Russian Cyber-Enabled Diversions in the West

Abstract

As the Western democracies are increasingly digitized, awareness of the resulting geopolitical vulnerabilities has lagged behind. There is a need to understand that cyber operations have strategic aims that go beyond mere snooping and spying. They are effective at spreading mistrust, blackmail, and destabilization, and at displaying the perpetrator’s capabilities and serving its deterrence purposes. The harm scales used to evaluate the severity of a cyberattack usually focus on physical or economic damage, overlooking the real significance of politically motivated cyberattacks. For example, the damage caused by rigging an election process goes far beyond some of the physical harm scenarios. Cyber operations are particularly effective in combination with other political pressuring tools. The worrying aspect is that this synergic spectrum can widen and lead to cyber escalation, in which case the level of harm caused by the cyber operations will become higher and more prolonged, especially in the (geo)political sense.