Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
Hello and welcome back to a new episode and a new year with me, Saul David, and Patrick Bishop. Well, it got off to a dark start with Vladimir Putin's traditional New Year address to the Russian people. Putin's words gave little hope that Russian strategy is likely to change anytime soon. Instead, he doubled down on the war rhetoric, telling Russians that the conflict in Ukraine was an existential struggle forced on them by Western aggression and one which they had no choice but to win.
The speech came as Russia suffered yet more casualties on the battlefield in a series of successful Ukrainian strikes that left many dead. Well, body counts are just one element in how this war is playing out. And today we'll be hearing in detail about another fascinating facet of what's going on. That's the huge struggle being fought out in cyberspace.
And to tell us all about it is one of Britain's greatest experts, David Alexander, who's an academic, but who's also worked at a very senior level on the development of both national cyber policy and operational capability, both for the British government and for the British Ministry of Defence. But first, what do you think about that speech, Saul? Well, it was a sort of combination of the usual same old, same old, but also quite chilling when we consider it in the round. But let's talk a little bit about the detail here.
He talked in it about difficult but necessary decisions. Obviously, he means going to war, about the need to restore full Russian sovereignty, which is a very clear indication that Ukraine comes within Russian sovereignty. And that's not just a bit of Ukraine. That's all Ukraine. He drew a clear line between courage and heroism on the one side and betrayal and cowardice on the other. And this, of course, is a threat to anyone who undermines the war effort.
Events, he said, have become pivotal, even fateful. They have become the frontier where we lay the foundation for our common future, our future independence. So this is really a hinge moment in history. There's an existential threat to Russia and that the whole country needs to be united in its determination to defeat Ukraine. And it's all the fall to the West, of course, who hypocritically asserts
assured us, i.e. the Russians, of their peaceful intentions, but in fact were encouraging the neo-Nazis, the Ukrainians, of course, in every possible way, says the West lied to us about peace while preparing for aggression. You know, it's a big kind of rallying call as well, isn't it? He's sort of saying, you know, he's talking about unity and
brotherhood, all these kind of old Soviet tropes, really. And it's all delivered in this very schmaltzy kind of tone, you know, full of references to the kind of, you know, great Russian spirit and how they all help each other out in times of strife. So it's a real attempt at unity. And he also has some encouraging stuff to say about sanctions, doesn't he? Yeah. And he also talks about how the Western attempt to destroy Russia, or at least force a collapse, economic collapse,
through sanctions hadn't been that effective. He said that it did not happen because we have been strengthening our sovereignty in a vitally important field in the economy. Well, that's severely open to doubt, I suspect. I mean, we can see that just about every economic metric the Russian economy is contracting. He may have a point in the sense that it's probably not contracting as quickly as some in the West would have hoped.
But nevertheless, huge damage is being done. He went on to say in the speech, this should be an inspiration for other states in their quest for a just, multipolar world order. And that's quite clearly a rallying call to China. And we'll say a little bit more about China in a moment. But, you know, the overall point here, Russia, a moral example to the world.
So all in all, really, it's all a total inversion of the truth. And I was amused to see that, you know, everything about it is phony, including the visuals, you know. So he's surrounded by these soldiers, both men and women, and someone's done some internet sleuthing.
and discovered that they actually pop up in loads of propaganda videos involving Putin. And the suspicion is that they're actually members of his security details and are not members of the armed forces at all who may or may not be trusted to actually be that close to the leader.
But the crucial takeaway, I think, for all of us is that Putin's taking everything on victory, not partial victory, not returning to the status quo ante of February 24th, 2022, but on Russia winning outright. Now, that strikes me as a very risky strategy, wouldn't you say?
Yeah, I absolutely would. I mean, we get the sense that the war is heading the wrong direction for Putin. And therefore, we might have imagined there would be a little indication in this speech that, you know, peace talks might be in the offing if he gets what he wants. But really, the round of this speech is a clear indication that Ukraine, the whole of Ukraine is part of Russia, not just the bits that
They've now claimed they've sort of absorbed into Russia, even though they don't control all of them, those four provinces in eastern Ukraine. So, yeah, it is a little bit chilling. So Ukrainian missile strikes couldn't really have come at a worse time. This was just one minute into the new year when Ukraine
HIMARS missiles slammed into a technical school used as accommodation for soldiers in the industrial city of Makivka, which is in the Donetsk. It's been under occupation since 2014. Now, the Russians admit that it killed 89 people. It's very unusual for them to actually say anything about casualties. And this is the highest number ever.
