“The keyboard is a weapon of war”: UK loads up offensive cyberwarfare capabilities
Britain's state-sponsored threat actors will take the fight to Russia in digital operations backed up by nuclear and conventional firepower.
The British government has announced the launch of a new arm of the military which will wage offensive cyber war.
Speaking in Glasgow today ahead of the publication of a new Strategic Defence Review, Sir Keir Starmer said the UK was moving to "war-fighting readiness" and will "accelerate innovation at a wartime pace" to make Britain "the fastest innovator in Nato".
In the Review, Labour also committed to building up to a dozen new nuclear attack submarines following a £15 billion investment in warheads and announced a £5 billion investment in laser beams and killer robots.
Last week, the government announced the establishment of a Cyber and Electromagnetic Command at the Ministry of Defence (MoD), which will implement a "Digital Targeting Web" to connect Armed Forces weapons systems and "allow battlefield decisions for targeting enemy threats to be made and executed faster".
This system is built on lessons learned from Ukraine, where warfighters achieved a "step-change in lethality early in the war" using tech that helped them find, target and attack Russian forces.
Fight them on the breaches
This is not the first time Britain has confirmed that it undertakes offensive cyber operations. In 2016, it said that UK forces had launched a digital blitzkrieg against Islamic State forces in Mosul. Since then, details of its online operations have emerged sporadically.
When it announced the new offensive operations, the MOD said that UK military networks have suffered than 90,000 ‘sub-threshold’ attacks in the last two years.
These will now be countered by the Cyber and Electromagnetic Command, which will lead both defensive cyber operations and coordinate offensive cyber capabilities with the National Cyber Force.
"The nature of warfare is changing," Defence Secretary John Healey MP said last week. "The keyboard is now a weapon of war and we are responding to that."
"By attracting the best digital talent, and establishing a nerve centre for our cyber capability, we will harness the latest innovations, properly fund Britain’s defences for the modern age and support the government’s Plan for Change," he added.
Nadir Izrael, Co-founder and CTO at Armis, told Machine: "This is a welcome step towards strengthening the UK's national defence. Modern warfare isn’t just on land, sea or air. It’s digital too. Cyberattacks are now used to sow division, target infrastructure and weaken nations from within.
"Right now, 71% of UK organisations believe Russia poses the most cybersecurity risk. As we face growing threats from these hostile states, we must make sure cyber defence is treated as critically as any physical force."
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