New Domains of Conflict and Accountability

Cyberwarfare — state-sponsored or state-linked offensive cyber operations against military, government, or civilian infrastructure — has become an established feature of contemporary conflict alongside physical fighting. Notable incidents include the 2010 discovery of Stuxnet, a sophisticated computer worm that damaged centrifuges at Iran's Natanz nuclear enrichment facility and that researchers and, later, unofficial US and Israeli government sources widely attributed to a joint US-Israeli operation; the 2017 NotPetya attack, which US and UK governments attributed to Russian military intelligence and which caused billions of dollars in global damage after spreading from Ukrainian accounting software far beyond its apparent intended targets; and a sustained pattern of cyber operations accompanying the Russia-Ukraine war, including attacks on Ukrainian power grids and government systems. Analysts generally regard major cyberattacks against critical infrastructure as carrying significant escalatory risk, since the difficulty of rapid, reliable attribution and the potential for cascading, unintended damage to third parties complicate the kind of clear response and deterrence signaling that governs conventional military escalation.