they've acknowledged. Ukrainians, of course, say it's much higher, 400 dead and 300 wounded. And a lot of them seem to be men called up in the partial mobilization in September. And these are not
As we've seen before, people from the outlying regions, at least some of them, are from Samara, which is in Russia proper, on the Volga. And we've actually seen images of gatherings there to mourn the dead. Now, the Russians have also done something unusual, which is admitting people.
that it was caused by lax procedures, someone using unauthorized their mobile phone when they weren't meant to, which plays into what you were saying last week about this iPad app the Ukrainians are using. Yeah, I mean, we don't know absolutely that that's what they did here, but clearly they are gathering intelligence and this...
lax operational security, as you pointed out, Patrick, has allowed them to identify that there are an awful lot of people operating out of that location. And it may be even worse than that, actually, because there are strong indications, both from Russian and Ukrainian sources, that the reason the death toll was so appalling, and 400, if that's accurate, is an
absolutely horrific number of people to be killed in one series of Ukrainian missile strikes. If we compare it to what's going on in Ukraine, you know, you get one dead here and a few dead there, bad as that is, but 400. It's appalling. So how could that have happened? Well, there are indications that either the barracks itself had ammunition in it
or it was right next to an ammunition dump. And it's just the sort of criminal stupidity that the ultra-nationalist Russian mill bloggers are constantly going on about. And there's a swift move to say that the guilty will be brought to justice by the Russians, but that's pretty much admitting that there was a problem in the first place. So how long is it before Putin gets the blame? It's all very well blaming it on his military commanders, but he is the boss.
So that brings us to consideration of how things are going to play out in 2023. Now, in all of this, as always, Saul, I'm the optimist and you're the pessimist. So I'll just set out a little, a few thoughts, if you like, on what may happen. Now, it seems to me that since that speech, Putin really has got no choice but to attack. That's the only way he's going to get back this, you know, the territory that they say is theirs. So all this talk about
a big spring offensive that we were hearing a few weeks back. We at the time thought it might be a classic case of maskirovka, you know, disguise, deception. But, you know, I'm beginning to think that maybe it is for real. And if that is the case, then it provides Ukraine with a great opportunity. I'm thinking actually of what happened on the Western Front in 1918. And I have to admit, I owe this insight to my daughter, Anna, who's currently revising for history GCSE
We were talking about this and she actually drew my attention or reminded me of what happened there in the Ludendorff offensive launched in March 1918 when the Germans were hoping to finish off the job before the Americans actually came into the war properly. And they did extremely well. They got to within 120 kilometers of Paris. They were using new tactics, stormtroopers rather than the big mass attacks supported by artillery.
But they overstretched themselves and the Allies quickly recovered, launched the Hundred Days Offensive that basically finished the war off. I mean, it really was brought about by a collapse at home where people had no real idea that how badly the war was going. And then led by the mutinies of the sailors in Wilhelmshaven and Kiel that precipitated the internal collapse of
Of course, the problem with that is that there's no real, in Russia, there's no real organized opposition as there was in Germany then. Okay, now you're going to give me the pessimistic view now. So how do you think it's going to go?
No, I like that potential scenario very much. Maybe more wishful thinking than anything else, Patrick. I think you're right in one sense. He is boxing himself into a corner. I mean, when you when you come out with a speech like this and say that, you know, there's a there's an existential battle going on and Ukraine is basically part of Russia. Where do you go to win a victory? You've got to attack. But I think.
I simply don't believe that they are in a position to do so. And that if they do, the Ukrainians will be licking their lips. So I agree with you up to a point. It's just that I'm not convinced that the Russian army either has the capability. I'm not
going to say stupidity because it's shown incredible sort of ineptitude since the start of this campaign. But if it does do that, it is going to be defeated on the battlefield. Now, the broader question is whether it's going to lead to the removal of Putin. We would love to see that, of course, but there is still no real indication, although the war clearly isn't
popular in Russia, that there is enough of an organized opposition or even enough people in the sort of inner circle prepared to risk their lives by toppling him. I mean, we talked before about Hitler and how difficult it was to get rid of him, although there were various plots. And you can imagine it's going to be a similar scenario. So I think it's going to be more attritional struggle personally into 2023. And that actually, if anyone's taking the initiative, it's probably going to be the Ukrainians.
