Cyberattacks have emerged as a significant threat to global security. Cyber warfare as a national strategy has negatively impacted international peace, and weaponized malware has fueled geopolitical tensions while creating instability and an escalation in conflict.
There are four destabilizing features of cyber warfare:
- Obscurity and impunity
- Lack of international governance
- Escalation potentiation
- Critical infrastructure instability
1. Obscurity and Impunity
With increasingly sophisticated technology, state actors effectively hide behind criminal cyber operations, making it challenging to attribute a cyberattack to its perpetrator. The modern reality of this modus operandi has created an environment of faceless global threat actors leveraging the cyber cloak of obscurity with impunity.
Unique to modern times, cyber warfare poses questions difficult to answer since the source of cyber strife often remains hidden; it is challenging to know how to retaliate following a cyberattack when its origin can’t be traced.
Ultimately, this ambiguity challenges the distinction between national and criminal agendas.
2. Lack of International Governance
Ethically, cyber warfare operates in a gray area due to a lack of international governance, introducing novel elements of uncertainty. Unlike traditional warfare, the rules of engagement online are not clearly defined. Without established norms of responsible state behavior in cyberspace, the resulting confusion can create suspicion and deter diplomatic cooperation.
The lack of legal clarity has left some cyber professionals in a moral quandary, concerned about the ethics of covert cyber operations sanctioned by state leaders in the absence of established international precepts.
3. Potential for Escalation
Governments often struggle to identify cyber attackers, creating the potential for confusion and escalation of aggression across borders. World leaders currently lack the resolve, commitment, and cooperation necessary to enact international treaties that address these concerns. As a result, what begins as a seemingly minor cyber incident can quickly escalate into a significant conflict with massive consequences.
4. Targeted Critical Infrastructure
Cyberattack targets are often similar to targets of traditional warfare, with perpetrators having similar motives and agendas. For example, intelligence gathering is common during a cyberattack, and there is often a political agenda. Critical public infrastructure may be left inoperable, such as after experiencing a denial-of-service hack. However, unlike traditional warfare, a state-sponsored cyberattack is often unanticipated by private citizens, who view themselves as residing in a country at peace.
Basic services commonly targeted by cyber warfare operations include:
- Financial institutions
- Electoral systems
- Internet and telephone communications
- Power grids
- Water delivery
- Hospital emergency centers
The random and unexpected crippling of critical services reduces confidence in traditionally reliable infrastructure, creating feelings of instability among the general populace while providing a satisfactory outcome for foreign aggressors.
Increasing Global Conflict
Cyberattacks can be a precursor to and a cause of increasing global conflict. The US Department of Homeland Security’s 2024 Homeland Threat Assessment explains that damaging cyber campaigns propagated by numerous state actors are sowing discord. “Nation-states seeking to undermine trust in our government institutions, social cohesion, and democratic processes are using AI to create more believable mis-, dis-, and malinformation campaigns.” Utilizing media manipulation, online propaganda has the power to destabilize and topple nations.
Globally, the number of wars being waged is increasing, partly due to national cyber policies and strategies that spark new conflicts while increasing the severity of existing wars.
Traditional vs Cyber Warfare
Advocates point to the benefits of cyber vs conventional warfare. For instance, according to Maesschalck (2024), a researcher with the Security Lancaster Research Institute, cyber warfare can be a cost-effective alternative to traditional war methodology, offering anonymity while benefiting countries with limited military resources and/or who wish to conduct covert operations. Cyber warfare is also seen to achieve strategic objectives with less physical destruction and loss of life compared to traditional warfare.
Regardless, the serious risks associated with international cyber espionage and warfare, including unintended consequences, cannot be ignored. Miscalculation, escalation, and erosion of trust between nations can lead to an unstable political and international environment. The ease with which cyberattacks can be launched lowers the threshold for conflict and increases the likelihood of misinterpretation and misguided retaliatory action. The potential for cascading effects across interconnected systems remains a significant global threat.
Legislative Response – Effective?
Cyber warfare, when wielded as a national strategy without international commitment to ethical guidelines, exacerbates global insecurity. For individual citizens, unreliable infrastructure threatens their sense of stability. Meanwhile, cybersecurity professionals, tasked with acting on national interests, are left with a sense of uncertainty due to the questionable ethics of militarized cyber engagements lacking transparent policies and legal frameworks.
Pointing to the global nature of this problem, optimists advocate for a coordinated legislative response from governments worldwide to secure the future on the cyber front. Political advocates propose a forum of respectful dialogue to establish a clear framework for cyberwar engagement, creating a path toward national resiliency and a safer cyber landscape.
On the Threat Horizon
Can global resolve be mustered to effectively negotiate the tense political environment and establish what constitutes acceptable (and unacceptable) defensive and offensive cyber military maneuvers?
In the absence of international governance, cyber warfare tactics remain a contributing factor to political strife and instability, and legal ambiguity creates evolving ethical challenges for cybersecurity professionals tasked with designing, identifying, launching, deterring, and responding to grave cyber threats in the pursuit of national interests.
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References
Maesschalck, S. (2024). Gentlemen, you can’t fight in here. Or can you?: How cyberspace operations impact international security. World Affairs, 187(1), 24–36. https://doi.org/10.1002/waf2.12004
U.S. Department of Homeland Security. (2023, September 13). Homeland Threat Assessment 2024. https://www.dhs.gov/publication/homeland-threat-assessment
