In an article titled The Future Of Information Warfare Is Here — And The Russians Are Already Doing It Tom Ricks tells us of a sneaky way the Russians tricked Ukrainian soldiers, quoting Army Col. Liam Collins:
“The Russians are adept at identifying Ukrainian positions by their electrometric signatures,” writes Collins. One would expect that, but the thing that impressed me what came next.
“In one tactic, soldiers receive texts telling them they are ‘surrounded and abandoned.’ Minutes later, their families receive a text stating, ‘Your son is killed in action,’ which often prompts a call or text to the soldiers. Minutes later, soldiers receive another message telling them to ‘retreat and live,’ followed by an artillery strike to the location where a large group of cellphones was detected.”
Surely this particular tactic won't work again. But it's a constant battle to stay ahead in any arena that relies on technology.
From time to time we hear of some big hack resulting in the loss of gigabytes of personal information about citizens. When we factor in the possibility that an enemy may have a dossier on each soldier it's even more important to guard against what that information can do to hurt them.
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3:07 PM 12/1/2019
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