Yeah. On that point about generals making a move, I think you're right. It's not going to be the generals, but it could be people inside the real security kings in the setup, which of course is the FSB.
And your reference to the generals' plot against Hitler, they were plotting against Hitler before the war even began. So it really did take the imminent collapse of the whole military effort for it to become so pressing that they were prepared to really stick their necks out, literally, because they ended up being strung up by them when the plot failed. But I do think there comes a point where...
When it's just, you know, as always, it's a question of the survival of the plotters. They have to make an existential decision for themselves about whether they stick with a kind of leader who's losing or risk everything in a coup attempt. You know, I am a believer, just purely instinctively, that something big could happen that would completely change society.
The situation now China, of course, is always, you know, a huge kind of question mark over what they do next. Do they actually have the wherewithal, the power, the influence to tip things one way or another? There's been an interesting development there, hasn't there, Saul?
Yeah, I mean, rather bizarre. No face-to-face meeting, but a so-called video summit between President Xi of China and Putin. And Putin seems to have done most of the talking, which I think is quite telling. He said that he hoped the Chinese leader would make a state visit to Russia to demonstrate, and this is a quote, to the whole world the strength of Russian-Chinese ties on key issues in the face of unprecedented pressure and provocations from the West. Now, that's
his line, but the Chinese response was much cooler. The official Chinese statement on the summit made no mention of a state visit. And instead, if anything, highlighted the differences in their approach to the alliance from the Russians' approach. It said that Beijing's position on the war in Ukraine would remain objective and fair. And you can read between those lines, Patrick, and imagine that really they're staying, they're continuing their neutral stance. And all of this is important because we've had people suggesting that it's
you know, the real threat in 2023 is if they come in and support Russia militarily. Well, watch this space. Okay, that's enough from us. Next, we're going to hear about a hidden but vital aspect of the conflict, and that's the cyber war. Now, this really is a Russia versus the West struggle. As David Alexander, who's one of Britain's greatest authorities on the subject, told us very eloquently when we spoke to him.
David, welcome to the podcast. Before we talk about the war in Ukraine, can we just get a little bit of a sense of what cyber warfare is and how it differs from something that's probably a bit more familiar to most of the listeners and that cyber espionage?
Yes, certainly. Cyber espionage is the covert and normally unobtrusive collection of information and intelligence through computer networks. So it's closely related to SIGINT, and that's why it's practiced by the same people that do SIGINT, such as GCHQ and the NSA.
and the other organizations throughout NATO. Cyber warfare is the offensive part of the process whereby you used computers to actively reach out and disrupt the activities of your enemy. Now, obviously,
We would consider that to be something you would do to disrupt the military. As far as some nations, including Russia, are concerned, that includes targeting civilian assets, parts of what we call the critical national infrastructure, such as power, water, communications, and things like that, which they try and justify by saying it has a military use, but under pretty much any legal definition that the reasonable world would not be considered acceptable targets.
Okay, so let's talk a little bit about rules of conduct. And I think most of us can imagine that Russia are pretty much ignoring these rules. But are there any rules and who is abiding by them? There are rules. There is, in the same way that you have rules such as the Geneva Conventions and the Hague Convention and the San Remo Manual on International Law applicable at sea, there is a manual called the Tallinn Manual, which covers rules
the International Rules of War for Cyber Operations. And these were written after the 2007 attack on Estonia by Russia, where they effectively turned off their internet network connectivity for four or five days. And it's called the Tallinn Manual because it's named after the capital of Estonia, where a lot of the work was done and based. And in fact, where NATO now has its cyber center operations. So that's where the name comes from.
And this book details the things that under international law that military and legal experts have written that say, this is how you determine what would constitute USAD Bello, what would constitute an act of war, what would be a lawful approach. And also it covers the aspect of attribution, because of course, a cyber attack is...
Now, you haven't got a battle end sign. You're not wearing a uniform. You haven't got roundels that sit on an aeroplane of a recognisable design. How do you tell where an attack's come from? And that in itself is an important issue, which gets very complex when you're dealing with just electrons travelling down the wire.
