On the other hand, as the admiral highlighted Rob Bauerhead of NATO military commandthroughout the history of humanity technological advancement has always increased the ability to destroy, amplifying the speed and precision of offensive tools. Two other concepts closely related to the military and security field could be revolutionized: that of sovereignty and that of war. “The spread of highly sophisticated cyber attacks, combined with the use of technologies useful for influencing the flow of information accessible to the public, has expanded the gray area“he stressed Ahsan Gulrez, lieutenant general of the armed forces of Pakistan.
The concepts of sovereignty and war change
The war of the future could be driven by technological means, remote cyber attacks with the exploration of vulnerabilities in critical infrastructures of a geographically distant country. “This will make it difficult to maintain traditional concepts of territorial integrity and sovereignty.”, claims Gulrez. Sovereignty will no longer be limited to physical territory, but also the virtual one. As he instead noticed Kihara Minoru, Minister of Defense of Japankinetic and non-kinetic threats are increasingly profound interconnected and indistinguishable.
While nothing can be hidden on the battlefieldmilitary development and the links between state and non-state actors can instead be greatly strengthened opacity, also making it more difficult to identify the possible perpetrator of an attack. “The border between periods of peace and war contingencies is becoming more and more labile“. How should a cyberattack against a military or civilian infrastructure? It can be considered a act of war? Questions that we will presumably find ourselves forced to answer not so infrequently in the near future. For now, no answers have been found, given that no consensus has even been reached on what a war action deliberately conducted by a state entity in the cyber and virtual sphere could represent.
All this also has repercussions on geopolitical front. With these increased risks it is very difficult for a country to guarantee its security on its own. For this reason, according to Minoru, the tendency is to intensify cooperations and bilateral, trilateral or minilateral partnerships. Yet, it should not be thought that the war of the future will be fought only through drones or autonomous means. “War action will still be done mud and blood“, claims Bauer. In short, it will not be an exclusionary choice: the war will not be fought using robots or androids as happens in some science fiction works or dystopian, autonomous vehicles will be added to traditional ones. Technological warfare will add to conventional warfare. As someone noted, Ukraine has so far resisted the Russian invasion thanks to the combination between new technological means – such as artificial intelligence, sensors, drones used for logistical transport, commercial satellites – and conventional means.
The human control dilemma
War action therefore takes on new contours: it will be impossible for the enemy to hide and therefore greater speed will be needed. It is what Bauer defines “complete transparency of the battlefield”. Greater speed means displacement perpetual. According to several experts who spoke at the Shangri-La Dialogue, the information and communication will play an increasingly critical role. Be “seen” by its own citizens or by the international community during a war will be increasingly decisive for a leader. In this sense, the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky he managed to avoid a collapse in Ukraine’s morale and mistrust from the outside thanks to his constant appearances in net. So here’s what you need to protect your accessibility to the network and store your data in multiple places at the same time. Not only and not so much physical, but also in cloud as Ukraine did with the help of Microsoft.
