A cybersecurity expert explains the roles that misinformation, and cyberattacks more broadly, are playing in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine.
Last week U.S. officials claimed the Russian government was planning to publish a video of a staged “attack” by Ukrainian forces. The officials said their announcement was an attempt to preemptively halt a misinformation campaign that could serve as a pretext for Russian forces to invade. Such propaganda campaigns have been used in wars throughout history—but today’s social media landscape allows misinformation to spread further and have greater impact.
The most likely, and the thing that we’ve probably seen most prevalent from Russia, is deliberate computational approaches to misinformation campaigns. In Russia’s case, [people] don’t necessarily need to hack a bunch of voting records and change the outcome of an election. All they need to do to achieve some of their goals, I expect, is to [introduce misinformation to] create doubt in the minds of the American public about the validity of our electorate.
What is cyber, and how does it play a role in warfare? It’s a tool in the kit bag that allows for engagement all the way from cooperation through armed conflict and war, and it can synchronize with the other elements of national power in a really interesting way. Cyberactivity can be anywhere in the continuum of competition, all the way from cooperation—we use cybercampaigns for diplomacy, information, and so on—through to armed conflict and open war.