Is there a NATO red line, David, on what constitutes an attack on one of its members that would trigger a NATO response? Yes, NATO has formally included cyber in its Article 5 descriptions.
so that there are specific acts that we would consider to be a cyber act of war on which we could then respond either with no cyber or by parking our tanks on their lawn. And in fact, back in April last year, Joe Biden gave a list of 16 targets to the Russians that he said, as far as we were concerned, these are some parts of the critical national infrastructure. They are unacceptable targets to attack. And if you do so, we reserve the right to respond in kind.
So we made a very clear red line in front of Putin about where we think the red line stands according to international law. Although, as we've seen, the Russians appear to pay scant regard to that.
What were those targets? Can you give us some idea of what we're talking about there? They would include things like electrical power systems, so generation, distribution. They would include the water supply, gas. So this is inside the NATO? Yeah, inside NATO. Petrol and oil systems, telecommunications, those kinds of things. So the things that we need to keep the lights on and keep civilization going.
there's a well-known phrase that any civilized society is only three hot meals from revolution. And it's designed to make sure we don't get to that point. And in fact, Estonia nearly reached that point because literally when people ran out of cash, they had no way to pay for anything and people were starting to go hungry and that's caused considerable unrest. So it's been proven that cyber warfare can actually have a major effect on a nation state if used properly.
David, we had defence analyst Robert Fox on the podcast a few weeks ago without giving us much detail, but claiming that NATO was already assisting Ukraine in its cyber capability before the Russian invasion. Can you tell us a little bit about that? Certainly. It's no secret that Russia has been launching cyber attacks on Ukraine since about 2013.
And these have especially ramped up. The first ones occurred during the Maidan revolution, and they've been going on ever since the 2014 invasion of Luhansk and Donetsk. And the kind of help that we've been giving the Ukrainians in response, and I should say that Ukraine is a major IT nation. They do a lot of work in IT. They're very IT savvy.
they have their own cyber capability, both defensive and offensive. What we have done, it's been openly declared that both the US and the UK and other parts of NATO have been helping to not only train the Ukrainians in how to detect and respond to cyber attacks, but also helping them with information that we've got on how the Russians are working. So
We've seen unprecedented levels of openness. So information that we've seen in the public domain, we've actually had public pronouncements from the Five Eyes organizations, which are pretty rare. We've also seen public reports that the U.S. Cyber Command and also the U.K.,
have been providing training and information to the Ukrainians. So there's a great deal of work going on behind the background, both to train and enable their people, provide them with tools and technology, but also provide them with information to help them attack the Russians. And I think it's going very well because certainly before the war started, Russia was regarded as one of the world's top three cyber-capable nations.
And I was expecting to see a lot more disruption and damage done to Ukraine than has actually happened. I've been very pleasantly surprised to see that they haven't suffered. And when they have suffered, they've been able to recover very quickly. And that is strong evidence of the fact that they've had a lot of help and they've learned in the same way that they've learned fast on the battlefield, they've learned fast in cyber as well.
What sort of damage is a cyber attack capable of doing in a military situation? For a start, if you can turn off the electrical system, you can disrupt a lot of the capability for air defence. You can have an effect on both the communications. Any modern army now is totally dependent upon its data networks to conduct war. I was actually in the room at a conference when a US four-star general said, I cannot go to war without my networks.
And the C4 I-Star, as it's called, relies on data communications right down to the cockpit, down to the terminal in the armoured fighting vehicle. If you can disrupt those, then you can have a major adverse effect on the battlefield. And at the same time, if you can turn off power supplies, you can disrupt the factories that are actually producing new munitions and conducting repairs. You can disrupt transport logistics. Now, if you have a railway system that's dependent on overhead...
no power lines. If you can turn the power off, you can stop the trains moving. You stop the supplies and the troops moving. So there's all sorts of things you can do. And of course, it has an effect on civilian morale as well, which is really what the Russians are trying to do at the moment. They're trying to destroy the will of the Ukrainian people to fight a war. But I don't know what your opinion is, but I think of the Blitz spirit. I think the more that you do this, the stronger the result gets to overcome the person who's attacking you.
Well, that was very thought-provoking stuff. Do join us after the break to hear what else David told us.
Let's talk a bit about some of the specifics of what Russia has actually attempted, or we think they've attempted in a cyber sense since the beginning of the war. Can you tell us a bit about that? Yes. We know that there was a lot of work done beforehand to prepare for this invasion, and they have form. If you look back to the invasion of Georgia in 2008, cyber attacks started three weeks beforehand. We also know the Ukrainian Internal Cyber Security Organization,
has found and disrupted at least what we call bot farms for mobile phones and internet connections.
