Cyber: A Global Weapon

An examination of state-owned cyber operations conducted by North Korea, Russia and China.

- Angus Batey

Geography traditionally un-derpins defence analysis, and even in today's era of global digital networks, there are distinct advantages to this kind of approach. Militaries are making increasingly detailed use of geospatial-intelligence toolsets to discover the so-called ‘unknown unknowns’ - those pieces of information that elude traditional intelligence-gathering approaches because the entity discovering them does not know that they exist, so does not set out deliberately to look for them. By layering disparate information sets onto map-based interfaces, hitherto unknown interrelationships between people, physical locations, and data generated by them can prove invaluable in understanding an operating environment or obtaining insight into an adversary's order of battle.

But with cyber warfare capabilities, a geographic approach may not always prove quite so helpful. Certainly, there is much value to be obtained from understanding the tools, techniques and tactics used by a nation state, and that state will have physical cyber infrastructure that can be mapped in the real world. There will also often be clues that can be obtained by studying the code that forms the basis of digital weapons, that can help to attribute an attack to a particular entity or physical location.

But cyber warfare tools exist in the unmappable digital realm, their impacts will usually be felt regardless of physical geography, and their second- and third-order effects can all too easily spill over beyond an intended target and have unexpected consequences. So while an assessment of the cyber warfare capabilities available to Asia-Pacific nations will of necessity have to look at the three countries in Asia with the most extensive, well-resourced, staffed and skilled cyber cadres - China, Russia and North Korea - the impacts those cyber divisions are having are global.