Welcome to the never-war

What we are seeing today is not just a sustained increase in the complexity and severity of cyber threat, but the end of our ability to define geopolitical conflict in binary terms. This is amply demonstrated in Russia and Ukraine, in relationships between China and the west, and in frozen conflicts and proxy-wars around the world.

This is no longer about war or peace, but about continuously varying scales of conflict. It extends not just to kinetic action (soldiers and tanks) but also to offensive cyber activity. It does not have a defined start or declared end goals, and it often exists without acknowledgement or with only tacit recognition.

It is not just state actors such as governments, soldiers and diplomats that prosecute this conflict, but hybrid activity by nation states, regional blocs, state sponsored cyber-pirates and state aligned independent malicious actors (notably organised individuals and elements of cyber crime). A system of soft incentives and disincentives reinforced through propaganda drives alignment of state and non-state actors. Those who feel they are acting with independence towards a personal mission are often simply being used by those with greater power.

This hybrid never-war comes in waves of activity, with both isolated and extended conflicts that likely will not dissipate in our lifetimes. These individual conflicts may never be formally acknowledged or even recognised to be part of a wider strategic direction, but nonetheless exist in that context. In the lull between bursts of activity, we may convince ourselves for years or even decades that this conflict is over, or never existed at all. Yet it does, and it will.

Ending any form of conflict without mutual destruction always means bringing people with different goals and outlooks together around a shared vision or outcome. Unfortunately, recent years have shown the dark side of information technology — the ability for national states and political leaders to use information and misinformation both tactically and strategically to drive a wedge through the truth that is hard to resolve. Increasing regionalisation and the accelerating fragmentation of the open global economy are now facts reinforced through controlled propaganda and restricted access to genuinely alternative perspectives and information. For those willing to use this for their own ends, it is becoming an increasingly powerful tool as controlled narratives become embedded across generations. Trust in information has already been eroded, and now for many there is a risk of losing trust in the truth.

This is multi-generational issue. We need to recognise it and be ready and resilient. Responding will require a new level of collaboration — it will require cyber, artificial intelligence, communications, legal, IT, capital, insurance, political, diplomatic and military disciplines; it will require public and private leadership; specialist and non-specialist input, professional and voluntary action. All parts of society working together with transparency, honesty, challenge and humility is the only path available to us in democratic society. Others will define a different path.

Cyber defence is a team sport now, whichever side you are on.