– Dr Daria Daniels Skodnik

Geopolitical Context

#002c4fIn relation to great powers’ politics and under escalating economic, political, and military competition security concerns have risen to an unprecedented level. The great powers’ technological advances and related strength elevated by wide-ranging modernisation of their military forces, enables further their global impact. Furthermore, the threat landscape is most likely to expand and accelerate depending on technological innovation. The use of new technologies will challenge nations to alter their defence posture and heighten their military forces competitiveness. In addition, great powers have made the cyber domain a highly contested space and a medium that reflects the hostile relationships among them.

The great power competition is forcefully unfolding in cyberspace, a domain of the global interconnected technologies. Cyber powers, i.e., the United States, China, Russia, Israel and the United Kingdom, and notable players like Iran and North Korea, all play a part. While China and Russia have very clearly powerful cyber capabilities, North Korea and Iran, and some non-state actors are penetrating deep in the cyberspace and are contesting it as well… more

4th Industrial Revolution

In the midst of highly complex strategic environment, the 4th Industrial Revolution is marking not only an unprecedented technological and scientific progress with overwhelmingly positive impact on society, but also borderless security shocks created by the ingrained ‘malware’ threatening with immeasurable consequences and disruptive effects on a global scale.

Specifically, new technologies hold an ominous promise to accelerate further existing enmities by foreign aggression and coercion using modern tools in new warfighting domains. The pace of change and disruption is accelerating across all five warfighting domains: land, air, sea, cyberspace and outer space. Particularly in the cyberspace, in which everything and everybody is intrinsically joined and instantaneously susceptible to multiple “butterfly effects”, a combination of geopolitics within the great powers’ competition and manifestation of unprecedented capacity of new technologies will be a driving force of future wars.

Multi-layered challenges of the 4th Industrial Revolution will inevitably, and in unprecedented ways, impact our security and consequently the military affairs… more

Artificial Intelligence

The remaining missing element for a perfect storm to be imagined we find in artificial intelligence (AI). Its militarized use increases the probability of “hyperwar”, a term coined by General John R. Allen, USMC (Ret.), alluding to the fact that unparalleled speed enabled by automated decisionmaking and concurrent use of autonomous weapons systems will fundamentally change warfare… more

Cyber security

The current security landscape, distinct from the past, is marked by sustained cyberwarfare launched in a “grey zone” of cyberspace, a zone between war and peace, where aggression and coercion persist just below the level that risks military confrontation. This on-going warfare can be labelled in multiple ways, e.g. Hybrid Warfare, Asymmetric Warfare, Digital Cold War with underlined East – West divide, Cyberwar, Codewar. However labelled, we can agree that is not quite a war and no death casualties have been reported to date. Until now, cybrattacks perpetrated either by states or by criminal groups and individuals have never risen to the level of acts of war despite disruptive waves across cyberspace. Nevertheless, cyberattacks recorded so far hold the promise of a dire future. Therefore, they need to be perceived as a wake-up call for institutional adaptation to secure and defend against them… more

Future of War