Inside Cyber Warfare, 3rd Edition

Chapter 5. The New Enmeshed War Strategy

Everything we call ‘cyber’ is inseparable from blood and sweat: the more the cyber or remote-digital dimension of warfare intensifies, the more blood and sweat are shed—and it won’t be any different.

Svitlana Matviyenko¹

I’ve never just been the financier of the Internet Research Agency. I invented it, I created it, I managed it for a long time. It was founded to protect the Russian information space from boorish aggressive propaganda of anti-Russian narrative from the West.

Yevgeny Prigozhin²

For much of history, wars have been fought and won through attrition, where the winner is the one with the largest army and the most resources needed to sustain years-long conflict. The early 20th century saw the rise of electronic warfare, and the 21st century added cyber and cognitive warfare. Each, when introduced, was considered to be a separate warfighting domain, but eventually it became clear that each was more effective when used in combination rather than separately.  

To further muddy the waters came the rise of social media, which for many of us replaced what became known as the mainstream media. In the early days of Twitter, for example, you could read breaking news hours before it hit the mainstream outlets. Perhaps you’d share what you learned with your Facebook friends, who, in turn, would propagate it in Facebook groups. And it was “muddy” because it was so easy to create fake news or spread misinformation, and increasingly difficult ...