Will Russia launch a cyberattack on the West?

If you want to stop a television tower from broadcasting, as the Russian army did in Kyiv on 1 March, then it's quicker and easier to do it with a missile than with computer code.

Rowland Manthorpe Technology correspondent @rowlsmanthorpe

Tuesday 15 March 2022 16:30, UK

If the war in Ukraine has shown us anything, it is the horrific power of conventional weapons.

Digital tools can do many things, but they cannot level a building, destroy a tank or directly end an innocent life.

If you want to stop a television tower from broadcasting, as the Russian army did in Kyiv on 1 March, then it's quicker and easier to do it with a missile than with computer code.

Informed observers of cyber are not surprised by this dynamic. They have long argued that military terms such as "cyberwar" and "cyberweapons" fail to describe the real impact of cyber, which is most relevant in the grey zone between peace and war, where states are in conflict or competition but not actually fighting on the battlefield.

The fog of war applies in this domain as much as anywhere else, and cyber is almost certainly being used to support the Russian troops on the ground in ways we cannot see. However, at this point it is clearly following the physical bombardment, not leading it, still less working as an independent force.

This is worth bearing in mind when we consider the possibility of a Russian cyberattack on a democratic country such as the UK.

Read the full Sky News article here