"THE LACK OF INFLUENCE OF HACKING IN WARFARE."

“Many speculated as the cyberspace expanded to new heights, width or in terms of electrons, of the possibility of mass infrastructure collapsing or these types of cataclysmic type of events associated with infrastructure being hacked…and yet nothing of that sort has happened. In fact the Ukraine war still talked about in terms of morale, number of troops and trenches despite the expansion of drone warfare and usage of AI. Conscription is still affirmed by the Ukrainian army despite being the few leaders on drone warfare and the Ukraine war starting with the hacking of satellite Viasat at the day of the invasion. One wonders why this to be the case despite hacking being not only relatively cheap which involves some computers but also the barriers to entry has decreased after AI has been introduced. So the question is that why isn’t there such castrophic events happening despite adversaries viewing hacking as very easy and cheap to do that inflicts massive disproportional damage to various infrastructure.”

“State actors still use hacking against adversaries constantly however these types of hacking is relatively low level and aren’t too significant and the large scale ones don’t happen frequently despite various state actors capable of using it.”

“Why hacking hasn’t led to the castrophic events that many people thought was likely to happen this discussion can be more understood in terms of understanding hacking as part of eacalation game. When one sides escalates as part of an offensive warfare objective the other side descalates as part of its retaliation i.e. deterrence. The other sides escalates and so and so forth. Usually these escalation games end with one side being coerced by the escalation, two sides reach a stationary point of both sides lose out in terms of ‘payout’. There are several constraints in this escalation game which one of the most obvious constraint being capacity. The capacity to escalate. But more specifically different levels of escalating. What is meant by this? If a nuclear armed country faces a border clash, it probably would respond with either a proportional response (border clash), escalates further (attacks on military bases) or it does nothing in response. A country such as this doesn’t usually immediately attack with a nuclear response. But with a more calculated response as it prefers a weaker response has more benefits than costs than a nuclear strike when taking consideration the possible political consequences of such escalation. In military affairs, different weapons usage represent different forms of escalation and the targeting of different assets represent different forms of escalation but even having different methods which vary in terms of level of escalation in the context of military, is quite costly.”

“The comparison is made between actual military fights and hacking is made in terms of escalation where the capacity of escalating in hacking especially when it comes to different levels of escalation is neither expensive or ‘gated’ since hacking doesn’t involve high amounts of capital being used and the barriers to entry is much lower compared to the manufacturing of military equipment and there is a vaerity of assets (that vary more in value) which is connected to the internet and not only that, the economies, socialising and the collection of tax revenue could be disrupted by hacking. Meaning state actors are very much capable of destroying each other’s economies, disrupt collection of tax revenue and social fabric if they engaged in a perpetual escalation game. But since the cost is too much for them to engage in a perpertual escalation game of hacking since even smaller state actors are able to inflict such enormous disproportional damage, hacking remains either ‘low level’ and if it targeted at high value targets its very specific.”