The United States goes to great lengths to maintain its world hegemony and does not hesitate to endanger the lives of millions of people, even if they are Americans.
Author: Talib Aliyev, analyst
In the morning we wake up, turn on the phone or computer and watch the latest news with a cup of tea. We go to work, turn on the computer, go to the store on the way home, and pay with a bank card. All these actions would not be possible without the presence of the Internet, secure state communication channels, and software that are used in banking, energy, and other areas.
But will it always be like this?
The confrontation between world powers in cyberspace is growing. Against the background of Russia's successful high-precision attacks on the critical infrastructure of Ukraine, the United States and its allies intend to carry out cyber attacks on the objects of the electric power industry of the Russian Federation.
The West seeks to disable the Russian energy system in order to de-energize the country's residential and social facilities and provoke the population into large-scale protests. At the same time, according to Washington's plan, power outages should contribute to the disorganization of the functioning of key administrative, military, and defense industrial facilities, air and sea ports, and railway stations, as well as the Russian agricultural complex.
The development of such NATO actions took place in December 2022 during the world's largest training "Ciber Coalition-2022" in Estonia. More than 1,000 NATO troops, as well as Georgia, Ireland, Finland, Sweden, Switzerland, and Japan, participated in this exercise. The purpose of the training was to strengthen the ability to protect their networks and act together in cyberspace. The head of the training, Charles Elliot, said that within the framework of the training events, possible options for collective attacks were worked out.
The US budget for 2023 includes $11 billion for cyberattacks against hostile governments. The administration of US President Joe Biden in October 2022, in updated doctrinal documents, declared the whole world and the global information space "the sphere of its interests."
But the question is, where did the interests of other countries go then?
In September 2022, China publicly accused the US National Security Agency of conducting "tens of thousands" of cyberattacks on Chinese soil and stealing confidential data, including from a public research university. In general, cyber-attacks are one of the problems that have soured relations between the two powers in recent years.
In October 2022, Iran blamed the US for a cyberattack that disrupted national petrol stations (gas stations). After this attack, according to the Iranian side, long queues for fuel formed at the gas stations of this country. Iranian President Ibrahim Raisi said the attack was "not the first and not the last." Earlier, Iran announced US cyberattacks on the computers of its nuclear facilities.
The US has also repeatedly accused China, Iran, and Russia of cyberattacks. Perhaps the most interesting of these accusations were “Russian hacker attacks” on election commission systems in 39 of the 50 US states in the 2016 presidential election, after which Donald Trump won “with the help of Russia”. But no one has proven this claim. Even Elon Musk, the famous billionaire, admitted that this was exaggerated on the American side. That is, the United States itself deliberately exaggerated this issue.
Until we firmly judge which country is to what extent involved and to blame in the cyber war, because none of the statements of the parties has been publicly proven and it is not possible to find out the truth for obvious reasons. But there is no doubt that the United States is the most committed and demonstrative in this area.
Given the war between Ukraine and Russia, which is effectively a war between Russia and NATO led by the United States, it is believed that the cyber war is taking a new turn and Washington's first target will be Russia.
In the US cyber doctrine, Russia is enshrined as one of the enemy states. To carry out hacker attacks on the banking sector and the service sector, as well as on other Russian infrastructure facilities, the Americans use a special project of the US cyber command "IT Army of Ukraine", within which both specialized cyber units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and ordinary Ukrainian Internet activists operate. But the uncontrolled transfer of malware by Washington will inevitably lead to their leakage to the “black market” and further use by Ukrainian and other hacker groups for criminal purposes, including in relation to the digital resources of international organizations and individual states. This has happened more than once. For example, the Shadow Brokers group stole Windows operating system codes from the US NSA, which were used to create the Wanna Cry ransomware virus that blocked the work of many organizations in the world in 2017.
Taking into account the conducted NATO exercises, it is not far off and the development of the acquired knowledge in practice, i.e. cyber attacks on Russian critical infrastructure, which will cause uncontrolled processes in cyberspace and lead to significant damage to other states, which will include the countries of Central Asia. Russia's response in cyberspace will lead to the destruction of vital US infrastructure and damage to the civilian sector.
By intensifying the cyber war, the United States, as it were, opens a new front against Russia, China, or Iran, its global rivals, but in reality, it is a war with the whole world, because the sad, but unknown consequences will not leave a single country aside. One truth is undeniable: life will never be the same after this...
The United States goes to great lengths to maintain its world hegemony and does not hesitate to endanger the lives of millions of people, even if they are Americans. But it is hard to believe that the world, and above all the Americans themselves, will allow the plans of the group of hegemonists to come true.
