Cyber warfare has become a critical in geo p[oltical arena.
Cyber tools are being used by states who seeking to exert influence, destabilize adversaries or alter the outcomes of elections of rival nations.
Countries such as the United States, Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, Israel, and others are now deeply involved in invisible cyber battles and the base of conflicts is underneath some of the world’s most significant political and economic events.
Hackers disrupting financials of states
When Israeli hackers deleted data from Iran’s state-owned Bank Sepah, disrupting financial services, the act represented another escalation of the use of cyberattacks during geopolitical conflicts, the largest since Russia downed the Viasat communications system during its initial invasion of Ukraine.
The Israeli cyberattackers did not stop there: A second compromise, this time of Iran-based cryptocurrency exchange Nobitex, resulted in nearly $82 million in lost digital assets, according to a post on X by the hacktivist group Gonjeske Darande, or “Predatory Sparrow.” For its part, more than 35 Iran-aligned hacktivists and state-sponsored actors had launched a coordinated attack against Israel’s infrastructure, including distributed denial-of-service attacks and defacements.
Cyber warfare also plays a pivotal role in the global economy. In the digital age, technology giants like Google, Amazon, Huawei, and TikTok are no longer just economic actors—they are central players in geopolitical competition.
The banning of TikTok in several countries, sanctions against Chinese tech firms, and the race to dominate 5G technology reflect the growing intersection of digital economies with national security interests. This means that data infrastructure, smartphone software, cloud servers, and even seemingly innocuous apps are becoming combatants in the future wars of the world.
World economies are moving toward a new order in which the war fought wont be visible because cyber war fare is all about invisible enemies. The boundaries of state power and geopolitical influence will no longer be marked by physical walls, but by firewalls.
An advanced, fortified firewall can prevent foreign and unverified cyber intrusions, becoming, in effect, the new digital frontier.
Cyber defense will be extending to building firewalls—not fences to monitor and protect the borders of future nations and organizations .
(Source; https://www.darkreading.com/cyberattacks-data-breaches/cyberwarfare-changes-geopolitical-conflict)
