An army of irregulars hacking at set-piece battle plans of West

Vladimir Putin, inspecting joint military drills between Russia and Belarus this month, takes long view of strategy, embracing non-military methods of war. Picture: AFP

The story the US spent millions designing a pen that could write in space while the Russians use a pencil offers a lesson for the kind of conflict Australia is facing. Irrespective of nuclear-powered submarines, the history of human conflict has been one of guerilla warfare where simple things applied with a corkscrew mind can kill you or save you.

In planning and preparing Australia’s national security strategy, one scenario must be considered — there may be no big battles on the high seas. Instead, our whole system, military and civilian, is a target along a continuum of possibilities.

In Three Dangerous Men, Russia, China, Iran and the Rise of Irregular Warfare, Seth G. Jones outlines how Moscow, Beijing and Tehran have targeted the US through irregular warfare. Jones explains cyber attacks, covert action, proxy conflicts, disinformation, espionage and economic coercion will be the tools reshaping international relations.

White House correspondent David E. Sanger argues given a choice between controlling submarine routes or deep-sea fibre-optic cables, he would go for the latter. Realistically it would be best to own both.

Canberra is having to confront this wicked challenge in the defence of the nation; knowing it must invest in expensive military hardware while realising this fancy kit can be penetrated by irregular warfare, without a shot being fired. While our minds think physical, our opponents are thinking moral and mental. A form of warfare aimed at internal disruption rather than destruction on the battlefield. Targets include our culture, education system, media, economy, rule of law, trade and alliances, infrastructure and access to resources.

The ransomware attack on the Colonial pipeline, one of the most critical pieces of energy infrastructure along the US eastern seaboard, is a good example. It was conducted by a bunch of hackers called DarkSide. Nothing to do with the Kremlin, of course. Remarkably, during their June summit in Geneva, Joe Biden handed Vladimir Putin a list of 16 sites he said were off-limits to hackers. Russia didn’t annex Crimea or begin carving out ports in Africa using fighter jets or conventional ground forces. Instead, it turned to the world’s second-oldest profession, disinformation and cyber attacks. Mercenaries from the private Wagner Group, deployed across Africa, the Middle East, Latin American and Eastern Europe, gave Putin plausible deniability. Iran uses Hezbollah, Hamas and drug traffickers, while the Chinese Communist Party deploys fishing vessels to carve out maritime territory.

According to information warfare expert Thomas Rid, the costliest cyber attack in history, NotPetya, is alleged to have been orchestrated by Russian military intelligence. What started as an attack on the Ukraine in May 2017 spread to 65 countries. Danish giant Moller-Maersk, which transports one in seven of the world’s shipping containers, lost an estimated $US300m. Before NotPetya, computer virus WannaCry from North Korea cost billions in damages after infecting 250,000 computers in 150 countries.

WannaCry and NotPetya were developed from stolen US National Security Agency encryption tools EternalBlue and DoublePulsar. And the controller of the Wagner Group, Yevgeny Prigozhin (aka Putin’s Chef), funds hacking and disinformation outfit the Internet Research Agency.

While we must prepare for conventional war, it is just as likely our adversaries continue applying a multi-generational campaign to erode our political will to resist. A year after the Battle of Leuctra in 371BC, Greek commander Epaminondas marched across the Peloponnesian peninsula but the Spartans refused to be engaged in the open. So in the middle of Sparta, Epaminondas founded two cities. In time, their people infiltrated and built influence over more than half of Sparta’s territory, controlling its trade routes. No battle was fought.

In 1999, two senior Chinese military officers, Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui, wrote Unrestricted Warfare, advocating use of non-military methods of war. This included disrupting the West’s trade networks, telecommunications, transportation, electricity grids and IT, as well as manipulating media and financial systems.

Ultimately, our defence may depend on the preparedness to adapt without being trapped within our own prism.

We are not up against regimes who think like we do. Instead it’s time to open our own continuum of possibilities in a whole-of-system national security strategy.

Jason Thomas teaches risk management at Swinburne University of Technology and is director of Frontier Assessments