[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"$f7uEvFiFYUUOKvp2Ngu1qDyfnoWPixMdh1AbYS5Jn1ak":3},{"article":4,"iocs":45},{"id":5,"title":6,"slug":7,"summary":8,"ai_summary":9,"brief":10,"full_text":11,"url":12,"image_url":13,"published_at":14,"ingested_at":15,"relevance_score":16,"entities":17,"category_id":27,"category":28,"article_tags":32},"cb0648b2-43c9-4ea0-ab1f-b7b6856462bd","The Fourth Battlefield: The Growing Role of Cyber Operations in Global Conflict","the-fourth-battlefield-the-growing-role-of-cyber-operations-in-global-conflict-df59d6","CrowdStrike co-founder Dmitri Alperovitch discusses how cyber operations support kinetic warfare, signal coming conflicts, and reshape the global battlefield. The post The Fourth Battlefield: The Growing Role of Cyber Operations in Global Conflict appeared first on SecurityWeek.","Dmitri Alperovitch, co-founder of CrowdStrike, explains how cyberspace has become the fourth domain of military conflict, supporting kinetic warfare and signaling future geopolitical disputes. Nation-state cyber operations, driven by espionage, regime change desires, or territorial disputes, are characterized by stealth and long dwell times, often preceding physical conflict.","Cyber operations are increasingly integrated into global conflict as a fourth domain of warfare.","Cyberspace is now the fourth domain of military conflict. Geopolitics can be summarized as the behavior of a country or region influenced by its location in time (history and current events), and space (geographical proximity to other countries or regions). Those geopolitical actions are also influenced by the state of the economy and the psychology of its leaders. Geopolitical disagreements between countries are usually settled by diplomacy but sometimes by physical force of arms. The latter is usually a kinetic war involving, as necessary and available, land (an Army), air (an Air Force) and the sea (a Navy). Over the last few decades, cyberspace has been increasingly co-opted into these conflicts as a fourth force. This article is a discussion on the confluence and effect of using adversarial cyber activity to support kinetic force of arms in solving geopolitical conflict. It is, in short, a discussion on geopolitics and cyberspace. Background In the modern world there are three types of warfare: kinetic war (traditional ‘boots on the ground’ physical conflict involving armed forces and usually preceded by cyber operations); cyberwar (aggressive cyber operations); and cyber-kinetic (cyber operations that result in physical damage). All three are generally motivated by politics or geopolitical differences, which makes the intersection of geopolitics and cyberspace an important study. The three primary geopolitical motivations for nation state cyber operations in support of geopolitical differences are espionage, a desire for regime change, and territorial disputes. In each case the cyber activity has become a common precursor to kinetic activity.Advertisement. Scroll to continue reading. In broad terms, nation state activity is ideologically East versus West. The East is primarily China, Russia, Iran and North Korea (CRINK for short). The West is primarily North America, UK, EU, and the remaining members of the 5Eyes (Australia and New Zealand). Dmitri Alperovitch Nation state geopolitical cyber operations differ in motivation and practice from simple criminal activity. Criminal activity is motivated by monetary gain. The desire is to achieve this with as much speed and as little cost as possible. Being noisy is not a problem if you can get in, grab what you want, and leave as quickly as possible. Nation state activity is very different. It is low and slow. Stealth and continuous dwell time are important. “If you detect nation state actors on your network,” comments Dmitri Alperovitch, “chances are they have already been there for weeks or months.” Alperovitch was a co-founder of CrowdStrike, is a renowned expert on geopolitics and cyberspace, and is author of World on the Brink. He spoke to SecurityWeek about the intersection of geopolitics and cyberspace, and provided invaluable thoughts and insights. Cyberspace and espionage Nation state espionage alone is not generally considered to be war, although it is often a prelude to, or part of, war. It has been practiced for as long as civilization has existed. There are records from ancient Mesopotamia (perhaps 4,000 years ago). The Amarna Letters (14th century BCE) from Ancient Egypt provide diplomatic and intelligence correspondence inscribed on clay tablets. More recently, approximately 2,500 years ago, Sun Tsu’s The Art of War has