Читать книгу Russian Cyber Operations - Scott Jasper - Страница 28

Paul Cornish, at Chatham House, argues that cyber warfare could be “the archetypal illustration of ‘asymmetric warfare’—a struggle in which one opponent might be weak in conventional terms but is clever and agile, while the other is strong but complacent and inflexible.”⁸² His definition for cyber warfare encompasses “a conflict between states, but it could also involve non-state actors in various ways. . . . The target could be military, industrial or civilian.”⁸³ The Russian definition for cyber warfare is translated as “cyber attacks carried out by states, groups of states, or organized political groups, against cyber infrastructure, which are part of a military campaign,”⁸⁴ whereas the US government’s definition is “an armed conflict conducted in whole or part by cyber means. Military operations conducted to deny an opposing force the effective use of cyberspace systems and weapons in a conflict.”⁸⁵

Two distinctions exist between the Russian and US versions. The first is the originator, which for the Russians extends beyond the state apparatus to organized political groups, whereas the US definition infers the use of only the armed forces in military operations. The second is the target, which for the Russians is cyber infrastructure and for the United States is opposing force systems and weapons. This implies Russia intends to attack civilian cyber infrastructure in armed conflict, although in Russia the term cyber warfare is used primarily to signify US and allied activity.⁸⁶ Yet both pretenses, the originator and the targets, of the Russian version were seen in the interstate war with Georgia in 2008 (see map 2.2). During the Russian incursion into Georgia, organized political groups took down civilian infrastructure and defaced websites in conjunction with kinetic military operations. Therefore, the disruptions and manipulations could have qualified as part of armed conflict.