The New Cold War

I'm a child of the Cold War. I lived through the Cuban Missile Crisis, the periodic tests of the air raid sirens, and the B-52 bombers flying low over my uncle's cottage on their way to Kincheloe Air Force Base. That settled down to a dull background anxiety with the fall of the Soviet Union, with the occasional proxy war flareup. But the Cold War is back though it's being fought on a different and less tangible front using propaganda, disinformation, and misinformation, and hacking to destabilize societies. 

In Tuesday's Big Picture post, Jay Kuo outlines how the US Republican party has become an ally, if not an outright tool, of Russia's propaganda machine. 

This piece walks through the three types of compromise—disinformation, extortion, and bribery—to give a sense of what we know and what we don’t really know, and, importantly, where we should be on our guard. As this summary will show, from the 2016 election till now, there’s enough Russian smoke now to assume there is a fire, one that compromises not only the integrity of our own system of elections, but the safety and security of the free world.

Given that so much of modern society depends on computers and automated systems, they've become a target for government-sponsored hacking groups. Wired reports on one such group that calls itself the Cyber Army of Russia Reborn or People's Cyber Army of Russia. 

Whether or not it's winning hearts and minds, Cyber Army of Russia—which also at times calls itself the Cyber Army of Russia Reborn or People's Cyber Army of Russia—seems to at least be getting some of the attention it seeks. Last week, a group of government bodies including the US National Security Agency, the FBI, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the UK's National Cybersecurity Center, and several others issued a joint report warning of “Russian hacktivists” targeting so-called operational technology targets like control systems for water and wastewater utilities. The report warned that victims had “experienced minor tank overflow events” and other disruptions—although it noted the effects were temporary, and the hacktivists had historically exaggerated their hacking's impact.

The Financial Times reports that Russia could be planning more serious attacks including bombing, arson, and attacks on infrastructure. (archive.ph link)

European intelligence agencies have warned their governments that Russia is plotting violent acts of sabotage across the continent as it commits to a course of permanent conflict with the west. 

Russia has already begun to more actively prepare covert bombings, arson attacks and damage to infrastructure on European soil, directly and via proxies, with little apparent concern about causing civilian fatalities, intelligence officials believe. 

 Finally, the Washington Post reports (gift link) that Putin is " re-engineering his country into a regressive, militarized society that views the West as its mortal enemy."

In “Russia, Remastered,” The Washington Post documents the historic scale of the changes Putin is carrying out and has accelerated with breathtaking speed during two years of brutal war even as tens of thousands of Russians have fled abroad. It is a crusade that gives Putin common cause with China’s Xi Jinping as well as some supporters of former president Donald Trump. And it raises the prospect of an enduring civilizational conflict to subvert Western democracy and — Putin has warned — even threatens a new world war.

Putin's plans were also covered by CBC Radio One on their morning news show, The Cuurent.  

I grew up with the Cold War. Now it looks like I might die with it.