More than 10,000 SIM cards and a lot of hardware has been confiscated that was in place inside Ukraine to help spread disinformation over Ukrainian mobile telephone networks. Now, that takes a lot of time and effort to set up in advance. So that was certainly done by the FSB and other such organizations in advance. There was also prepositioning of code in
in things like the energy system to try and disrupt energy supplies. But again, the Ukrainians were watching for that. They were ready for it. We knew this war was coming. In spite of the denies, people in the cyber world could see that this was coming and a lot of work was done to harden the systems. And also we saw some attacks that happened on SATCOMs,
There was an attack that temporarily disabled satellite communications, not just in Ukraine, but also in parts of Western Europe. And again, that's the problem with cyber attack. How do you target it precisely and not have any unintended consequences, any collateral?
If you look at the old Stuxnet attack, that was designed just to attack one plant in Iran, but it spread around the world within days. And that's a major problem. How do you stop that kind of thing happening? And that's been one of the things that has, A, limited the kind of attacks that Russia has done because it is nervous of causing disruption in places like the US and crossing the red line that we talked about earlier, but also about would it attack their own systems as well? Would they effectively score an own goal?
Can we move on to the information aspect of cyber warfare? This is something the Russians have invested hugely in with the bot farms and all the rest of it. Do you actually credit it with having any real effect? I often wonder whether the amount of energy and resources they put into it actually justify the outcomes.
I don't think that they have on this occasion had any real effect. Um, but in part that's because the West has changed its, uh, its approach. It's changed its philosophy in how we deal with this. I mean, the Russians have always been considered to be absolute experts in the field of what they call mass Karovka, no misdirection. Um,
the use of this kind of propaganda. However, we've seen the West be a lot more open about what we can see, what we know, what the reality is, almost sometimes in advance of the Russian pronouncements coming out. Only last week,
Jeremy Fleming, the head of GCHQ, said that there has been, what was his quote? There's been a sea change in the way that we conduct these kind of operations. And we are releasing information. And in part, that's because we now have access to much higher resolution satellite imagery, social media. People are posting stuff from the front line and from the cities online.
You can see these kinds of things happening and it's possible to geolocate and confirm that these locations actually exist and it's not fake.
It's much, much harder in the modern world, especially in light of this new approach for Russians to succeed. So I think the fact that the world is much more aware of what they're trying to do and we're spending a lot more time trying to counter it means that, as Patrick says, I think a lot of the effort has been wasted and actually has just made the Russians look pretty stupid. In fact, the Belarusians in the very early days of the war were actually publishing video that purported to show Ukrainian troops
waving white flags and surrendering. They reported that the Ukrainian leadership had fled the country. Stuff that was obviously written to fit in with the Russian battle plan.
but which, of course, never actually happened. They very rapidly stopped doing it because all they did was make themselves look pretty stupid. A couple of fascinating sidelines to the cyber warfare have been, one, the number of volunteer hackers who've been assisting the Ukrainians. So I'd be interested in your take on whether that's made much difference. And the other thing is the ability or at least the opportunity for cyber criminals and other nation states to take advantage of this. So can you tell us a little bit about both those aspects?
Yes, certainly. As with all these things, you have a frontline nation state capability, primarily based usually in the military to conduct offensive cyber warfare. And those people, of course, have extensive training. They have fantastic tools and a lot of capability that's backed up by the nation state. And those are normally based in the military because a lot of countries now have laws that mean it is illegal for civilians to conduct cyber
offensive operations. That would be hacking. If I were to do that, I'd be breaking our Computer Misuse Act. However, that doesn't mean that there aren't people who we generally refer to as hacktivists who will attempt to do this kind of thing out of patriotic fervor, shall we say. Some are better than others. There are organizations such as Anonymous who have devoted considerable time and effort, and they do have some people with real talent. And they have...
some success in disrupting Russian cyber. They've even managed to do things like hack TV stations and get messages onto air, albeit temporarily, talking about the real state of the war. Also, as an amusing aside, they managed to get the electric car charging points in Russia to display, how should I keep this clean, somewhat unhealthy messages about Putin himself on their charging screens.
