From innovation to participation: connectivity and the conduct of contemporary warfare

The war in Ukraine is the first conventional war to ever take place in an entirely connected information ecology. The internet has not been switched off. Mundane smart devices are ubiquitous. Soldiers and ordinary civilians are participating in the conflict in ways that have never previously been possible. This stretches participation beyond the information domain and the kinds of connectivity that shaped conflicts in places like Syria, Tigray and Mali. Now the smartphone is routinely being used by soldiers and civilians alike to geolocate enemy columns, control drones to range find for artillery, and produce and broadcast the damage assessment for online audiences to watch. Surveillance technology already makes it possible to track individual smartphone users. In times of peace these forms of surveillance are curtailed. During a conventional war, however, private organizations and governments have reason to circumvent peacetime legal conventions. The result is that mundane connected technology forms part of an extended chain of sensors that feeds data and information to those involved in information warfare and targeting activities. In effect, the smartphone has collapsed the means to fight and represent war into the functionality of one device. This article maps the policy and military implications of these developments in relation to participation, the conduct of war and the law of armed conflict.