By Hedelberto López Blanch *
The definition of cyber warfare, also known as information warfare, digital warfare, or cyberwarfare, refers to the shift of a conflict to cyberspace and information and communication technologies as the field of operations.
American security expert Richard Clarke defines cyber warfare as the set of actions carried out by a state to penetrate the computers or networks of another country, with the aim of causing harm or disruption.
According to researcher Gabriela Sandroni, cyber warfare adapts to the characteristics of cyberspace, has states as its main actors, and is characterized by its political motives. It could also be defined as the set of actions carried out to alter the enemy’s information and systems, while simultaneously protecting information from the attacker’s systems.
It has been repeatedly denounced that a profound cognitive war is being waged by large American and Western Information Technology (IT) and Communications Technology (ICT) companies to manipulate public opinion and distort events, portraying the oppressors of nations as the heroes and the oppressed as the guilty parties. Simultaneously, they carry out cyberattacks against the critical infrastructure of other countries to sow confusion.
The difference between IT and ICT is that the former focuses on the management and processing of digital data and information, while ICT includes the dimension of communication through electronic technologies. Both are essential for businesses.
Among the largest IT companies are: Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet, Meta, Nvidia, Tesla, Samsung, Intel, IBM, and Facebook.
The most important ICT companies are: Canva, Google Analytics, WordPress, SharePoint, Google Meet and Teams, Zoom, WeTransfer, and Google Drive.
Information technologies encompass hardware, software, data, and services that capture, process, and protect information to create value.
Gabriela Sandroni indicates that it is more feasible to defeat the enemy by attacking their IT infrastructure than by employing any other type of physical attack. This strategy has been used in various situations, and its usual objectives include disrupting services, obtaining information, sabotage, propaganda, and affecting the adversary’s technological capabilities.
Lately, one of the most common attacks is sending a large number of simultaneous requests to a server, exceeding its response capacity and paralyzing it; these are called distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks.
Due to its vast networks and complexities, it is difficult to cover all the intricacies of technological disinformation warfare in a single work. As an example, let’s look at the case of Cuba, which is suffering a severe hybrid war.
The website Razones de Cuba explains that “The battlefield of the 21st century is no longer just territory, the sea, or airspace.” It is the human mind. And in this new domain, Cuba faces an extension of the old blockade: a full-spectrum cognitive war, financed and executed from abroad, that seeks to erode national identity, delegitimize institutions, and fracture social consensus.
He adds that it is a system of unilateral coercive measures that, on the one hand, technologically suffocates the island and, on the other, uses the digital ecosystem itself to bombard the population with narratives of hopelessness, chaos, and hatred.
Among the most frequently used tactics are synthetic accounts and the simulation of discontent with bot farms and anonymous profiles that impersonate Cubans on the island to project an image of widespread chaos and violence.
Another ploy is the algorithmic amplification of crises by exploiting real situations (blackouts, shortages) caused by the blockade itself—to generate artificial trending topics that promote panic and demobilization.
State-sponsored gaslighting, a deeply ingrained psychological mechanism, has also been employed. When a citizen faces economic hardship as a result of the economic war, they are bombarded with messages claiming that their government is lying and that the Revolution has failed. The goal is to make them doubt their own perception of reality.
This war, as I mentioned earlier, has many facets, and in this respect, the use of this harmful propaganda is a deliberate and systematic attempt to shape perceptions, manipulate cognitions, and direct behavior to elicit a response that fosters the propagandist’s desired intention.
It is a war that, because of its deceptive and unhealthy nature, requires us all to be vigilant.
(*) Hedelberto López Blanch is a renowned Cuban journalist. He writes for the newspaper Juventud Rebelde and the weekly Opciones. He is the author of “Cuban Emigration to the United States,” “Secret Stories of Cuban Doctors in Africa,” and “Miami, Dirty Money,” among others.
[ SOURCE: RESUMEN LATINOAMERICANO Y DEL TERCER MUNDO CUBA / EN RESUMEN ]