But there's also other work. So there are estimates at one point that up to 400,000 people were attempting to hack the Russians. Now, that's a numbers game. Whilst a lot of them won't have any success, by sheer dint of pressure and trying everything going, some of them will have got through and will actually have achieved success. And it also means that the Russians have to devote a lot more time to defence than they would otherwise have to do so. The attackers have to get lucky once or the defenders have to be successful 100% of the time.
So someone's going to get through, and we have seen examples of that happening. And in some ways that causes embarrassment, but also it helps the real story to get through into Russia. And there are other various tools like BitTorrent and the Tor browser, which can be used. And a lot of work has gone into helping the Russian public to find out how to use things like a virtual private network, which gets them out through the Great Firewall of Russia.
to find trustworthy news sources reporting what's actually going on and not using the state media. So gradually, slowly, the word is being spread. And of course, mediums such as Telegram, troops on the front line are sending messages home and telling them what the realities are. So gradually, inexorably, the truth is getting to the Russian public. It's a question of how long can the state media not necessarily win the battle, but control this spread.
So that's a lot of work going on. At the same time, coming out of Russia, you have got not just their professional state-sponsored attackers, you've also got a lot of organized crime gangs. Now, many of the world's organized crime gangs are based in Russia simply because Russia tolerates their presence as long as they don't attack Russian assets.
The quid pro quo is that in times of national emergency or special military operations such as this, they're expected to come to the aid of the state and assist in attacking whatever target is nominated by the military. Of course, in this case, it's Ukraine. So those gangs, we did see major attacks on the rest of the world and commercial organizations by the organized crime gangs dropped very considerably in the early days of the war.
I did speculate at the time how long that detention would last because, of course, these gangs are motivated and driven by money. They have a lifestyle. The people working for them have to be paid. Where's that money going to come from? I doubt the Russian state is going to give them that money because they're hurting for money, A, because of sanctions, and B, because they've got to pay for the kinetic war. So we've seen over time that the assistance has dropped off
And we've seen a lot of resumption of cybercrime aimed at the rest of the world by these gangs because they've got a cash flow problem and they've stopped helping Russia. And there are also patriots, ordinary citizens who have been involved in doing some work. And we saw that back in Georgia in 2008 as well. But their effect is limited, again, because they don't necessarily have the tools or the knowledge necessary.
You need a lot of specialist knowledge to be able to do this kind of attack well. You need to be a sad geek like me to really understand how it all works and to really have a major effect. But Russia is losing that war simply because of numbers and because of the operational model. The cybercrime gangs have gone back to doing what they used to do, which is trying to make money. But that in itself has been made much harder because, of course,
There is now much more focus on Russia, on the traffic that's going in and out of Russia. And it's increasingly difficult, A, for them to conduct the attacks and B, to get the money that they make back into Russia because cybercrime and laundering were working very hard to make sure that Russia doesn't receive any money from outside until they can't prosecute the war.
In your brilliant briefing paper, which you very kindly sent us, David, you tell a story about how the FSB has been hit very hard by a cyber leak, naming a big cohort of their agents. Can you tell us a bit more about that?
Yes. In this modern world, it's much harder to be a James Bond to be a spy than it used to be because, of course, passports now have biometric details in them. You are biometrically tied to having a single identity. So the days of intelligence agents having a cupboard with 15 or 20 different legends, as they call it, in it with different paperwork and passports.
is increasingly impossible because you cannot cross borders without your biometric data tying you to an identity. So being able to identify an agent and reveal who they are effectively burns their cover and makes them pretty much useless. And that's one of the reasons why after things like Salisbury and the attacks in The Hague, a lot of work went into public outing these agents because it renders them pretty much useless. And
Ukrainians have published the details of something like 620 people who they say are FSB agents, all of whom were listed as living at the Lubyanka, which is the headquarters of the FSB. And it includes their names, their pictures, their addresses, phone numbers, car details. It's a kind of doxing attack. And if it's true, if those people genuinely are FSB agents, they no longer have any value outside because we know who they are.
And the moment they cross the border, they will be identified. To have 620 of your agents identified in that way is a catastrophic blow. David, Hugh Straughan suggested to us when we had him on the podcast not that long ago that while cyber, along with many other capabilities, was important, it wasn't a real game changer. You still actually had to win on the battlefield. I mean, is he correct in that?
Absolutely. Cyber is something that facilitates the action that you're taking in the kinetic war. But it is still true that to take ground, you need tanks and infantry and air support and artillery, obviously. Cyber won't do those things for you. It can disable the opposition. It can limit their ability to respond, but it's not going to stop their troops on the ground from fighting. You still have to go out there and win the hard yards.
