IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - September 2023 - 47

Nonstate actors. The Russia-Ukraine conflict also
satisfies the criteria of Total War in terms of the involvement
of nonstate actors. While private companies are
frequently the manufacturers of equipment and supplies,
they are not typically directly involved in offensive
or defensive action. This is not the case in the
Ukrainian war. For instance, Foxblade malware was
initially identified by Microsoft, an American multinational
corporation. From its initial detection of Foxblade
before the invasion, it remained in " constant and
close coordination " supporting the Ukrainian government
[67]. Along with other companies within Western
societies, Microsoft Corporation additionally suspends
operations in Russia and stated that it:
" will not display any state-sponsored RT and Sputnik
content. We are removing RT news apps from
our Windows app store and further de-ranking
these sites' search results on Bing ... Finally, we
are banning all advertisements from RT and Sputnik
across our ad network ... "
A Microsoft report provided formal documentation
of over 200 cyberattacks since the outset of the
conflict, noting that " More than 40% of the destructive
attacks were aimed at organizations in critical
infrastructure sectors that could have negative second-order
effects on the government, military, economy,
and people... we estimate there have been at
least eight destructive malware families deployed on
Ukrainian networks, including one tailored to [ICS] "
[68, p. 4]. Crucially, this report also notes that kinetic
attacks and cyberattacks are frequently concentrated
in the same regions.
Communication infrastructure is the backbone of
warfare. In addition to cyberattacks, Russian forces
targeted
Ukraine's communication infrastructure
with kinetic attacks [69]. During the early stages of
the conflict, U.S. entrepreneur Elon Musk offered
his ready-made Starlink communication network to
Ukraine. However, despite the donation of nearly
20,000 units, network outages and Musk's reluctance
to provide continued support, created grave
concerns about its
reliability [70]. Subsequently,
details emerged that Musk had denied Ukrainians
the ability to use the network for a maritime drone
strike in Crimea, with one official remarking that he
was " openly against U.S. foreign policy, " [71]. Musk
went on to present a peace deal on Twitter (later
rebranded as X) that was widely seen as favoring
Russian interests [72]. The fact that the mercurial
September 2023
Musk could interfere with the defense of a country
presents a clear illustration of the influence of the
private sector on warfare.
Beyond corporations, novel nonstate actors
also entered the Ukraine conflict, most notably,
the hacktivist collective Anonymous. Shortly after
the invasion on 24 February, Anonymous tweeted:
" The Anonymous collective is officially in cyber
war against the Russian government. #Anonymous
#Ukraine. " The group claimed responsibility
DDoS attacks, hacking Russian state TV by replacing
the normal content with patriotic Ukrainian
symbols and music [69] as well as censored news,
and leaked 820 GB of data related to Russian media
censorship activities [70]. Similarly, the group also
attacked Belarussian cyber targets for their involvement
in the conflict [71]. Lesser-known hacktivist
collectives such as AgainstTheWest, Squad 303,
Cyber Partisan, and Network Battalion 65 have also
conducted extensive cyberoperations, posting information
and source codes to support Ukraine [72].
Security language of the new Total War
Total War appears to be a distinct approach to
warfare. However, while Total War might be a useful
analytic category, this does not necessitate that state
actors perceive a conflict in these terms. Instead, the
security language used by nations must be directly
assessed to understand how they formulate a conflict
[9],[73]. In that language draws our attention to features
of an object or environment, it can bias what
information we attend to and what we ignore [5], [7].
Here, I argue that numerous national representatives
have made statements that invoke the notion of Total
War, thereby adopting a myopic focus.
Perhaps, the clearest example is the notion of " unrestricted
warfare " [74] used in China. Qiao and Xiangsui
[74, p. 12, 222] define unrestricted warfare as:
" [w]arfare which transcends all boundaries and
limits ... the boundaries between soldiers and
non-soldiers [are] broken down, and the chasm
between warfare and non-warfare nearly filled up,
globalization has made all the tough problems
interconnected and interlocking, and we must
find a key for that... suited to all the levels and
dimensions, from war policy, strategy, and operational
techniques to tactics; and it must also fit the
hands of individuals, from politicians and generals
to the common soldiers " (italics added).
47
for
IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - September 2023

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - September 2023
