I. The Slow and Imprecise Art of Cyber Warfare

Abstract

Sally Walker, former Director of Cyber at GCHQ, has stated that cyber attacks ‘can have impact in the real world and you can do it at scale’. Because cyber attacks can target everything from financial systems and critical national infrastructure to political leaders and legal institutions – undermining trust and the rule of law – they can have an ‘attritional’ effect on the cohesion of states to which open societies ‘are uniquely vulnerable’. Such warnings over the years, combined with high-profile incidents like the WannaCry ransomware attack against the NHS, have meant that military leaders have recognised the importance of the ‘cyber domain’. When new forms of conflict first emerge, however, there is almost always a period of inflated expectation. For the small community within Defence who have worked in the margins to explore the novel capability, there is a tendency to hype its effects and downplay its limitations in order to gain the attention of the wider defence and security community and secure resources within the bureaucracy. For that wider community – lacking an understanding of the capability – it is often much easier to visualise the potential threats posed by novel weapons than the challenges involved in employing them effectively. Cyber warfare today is arguably at the peak of this inflated discourse,