As the war in Ukraine continues, battles are being fought on all fronts. It’s interesting to see an actual new age war being played out. Obviously, Russia is on the losing side of this battle. I did a post the other day about the different attacks being played out and some of the developments I have noticed.
In this post, I am going to dive much deeper into the topic. I want to provide you with information as to what is actually taking place as we are seeing a new world being unfold in front of our eyes.
The two parts I will be focused on are cyberattacks and the information war being played out. Before I continue any further, I want to make it clear that I am not for war, I don’t support wars. At the same time conflict is an inevitable part of our human nature.
Information Warfare
Information warfare is nothing new, for hundreds of years, there were “messengers” riding horses back and forth between empires sending messages of deception to cause conflict.
Whenever wars broke out and the country was invaded, usually they would burn the libraries to ensure that history is forgotten and they would cleanse the civilization to bring forth a new one.
If we look at today it’s hard to really tackle the western media which is a well-oiled machine that can pump out content to fit whatever narrative at the moment. To put things into perspective, the media outlets are not actually independent, they are all owned by several companies.
For example, look at Covid-19, it seems as if Covid-19 has jumped off the airwaves and is now being replaced by the war in Ukraine. It’s really amazing to witness, they can shift the narrative at any moment.
A major portion of big tech companies that dominates the west could be seen as media companies, Facebook, Google, Twitter, Snapchat, etc. They make most of their money from advertising and our attention is basically what they are all fighting for.
If you can get a large number of people to believe in something even if it’s false it will become true. Given the velocity of information, it’s hard to track everything. Thus, certain ideologies or information can slip by our conscious and wreak havoc in our subconscious minds.
Russia in this case is not going to win the media war being pushed by the west, it’s too equipped with the right systems in place to flood the minds of the populace with disinformation. Here are some developments which are now taking place:
Facebook bans Russian state media from running adverts and monetizing
Google blocks RT and other Russian channels from earning ad dollars
Twitter is pausing ads and recommendations in Ukraine and Russia
Basically, it’s not looking good for Russia at all, at the same time Russia has their own PR machine as well and if Russia did have the power probably, they would’ve done the same thing.
It’s a war on information and deception, Vladimir Putin who is the president of Russia was a former KGB who was the main security unit for the Soviet Union. He knows how to deceive the media as well; this whole operation too caught the world off guard.
There were lots of debates around Russia and whether they were planning to invade Europe. Everyone believed it was never going to happen due to Russian media and western outlets who were deceived.
Another thing that I noticed being developed is the narrative of Russia in the western world. All the news outlets are under spewing the same information, anti-Russia and yet again, I am going to reiterate if Russia had the power and reach of the west, they would’ve done the same thing it’s all a game of war.
Misinformation and bias in reporting were expected from “liberal” media outlets of the west but they have even taken it to a new level.
War is the art of deception and it is now more evident than ever. A large part of the believes that Russia is the villain and they are the heroes. Russia and Mr. Putin are no angels or Mother Theresa but at the same time, the hypocrisy is cringeworthy.
It’s as if all of America’s past is now forgotten and Russia is the evil man of the world. The winners are the man at the top who started this, the losers will be the poorer class or working class as they don’t have the resources to tackle inflation or other economic issues a crisis might impose.
Cyber Attacks
Aside from the informational war, a cyber war is also taking place. Joe Biden, America’s President, stated that he has been presented with options to launch a massive cyberattack against Russia.
Such as move would be counterintuitive as I am sure Russia was preparing for such offense from America. They probably have some means on how to launch a counterattack.
There have even been allegations that the Russians meddled in the 2016 elections to help Donald Trump win the election. They have the capability to do it as Russian hackers are world known to be ruthless in their activities.
Despite that, over the last few weeks, Russian news websites have been under heavy attack from hackers.
There have been reports that Russian TVs have been hacked to play Ukrainian songs. There have been assumptions that Russia has done a lot of damage already, as there have been reports that Russian hackers have infiltrated important systems within Ukraine.
If you want to visualize the ongoing cyberwar worldwide you can visit Kaspersky cyber map, to visualize the ongoing network attacks being played out.
Notice that Russia is the number one most attacked country in the world.
Ukraine is at 16th.
America is at 4th.
Amazingly I was expecting Ukraine to be within the top 10 but the data shows otherwise. There haven’t been any major cyber-attacks yet targeting any key infrastructure such as power lines, banks, hospitals, and other vulnerable entities. If that becomes a case, it will escalate the issue on both sides of the war asymmetrically.
Observing these two sides of the war that is not obvious to the average viewer is significant as it can help to give a glimpse into the different battle areas where the war is taking place. The goal is to don’t trust any information, think for yourself, verify, trust and verify again.
