Inside Geneva: Cyber Wars

The war in Ukraine is almost a year old. In this episode of the Inside Geneva podcast, we ask our guests what role cyberwarfare has played.

“Cyberspace has been central to the war in Ukraine. It has been used to shape the battle space. Cyberattacks were used to lay the ground for the invasion,” says Christian-Marc Lifländer, head of NATO Cyber Defence Section.

The influence of cyberwarfare has been stealthy. “Everybody was expecting when cyber was used in warfare that there would be some cataclysmic, major humanitarian impact of the use of cyber,” explains Charlotte Lindsey of the CyberPeace Institute. 

But it’s also worrying. “In the case of Russia, what we have seen are very specific efforts to make sure that some of the key parts of the Ukrainian internet will be connected to the Russian internet, that then provides them with new ways of ownership, control and monitoring,” saysMax Smeets of the Center for Security Studies at ETH Zurich.

The influence of cyberwarfare is far reaching, says Charlotte Lindsey. “What has come out clearly from the conflict in Ukraine and Russia is just the scale and extent of cyber operations which are happening way beyond the boundaries of those countries and are affecting many others.”

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