Julia Voo & Virpratap Vikram Singh
Over the past two decades, state-linked efforts to shape and influence cyberspace have grown significantly in scale, targeting and impact, driven in part by rising societal dependence on digital infrastructure. Cyber and disinformation operations, intelligence gathering, and attacks on physical infrastructure, have become pervasive and increasingly normalised features of grey-zone competition. Yet, public attention has remained strategically myopic, excessively focused on a few well-known ‘adversaries’ and ‘threats’. Research by the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) has identified at least 134 states and territories affected by disinformation operations and submarine cable disruptions, and at least 84 that are known to be conducting cyber operations and investing in submarine cables – activities that proactively shape the physical, logical and virtual layers of cyberspace. Together, these findings offer a more holistic representation of global cyber activity.
Cyber operations to protect and project In the early 2000s, state activity in cyberspace was both new and relatively limited. The United States–Israel Stuxnet operation, reported in 2011, was a rare but notable example of a sophisticated, destructive cyber operation with tangible real-world effects; it infected Iran’s SCADA systems at its Natanz facility, resulting in the destruction of its uranium-enrichment centrifuges and delaying the country’s nuclear programme. China’s multi-year APT1 campaign, reported in 2013, was likewise unprecedented at the time – it targeted 141 organisations across 20 industries for political and economic espionage.
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