Abstract

This talk presents and examines cybercraft. Cybercraft is used to understand great power conflicts from a strategic level that includes the cyber domain, and operations within the cyber domain. Under this lens, the details of individual cyber operations are less interesting than how they are collectively advancing towards strategic objectives. This expands the understanding of cyber conflict beyond the constraints of CyberWar.

Existing discussions of CyberWar are severely hampered by focusing on cyber battles at the tactical or operational level, rather than the strategic level of war. Strategic cyber warfare is based on principles that have been around for a long time (e.g. Fabian strategy), but only recently formalised as doctrine in the West. None of this is new, but cyber operations can now achieve results typically reserved for kinetic warfare.

What makes this significant is the upheaval of the cyber dimension: it collapses information spheres, geolocation, and gatekeepered communities. The main impact of this is flattening the resource requirement differences between a state, a corporation and a person. Small groups of people can take actions that are as effective or more effective than states.