Cyberwar and all of its ramifications have been in the news a lot lately. Everything from the OPM hack of several years ago to the recent attack on the Colonial Pipeline represent the current state of cyberwarfare. Much of the cyberwar that we do hear about involves big breaches that take down government agencies and major corporations, but what about the actions of the Russians in Crimea, and the much-touted “hybrid warfare” that makes cyberwar part of the holistic whole?
The truth is, manual wargaming has been as much behind the power curve as anything else in simulating what cyberwar would look like between peer adversaries. Anything that is known is behind layers of government secrecy and the murky nature of cyberwar. There are no hard and fast rules for how and when cyberwarfare can and will be used. And that alone can have disastrous consequences.
The professionals are sure grappling with the problem. Take, for example, a very sobering unclassified game I was a part of that was run by the United States Navy War College. They took two fictional nations, both nuclear powers, and put them into a border crisis that was rapidly expanding into a major war. Then they added a wrinkle. Both sides had the means to hack into the other’s nuclear command and control and, for a critical time, leave them unable to communicate with their nuclear forces, leaving them vulnerable to a counterforce strike. My side discussed this and decided (with some sense of horror and trepidation) not to use this unless someone used it first on us. I would state that I am not 100% sure real-life policymakers, in the depths of a crisis and under immense pressures, would be quite so restrained.
Then there are the operational and tactical dimensions. Many dismiss cyberwarfare as simply another dimension of electronic warfare. I would argue it’s not. Cyberwarfare can be used to great effect to render an enemy blind, deaf, and dumb or to defeat him even before hostilities have begun. One such vulnerability is in the U.S. power grid, as was very ably demonstrated in the book “Lights Out” by Ted Koppel. The book postulated and wargamed out a major attack on the U.S. power grid.
The trouble is, many wargame designers don’t really understand the ramifications of cyberwarfare. They see it as arcane stuff right up there with espionage. I would argue that instead, they need to see it as something simpler. Cyberwarfare and its capabilities are emerging, but just like the relationships between attacker and defender, it’s much easier to attack someone than it is to defend against it. Cyberwarfare is not any different and should be reflected as such in a wargame.
So how do we reflect it? A lot of methods come to mind. First, I would choose to give a player a matrix of simple options and varying chances for success. Spreading memes on social media is far easier than, oh say, trying to take down their nuclear early warning system. And releasing a computer virus should have its own problems. Like biological weapons, computer viruses don’t salute, and they don’t care what data systems they infect. Just see the example of Stuxnet. While it was wildly successful, there is always a risk it gets out of hand, and what if it infects a nuclear-armed power? Wargame designers have to keep this all in mind.
Another idea for tactical and operational games is to use what’s called a limited intelligence game where the enemy’s dispositions aren’t readily apparent. If you’re able to hack into his tactical datafeed, well, that’s as devastating as hacking into someone’s radio net 30 years ago. And worse, it’s a whole lot easier to issue false orders on a tactical datanet than it is to fake someone’s voice on a radio.
All in all, there have been attempts to reflect these realities in wargames, but again, most are considered optional rules or adjuncts to the “real wargame” which is pushing around counters of mechanized divisions or fleets and aircraft. But what if the hackers disrupt the supply chain that moves those counters? Or they cause civil unrest when they turn off the power in the country being invaded? Or they just cause confusion using social media to spread black or grey propaganda?
All of these things have already occurred in the real world or are capabilities well within reach of even non-state actors. We in the wargaming community need to grapple with it as well. GMT’s been attempting to do just that in the framework of their Next War series. But it’s going to take a deeper understanding of what is cyberwarfare in the wargaming community and how that technology’s effects can be understood in manual wargaming.
It’s a lot of questions to ponder, my friends. Till then, Good Gaming, Everyone.
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(This article is credited to Jason Weiser. Jason is a long-time wargamer with published works in the Journal of the Society of Twentieth Century Wargamers; Miniature Wargames Magazine; and Wargames, Strategy, and Soldier.)