So people like yourselves are never going to be able to work. There's always going to be stuff to write about. It's good to hear. Just one final question from me, David. Nonetheless, having said that, it seems that NATO does have considerable overmatch in comparison to Russia. Can you give us some idea of how great that overmatch is?
There are quite a few parts of NATO that have openly declared that they have an offensive cyber capability. Everybody has a defensive ability. And of course, because we have been watching what Russia has been doing in Ukraine and elsewhere,
we have a fairly good idea of how the Russian tools, tactics and techniques work. We know what to look for. I mean, they're incredibly good. They are some of the world's best at getting into people's systems without being seen and then having the ability to stay there undetected for a long time. However, those nations that have worked out how to do it are sharing that information with other people.
So this is one of the reasons why Ukraine has proven so resilient, because if the Russians have attempted to get into their systems, they've normally detected it and been able to stop it happening and limit the damage very quickly. In terms of our ability to respond, if Russia were foolish enough to actually launch or inadvertently conduct a cyber attack that affected parts of NATO, certain countries have an ability to respond. We have tools and capabilities that allow us to identify and attack countries.
systems in Russia or anywhere else that caused us a problem with fairly devastating effect. We could do to them what they were doing to us. And the fact that there's a lot more of us with a lot more capability means that in the same way that what's the expression that quantity has a quality all of its own.
And simply the Russians would not have enough resources to be able to defend against everything that we could do to them. We could effectively cut them off from the outside world. If we chose to, we could isolate Russia from the internet. They've conducted exercises about doing it for themselves. But the reality is that so much business and commerce depends on it these days that you'd be cutting your own throat to do it. And in fact, the Americans actually removed a couple of sanctions that they put in place on Russia in the early days, which
because some of those factions included not providing news feeds into Russia. And they realized that actually providing those news feeds and letting the Russians know what was happening, what the outside view of the world was, made a lot more sense and would help with the propaganda war.
So, yes, there are things that we can do to them. We could conduct a crippling blow on them if we chose to. We could make them work very hard and we could make them let... We could express our displeasure. However, in the same way that it's Article 5 for us...
It would be probably your sad bellow as far as the Russians are concerned. So it's not something that I think we would ever use as a first strike capability. It is, as I said, as Biden said, if you cross this red line, we reserve the right to respond in kind and it will hurt. Fascinating.
Last question from me, David. We're slightly mystified at the number of people who are contacting us officially and unofficially in terms of the podcast and suggesting that we're underestimating Russia. It still has extraordinary capabilities, both militarily, cyber, and in every other aspect. We don't entirely agree. It seems to us that, and I think you might agree, that Russia is not only losing the kinetic war, it's losing the communications and cyber war capabilities.
Do you think that is the case? And if it is, is there anything Russia can do to turn the tide? I'm convinced that Russia is losing. I'm not a military expert and I would be wrong of me to comment on the kinetic war. But certainly from a cyber point of view, they have not had anything like the impact that we thought they were capable of. They have underperformed considerably in
And given the way things are going for them on the ground, I think that if they had a cyber capability beyond what they have displayed so far, they would have used it. The fact that they haven't, the only logical conclusion that I and my colleagues can come to is that
they don't have that kind of capability after all, or we have managed to neutralize it. And I think the preparation, the work that we've done in advance, the know your enemy, the intelligence work that's been conducted in advance in terms of cyber means that we've been able to neutralize the threat. And Ukraine is effectively launching the attacks under advice and guidance from us. And the fact that they're able to do so, I think indicates that
If the Russians were stupid enough to actually challenge NATO in the cyber environment, we have the ability to stop and contain and make them bitterly regret that they ever did so.
Well, that was really illuminating. Interesting that Russians actually seem to have helped the Ukrainians prepare for the big conflict by launching all these endless attacks on their cyber capability from 2014 onwards. Yeah, he confirmed what we heard from Robert Fox, of course, and that is that NATO or the Western General were helping Ukraine with their cyber capabilities before the invasion in February 2022, and that this must have helped to prevent Russia from taking out vital infrastructure.
I like the idea of these volunteer hackers, don't you, coming to Ukraine's aid and launching their own private war with the Russians in cyberspace. Also kind of struck by just what a criminal space Russia is, you know, where they allow these gangs to basically hack into our bank accounts with impunity and all the rest of it, as long as when they're called upon to do their patriotic duty.