a chapter titled ‘The use of spies’ treating espionage as the foundation of military activity. Cyber, however, now raises espionage to a new level of scale and purpose. Its motivation is as often economic as it is military. Nation states use cyber espionage to monitor other nations’ military capabilities and where possible steal military secrets, but also now to steal intellectual property from foreign enterprises. The latter means that commerce as well as the military must protect against nation state low and slow incursions. Every nation with a cyber capability is engaged in cyber espionage. The West, with the Five Eyes (FVEY) alliance, is probably the better actor. “It’s an intelligence alliance (US, Canada, UK, Australia and New Zealand) that evolved from the work of Alan Turing and Bletchley Park during the Second World War,” comments Alperovitch. It started as a signals intelligence alliance collecting from airwaves and detecting radio signals, but its activities have broadened into cyber espionage. “NSA, GCHQ, and the other countries in the alliance are now using cyber to accomplish national security priorities – which is the collection of intelligence on our adversaries. So, yes, we’re doing that. And I think we’re the best in the world at it.” What we don’t do, he continues, “We don’t steal intellectual property from private companies for the benefit of our own industries. That’s what China does.” A hypothetical example could be drawn with AI. AI will be seriously important in the future, militarily, sociologically, and economically. It is to be expected that both sides are already surveilling the state of AI in the other. Five Eyes might wish to watch DeepSeek-like companies for intelligence purposes; but that’s all. Beyond intelligence, China, however, might wish to watch, and exfiltrate, Anthropic-like intellectual property – and pass that IP on to its own DeepSeek-like AI enterprises. Other CRINK nations would do similar. There are additional behaviors that CRINK might engage in that Five Eyes does not. “We don’t engage in ransom operations or theft of currency and cryptocurrency as North Korea does. Our operations follow the rule of law, both domestic and international. The operations are designed generally to not be escalatory unless we’re in a military conflict, in which case, anything goes.” The last comment is interesting and explains the difficulty in understanding the role of cyberspace in geopolitics. When, exactly, can two nations be defined as ‘at war’? It used to be the presence of opposing armies on a battlefield, or a formal declaration of war between nations. However, since 2011 in the US, and 2016 in the rest of NATO, cyber is officially a military domain, and cyberspace is therefore a potential battlefield. In the US, Cyber Command was ordered by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates in 2009 and became operational within Strategic Command in 2010 before becoming an independent unified combatant command in 2018. The logical implication of this process is that the moment one nation engages in cyber espionage against another nation on the cyberspace battlefield, the two nations are effectively at least at military quasi-war with each other. But “We’re not going to go [full kinetic] war over espionage, because everyone does it,” adds Alperovitch. If espionage led to war, the world would have been at continuous war since ancient Mesopotamia. Nevertheless, his earlier qualification (‘unless we’re in a military conflict, in which case, anything goes’) marks a major change in the role of cyberspace that comes to a head when kinetic conflict has either started or is inevitable. Cyberspace and kinetic conflict There are two primary causes for kinetic war: regime change and territorial disputes. In both cases, any kinetic activity is generally preceded by or concurrent with aggressive cyber activity. Cyber activity is unlikely to ever win kinetic wars – its purpose is to prepare for, support, and hasten a kinetic victory. There are two recent examples of attempted regime change (Venezuela and Iran), and two examples of territorial disputes: Russia with Ukraine, and China with Taiwan. Venezuela. Nicolás Maduro, then president of Venezuela, was arrested and removed from Venezuela through a kinetic US operation on January 3, 2026. This operation was almost certainly, and is commonly believed, to have included a cyber element, if only pre-kinetic espionage intelligence gathering. Operational support (possibly in assisting the power blackout that was part of the extraction) is likely, but unproven. 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