New Cyber Wars, Op-ed

Months ago, the French President Emmanuel Macron had warned, during attending the Munich Security Conference in Germany, that Russia would continue to try to destabilize “western democracies through manipulating social networks or information operations. She would do so either through special parties or direct dedicated services.”

Macron added that Moscow would be a very aggressive actor in this field during the following months and years and in all elections, and will search for strategies to enable it to recruit new agents.”.

 Macron noted that “Russia was not the only actor in this field, as some U.S. conservative  rightists have also interfered in the European elections”, in reference to the supporters of US President Donald Trump. 

“We only have some defenses in the face of these attacks,” he added.

He believed that “technological defenses should be strengthened, as well as cooperation between "western" agencies to identify" these attacks, which often remain anonymous.

Today, the UK says that Russian intelligence has been behind attacks executed by a pirate group "known as IPT29" to seize research on a vaccine against the novel coronavirus.

British Foreign Secretary Dominic Rapp considered it "totally unacceptable that the Russian intelligence targets those working to combat the pandemic”, and warned that those who carry out similar attacks "will bear responsibility for their actions" sooner or later.

He added, in a statement: "While some pursue their selfish interests, the United Kingdom and its allies continue their hard work to find a vaccine and protect global health."

The accusation comes at a time when relations between London and Moscow are strained against possible Russian interference in the recent British legislative elections campaigns that the conservatives won, and in the 2016 referendum that led to Britain's exit from the European Union.

The British government has confirmed days ago that it is "almost certain" that "Russian actors" sought to disrupt the legislative elections by publishing documents, during the campaign period, about a possible trade agreement between London and Washington after Brexit; where an investigation was opened to determine the source of these leaks which were published on the "Reddit" social networking site.

Relations between London and Moscow are at their lowest levels since the poisoning of former Russian agent Sergei Skripal in the city of Salisbury in southwestern Britain. Russia has previously denied any involvement in the poisoning, but the issue has led to mutual expulsions of diplomats between London and its allies on one hand and Moscow on another hand.

The dialogue between the two countries was not renewed until February 2019, after communications were cut off for eleven-month. 

Amid a complicated international environment, which began to complicate even more with the Coronavirus pandemic, Russia began to appear as a confident power, using smart weapons that international relations have not witnessed before, and it greatly affects the course of political operations in the strongest democracies, and seeks to obtain the data it wants.

The Russian President is well aware of the concept of power, and precisely the concept introduced by the great American strategist Joseph Nye, that is, the ability to achieve the results one wants.

The resources that produce such power vary in different contexts. Spain, for instance, took control of colonies and gold bars in the sixteenth century, and the Netherlands gained from trade and finance in the seventeenth century, and France benefited from its large population and armies in the eighteenth century, and the United Kingdom gained its strength from the industrial revolution and from its navy in the nineteenth century. As for this century, it is characterized by a young revolution in information technology and globalization ...

Today, the personal vision of the international policy maker, or the strategic expert, must include an objective view of the current environment, and a prior assessment of the results of continuity and change within this environment, in a way that ensures achieving his interests in the future.

Although the strategist admits that the future can not be precisely predictable, he believes that it can be influenced and shaped to reach results that achieve his strategic interests. This is the theory that western countries believe in, and where Russia had a prior role in cyberattacks and in a world whose features are based on the quadruple volatility, apprehension, complexity, and mystery.