Cyber Wars Are an Invisible World War
The 21st century war does not start with a missile strike, but rather, it starts with a mouse click. Countries are not only creating armies, but algorithms. The era of the cyber war has come into the world without making much noise, but its coverage is far more destructive and widespread than any weapon ever invented. It is invisible, borderless and real-time, fought over cables, clouds, and code. And the world, it appears, has not yet come to realize the size of this new battlefield.
In contrast to the conventional warfare, cyber conflict does not leave any smoldering rubble or explosions in the headlines. It puts power grids out, hospitals out of commission and bank accounts emptied. One malicious code could lead to the downfall of a whole city. The world balance of power is being rewritten in the digital sphere, with the Russian attacks on the digital infrastructure of Ukraine, the US and Chinese cyber espionage conflicts. Every cyberattack sends a warning signal. It is a shot not across the sea, but through fiber-optic cables, which connect all governments, companies, and citizens.
The danger about this conflict is that this conflict is invisible. Countries can be invaded without the knowledge of when it is too late.
Who is doing the attack? This is never completely clear, providing strong players with an excuse and small players with an advantage. The new soldiers are Hackers who are usually state-sponsored or in the grey areas of legality. These are the so-called digital mercenaries who can disable institutions, loot secrets or affect election outcomes by simply hitting a key behind a glowing screen somewhere in an unknown location.
However, maybe the big loser in this unseen battle is trust. This is because when a hospital in London is hacked, or an airport in India is shut down by ransomware, it affects people not just in their trust in technology, but trust in institutions as well. Governments are warning people to be more alert, and even the most developed security systems are defeated by advanced cyber weapons. The virtual means of communication and empowering humanity have been its own best source of anarchy, ironically.
The bad news is that the cyber war is not in the offing, it is here with us. All nations, businesses, and individuals that have been linked to the internet are at the ground level. However, international regulation of cyber warfare is purely a toothless paper, and there are no international treaties to bind or define what should be considered an act of cyber war. The digital Geneva Convention is still to be penned although the battlefield continues to broaden daily.
Unless the world deals with this new reality, the world war that will follow will have a lot of soldiers and bombs. It may start quietly with screens going black, data disappearing, and cities becoming dark. Whether we can prevent cyber war or not is no longer a question, but whether we would be able to endure it with our freedom, privacy, and democracy prevailing.
