The news from Israel and Gaza has come so fast and furious that it can be difficult, if not impossible to track how it’s changing the battlefields of the future (digital and otherwise). An entirely new kind of warfare is unfolding in the Middle East (and Ukraine), merging traditional military conflict with digital subterfuge that can incorporate new technological tools and turn traditional power dynamics on their head. (Take Hamas receiving more than $134 million in crypto dating back to 2021, for example.) Let’s catch up on a few recent developments as the future of war continues to unfold amid the human catastrophe: Cyber-warfare is still rampant, and evolving to fit the conflict. POLITICO’s Antoaneta Roussi and Maggie Miller reported this weekend on the extent to which digitally savvy supporters of Hamas are wreaking havoc by trying to take down everything from Israeli newspapers to the country’s Iron Dome missile defense system. An Israel-based cybersecurity group told Antoaneta and Maggie that it detected more than 40 groups disrupting more than 80 sites beginning on the day of Hamas’ first attack, according to a spokesperson. Many of the groups behind the cyberattacks are aligned with Iran and Russia. “Hamas and Hezbollah and Iranian-backed hackers are a heck of a lot better than you might think,” United States House Intelligence Committee ranking member Jim Himes (D-Conn.) said last week, citing their capabilities despite the relatively low levels of internet connectivity in Gaza. To that point, Antoaneta and Maggie write that “The hacks are likely to be coming from outside of Gaza given the low internet connectivity there even before the strikes, and with the power cuts and bombing strikes from Israel in ensuing days.” Don’t discount Hamas’ cyber capabilities, however: As Audrey Kurth Cronin, director of the Carnegie Mellon Institute for Security and Technology, told me during a recent conversation, Hamas’ broader suite of tech tools “are not cutting edge but they're extremely effective if they're used in well-planned ways.” And speaking of asymmetry… Cronin additionally warned, in an op-ed published by Foreign Policy yesterday, that the overwhelming on-paper advantage Israel wields against Hamas could end up backfiring — a perpetual feature of war in a world where modern militaries wield massive technological advantages. “Overwhelming military oppression in Gaza would backfire, stirring support for resistance and aligning Israel’s adversaries against it,” Cronin writes, noting that smaller forces have attempted to provoke their larger opponents throughout the history of warfare. What separates modern-day Israel from Tsarist Russia or Sri Lanka, to borrow a couple of her comparisons where governments brutally cracked down on dissidents, is the incredibly sophisticated surveillance and security apparatus they have at their disposal to surveil and restrain Palestinians. She concludes that “Without a clear endgame, a renewed occupation of Gaza could further split the country.” This war could change the future of social media. The European Union, which has some of the strictest social media regulations in the world, continued its ongoing efforts to clamp down on harmful or false content related to the war last week, most recently warning YouTube to clean up. (The EU sent similar letters to Meta, X, and TikTok.) That’s easier said than done. To put it mildly, digital media tends to move faster than government bureaucracy — especially when the world’s leading contrarian futurist is in charge of one major platform. That means misunderstandings, debates, or even just outright lies about grisly images from the battlefield, alleged political censorship, or threatening inter-governmental smack talk continues to run rampant. Speaking to POLITICO’s Steven Overly on today’s POLITICO Tech podcast, Nathaniel Fick, the U.S. ambassador at large for cyberspace and digital policy, said tech companies need to clear that fog themselves. “Tech platforms have the capacity to inform communities, they have the capacity to disseminate accurate information rather than to fuel hate, confusion, and violence,” Fick said. “It’s especially important right now for all actors from politicians to tech platforms to citizens to demonstrate some restraint and act responsibly during what is intrinsically a very volatile time.” Some social media users are stepping into that information void, adapting the Arab Spring liveblogging ethos for a new tech era and demonstrating how the combination of an amorphous, inscrutable conflict and to-the-minute livestreaming can forge a new kind of war reporting. Bisan Odeh, a twentysomething Palestinian influencer, has been posting regular updates from within Gaza to her Instagram page. Unvetted as they might be, their popularity and reach point to the unpredictable future created by the pile-up of conflict and technology in this conflict.
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