They do actually step up to the plate, although it seems their basic motivation of greed is now coming into conflict with that call to arms from the Kremlin. But the good news, I suppose, is that we are winning this one and we've got huge overmatch, even though it's not actually a war winning capability.
Yeah, I think the broader point here is that while cyber is hugely important, and as you say, the good news is that Russia is losing this as well as the kinetic war. It's not, you know, it's not the be all and end all. It is an add on, as Hugh Strawn told us, it's a force multiplier, but it can't win the war alone. That still needs to be done by troops on the ground and raw military power.
Okay, well, now for a few of your questions. One from Chris Hyde here. He's asking, what's the COVID situation in Ukraine and whether it's impacted on their ability to defend themselves? Well, I did a bit of research on that. The answer is zero, practically. I mean, strangely, the worst sort of COVID peak was right at the beginning of the war, and it's now down to about zero. So that's one area where COVID isn't actually disrupting things too much.
Yeah. And the good news, Patrick, is we know that not a vast amount of Chinese people are flying into Ukraine anytime soon. So that's probably going to help matters slightly. Um, another question from Philip Glucksmann, who said, thanks for answering his last question and giving his brother-in-law a mention. It made their Christmas. Well, he asked an interesting question about China. Um, China very often seems to be passive in this conflict, maybe even more supporting Russia than Ukraine. I think we'd agree with that. Uh,
He goes on to say, I think the only real solution for ending this war is to use the carrot and stick method to put more pressure on China to support Ukraine. Xi Jinping is the only person Putin listens to. China is the only trade partner that really matters for Russia. Well, all of that's true, of course, Philip. But I think the possibility of the West forcing China into a position where it effectively wins
withdraws any kind of support for Russia unless it ends the war. I think that's a bit optimistic, frankly. I mean, China's playing a very clever waiting game to see what happens on the battlefield, because in the end, its own strategic interests are tied up in this war insofar as a victory for Russia will be a green light for it with Taiwan. So no, I don't think China is vulnerable to Western blackmail, I'm afraid.
Yeah. And of course, their will they, won't they styles actually creates leverage for them in all sorts of other areas. There is one here that I think makes an amusing point from Rick Travers in Vermont, who asked us about the extent of humanitarian aid that Ukraine is getting. This is a subject we haven't really addressed properly, and we're definitely going to do it in an upcoming pod. But he makes what I think is quite a
a fun point at the end. He says in World War II, the US gave Russia the equivalent of $180 billion worth of support in terms of armaments, all sorts of kits, clothes, fuel, equipment,
And he says, I think we want our money back, which is a very nice idea. But it does put me in mind of, you know, the UK provided a huge amount of help to Russia during the war, tanks, jeeps, trucks, aircraft, etc.,
I've never got a word of thanks from Stalin. All we ever heard from Moscow was, give us more, that's not enough. So I don't think you're going to get sent back of that, Rick. No. Just an interesting one, the last question we're going to deal with this week. Tom from Essex. Hi, guys. After listening to...
Episode eight, Shaping Perceptions. I was surprised that social media didn't really get a mention as it's been a major aspect of the information war surrounding Ukraine from Russian mill bloggers and independent Vox Pops with everyday Russians to Ukrainian drone compilation videos, et cetera, et cetera. What are your thoughts? Well, he's absolutely right. It has played a key role. I think, you know, the general feeling when you talk about
social media and politics in other words can you get a sense of you know people's opinions political opinions through social media no I think it can be exaggerated it can be a real echo chamber but in the case of this war I think social media has played an absolutely vital role but you've
Ukraine has really been dominating it. It's been showing these little clips and videos and, you know, of its successful military strikes, for example. And frankly, social media, of course, because it's very difficult to control in terms of information, probably isn't helping the Russians on the other side. On the one hand, you've got the mill bloggers, as Tom points out, who are basically criticizing the war effort in many cases. And on the other hand, you've got ordinary Russian
hearing stuff from the West, if they can get access to Western social media. And of course, you almost always can. So frankly, social media is hugely an advantage for Ukraine, I would suggest.
Okay, well, that's all we've got time for this week. If you've got any questions, please email them to battlegroundukraine, all one word, at gmail.com. And do join us next week when we'll be speaking to former British General and Russian Specialist, Sir Mike Jackson. Goodbye.