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4 Capitolo - CYBER OPERATIONS A SUPPORTO DELLA PROPAGANDA

ON FUTURE

WAR

July 2023
Cyber Operations during

the Russo-Ukrainian War
From Strange Patterns to Alternative Futures
By Grace B. Mueller, Benjamin Jensen, Brandon Valeriano, Ryan C. Maness, and
Jose M. Macias
In the Future…
• Cyber operations will play a supporting rather than decisive role in major theater wars.
Great powers will continue to invest in cyber capabilities but see diminishing returns on these
investments outside of intelligence and deception efforts once major conflict breaks out.
• War will still be a continuation of politics by other means and rely on the more tangible
effects of violence than on the elusive effects of compromising information networks.
During the transition to warfighting, military commanders will prefer the certainty of lethal
precision strikes against high-value targets to the uncertainty of generating effects in cyberspace.
• The merits of cyber operations continue to be their utility as a tool of political warfare
because they facilitate an engagement short of war that leverages covert action,
propaganda, and surveillance but in a manner that poses a fundamental threat to human
liberties. Cyber operations will remain a limited tool of coercion. Due to their uncertain
effects, military leaders will initiate fewer critical cyber operations against command and
control and military targets than currently anticipated. They will also face fewer restrictions on
waging information warfare to mobilize and shape discontent.
Introduction
How central are cyber operations to combined arms campaigns in the twenty-first century?
Between the spring of 2021 and winter of 2022, Russian military forces began to mass combat
troops along Ukraine’s eastern border. On February 24, 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine. It marked
the fourth time Russia used military force against a neighbor since the end of the Cold War and the
seventh time Russia used cyber operations as part of a larger campaign or independently as an
instrument of coercion against a neighboring state. 1

MUELLER, JENSEN, VALERIANO, MANESS, AND MACIAS | 1
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