ARGUMENT: THE LIMITS OF CYBERWARFARECyber Conflict and Subversion in the Russia-Ukraine War
The Russia-Ukraine war is the first case of cyber conflict in a large-scale military conflict involving a major power. Over the years, Russia-sponsored hacking groups have adapted their tradecraft to the war setting. “Contrary to cyberwar fears, most cyber operations remained strategically inconsequential,” Lennart Maschmeyer writes. “The case of Ukraine illustrates not only the limitations of cyber operations but also the relative superiority of old-school means of subversion.”
The Russia-Ukraine war is the first case of cyber conflict in a large-scale military conflict involving a major power. Over the years, Russia-sponsored hacking groups have adapted their tradecraft to the war setting. Lennart Maschmeyer writes in Lawfarethat,contrary to cyberwar fears, “most cyber operations remained strategically inconsequential, “but there are several exceptions: the AcidRain operation, the UKRTelecom disruption, the September 2022 power grid sabotage, and the catastrophic Kyivstar outage of 2023.”
Maschmeyer adds:
Delving into these operations shows how Russia-sponsored hacking groups have exploited unique opportunities provided by territorial conquest and reveals an intriguing, underappreciated insider dimension to some of the war’s most damaging cyberattacks. These developments suggest hacking groups are increasingly fusing cyber operations with traditional subversive methods to improve effectiveness.
In the wake of the invasion, there were predictions of cyber “shock and awe” campaigns that would trigger catastrophic large-scale disruption and might even render the use of force unnecessary. Nadiya Kostyuk and I pushed back against these predictions two weeks before the invasion. We stressed the need to assess plausible threats based on Russia’s track record. Rather than being a novel tool of warfare, I have previously argued on Lawfare that cyber operations are more similar to intelligence operations, specifically subversion.
Subversion projects power indirectly and secretly, exploiting vulnerabilities in adversary systems to infiltrate them and make them do things they are not supposed to. Traditionally, states have used spies to infiltrate enemy societies and institutions. Examples of subversion are turning a political organization into a covert arm for adversary interests or turning an industrial facility into a lethal weapon by releasing poisonous gases. It offers an indirect and secret way of interfering in adversary affairs.
