Geopolitical Cyber Risk: Cyber Operations in Modern Warfare

This analytical post examines how states employ cyber operations during armed conflict to support tactical objectives, gain and sustain strategic advantage, and weaken an opponent’s warfighting capacity, highlighting common targets such as government/military/intelligence networks, media and communications, and key economic sectors (energy, finance, manufacturing). It presents a scenario-based mapping of triggers, objectives, and actions for opponent, supporting, and neutral states and applies the framework to the Russia–Ukraine conflict, offering guidance to improve threat modeling, risk assessment, and forecasting.