Thwarting the social instabilities and political divisions created by bots and other manipulators of information requires creative countermeasures, including aesthetic ones. This belief describes the gameplan of the Department of Homeland Security, which is betting that aesthetics can help safeguard a democracy that has come to seem increasingly fragile.

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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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WEST POINT, N.Y. – Cadets at the U.S. Military Academy are learning the importance of Army space from the Space and Missile Defense’s Space and High-Altitude Research Center.

Lt. Col. Craig Boucher, director of the SMDC Space and High-Altitude Research Center at West Point, said the center’s mission is to provide space and multi-domain operations education and training and provide operationally relevant space- and missile defense-related research projects for cadets. The center’s role is multi-faceted, but they focus on developing space-aware and space-smart leaders for the Army and the Army’s contribution to the joint force.

“Beyond that the vision is to inspire the next generation of Army leaders to pursue careers in space and missile defense,” he said. “On the training and education side of things we provide the space and multi-domain expertise along with the Army Cyber Institute to raise awareness across the corps of cadets on how space enables their tactical actions on the battlefield and reinforce why things like basic land navigation skills are so important when GPS is denied by an adversarial force.”

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RICHMOND, Va. – Approximately 20 Virginia National Guard Soldiers and Airmen took part in the Cyber Fortress exercise with public and private sector partners Sept. 21-30.

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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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The crisis brewing between China and Taiwan has involved strident Chinese threats and warnings, military exercises (including firing nearly a dozen missiles toward Taiwanese-controlled waters), and China’s suspension of talks with the United States. Even if China is not seeking to use the current situation as a pretext to justify an invasion of the island, there is the risk that miscalculations or accidents could cause the situation to escalate along a dangerous trajectory.

But what about the cyber dimension of this crisis?

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Earlier this year, we announced the launch of C2P—the Competition in Cyberspace Project—a joint initiative for which the Modern War Institute partnered with the Army Cyber Institute. The project’s purpose facilitate much-needed discussion on a range of cyber-related topics. What does conflict in cyberspace look like? What does strategic competition in cyberspace look like? Equally importantly, are there clear, bright lines that distinguish one from the other?

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST HERE

Last month, Microsoft published a report on the emerging lessons from the “cyber war” in Ukraine. It provides a rich storyline and a number of historical analogies and, in emphasizing the significance of the war’s cyber dimension, it falls firmly in line with commentary from many tech sector experts and government professionals. For example, Tom Burt, a Microsoft executive himself, described the conflict as a “full-scale cyberwar.” In an interview with the Washington Post, Toomas Hendrik Ilves, Estonia’s former president, warned that Russia might yet launch a significant cyberattack (even if, to date, one has not occurred). Further, the US government is steadily issuing warnings to the private sector, encouraging corporations to keep their “shields up” (a slogan created by Jen Easterly, the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency). Abroad, the warnings are also dire, with the Danish defense minister, Morten Bødskov, noting that “the cyber threat is constant and evolving. Cyberattacks can do great damage to our critical infrastructure, with fatal consequences.”

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