struggled to contain the groundswell after decades of rule. The rest of the world watched the human rights atrocities broadcast live on social media directly from those living through it instead of from traditional media institutions or foreign correspondents. The ubiquity of cellular phones and social media had democratized media production and the world had a front-row seat to revolution and upheaval.

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A few weeks ago, Montenegro—a NATO member—was hit with a cyber attack that targeted government servers. Montenegro’s outgoing Prime Minister, Dritan Abazovic, initially hedged about potential responsibility for the attack, stating on August 26: “We do not have clear information about the organizers… Security sector authorities couldn’t confirm that there is an individual, a group, a state behind [the attack].” Nevertheless, later that same day officials from Montenegro’s national intelligence agency attributed the attack to Russia. They also implied that the attack was related to Montenegro’s support for Ukraine and push for membership in the European Union. Yet, the extent of Russian involvement in the cyber attack remains ambiguous, which poses significant political and strategic challenges.

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