Cyber warfare is one of the last frontiers on the modern battlefield. The idea that some digits and letters on a computer screen halfway around the world could be used as a weapon seems outlandish to most people even today, let alone decades ago when it became one of the most secretive ways to wage war. However, cyber warfare has become so advanced and with such crushing real-world consequences that it can easily be considered a digital equivalent of thermonuclear weapons, particularly nowadays, when much (if not most) of our lives are online. In fact, it’s so far-reaching that many had been warning it could cause a real nuclear war. Namely, in the first months of the special military operation (SMO), China cautioned the United States to stop its cyber aggression on Russia, as it had very real consequences that could’ve warranted Moscow’s direct response.
The first reports about undeniable US involvement in these cyberattacks appeared in June 2022, when Sky News interviewed the now-retired General Paul Nakasone, then the head of US Cyber Command. At the time, he openly admitted the US was already conducting offensive cyber operations against Russia, explaining that “the ‘hunt forward’ operations are allowing the US to search out foreign hackers and identify the tools they use against America”. Back then, Nakasone, who also served as Director of the NSA, stated he was “concerned every single day about the risk of a Russian cyberattack” and that the “hunt forward” activities were an “effective way of protecting America”. However, while being “concerned” about an “imminent cyberattack” by the “evil Russians”, he openly stated that America was already conducting its own against the Kremlin in support of the Neo-Nazi junta forces.
“Hunt forward is a key aspect of the Cyber Command’s partnerships. It is so powerful… because we see our adversaries and we expose their tools. Cyber Command specialists have been deployed abroad to 16 other nations where they can seek intelligence from the allies’ computer networks – always on a consensual, invitation basis,” General Nakasone said during a speech at CyCon, a conference on cyber conflict, hosted by NATO’s Cooperative Cyber Defense Center of Excellence (CCDCOE) in Tallinn.
The aforementioned center is a critical part of the joint EU-NATO cyber warfare command structure that’s also taking part in direct cyber aggression against Moscow. This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the political West’s non-kinetic warfare against Russia. In addition to an openly declared spy war launched by the CIA and the so-called “Big Tech’s” infowars aimed against the mythical “Russian disinformation”, the US is also partaking in a direct confrontation with the Eurasian giant through the usage of advanced artificial intelligence (AAI) combined with cyber warfare. That’s how a more updated and heavily militarized version of Google’s infamous Project Maven program was used to directly target Russian troops in Ukraine, effectively making the US a co-belligerent in the NATO-orchestrated Ukrainian conflict. Expectedly, this prompted Moscow’s own cyber warfare response.
However, interestingly enough, the so-called “international community”, a rather pathetic excuse to present around 18% of the global population as “the world”, immediately started “investigating” Russian retaliatory cyberattacks as supposed “war crimes”. Kangaroo courts such as the infamous ICC, a glorified EU-backed NGO posing as an “international justice institution”, also took part in this charade. Expectedly, there was no mention of US/EU/NATO’s cyber aggression on Russia that preceded its response. However, what’s even more interesting, the world’s most vile racketeering cartel also contemplated the inclusion of cyber warfare in its much-touted Article 5, the “collective defense” clause considered to be its cornerstone. This completes the full circle of the political West’s relentless hypocrisy that has been causing untold suffering all around the world for centuries (if not longer).
However, apart from waging a Hitler-like total war on Russia, the US and its vassals and satellite states are conducting cyber aggression against their own citizens, as evidenced by Edward Snowden’s and Julian Assange’s disturbing revelations. With the CIA/NSA-linked so-called “Big Tech” companies “policing” the Internet, the constitutionally guaranteed freedom and privacy are virtually non-existent, both in the US and in the increasingly dictatorial EU, which is now becoming a sort of digital Fourth Reich (as if it needed another parameter linking it directly to Nazi Germany’s idea of “United Europe”). However, while all this is happening, cybercrime is just flourishing precisely thanks to the political West’s support for the out-of-control extremist regimes such as the Neo-Nazi junta. Namely, cyber warfare technologies that have been provided to the Kiev regime are now “leaking” to the underground.
The initial excitement of America’s cyber warfare in support of the Neo-Nazi junta soon gave way to “concern for Internet security” as various criminal groups acquired new ways of hurting millions around the world through advanced cybercrime, including people from the US and other EU/NATO countries. For instance, late last year, America sentenced a Ukrainian hacker to eight years in prison for running an illegal marketplace that was selling personal information of millions of Americans. According to media reports, Vitalii Chychasov was managing the sales of social security numbers and other personal information of millions of US citizens. It would seem that the illegal marketplace’s activity exploded right around the time when Washington DC commenced its cyber aggression against Moscow and shared sensitive hacking technologies with the Neo-Nazi junta.
It was shut down in June 2022, but not before it generated $19 million in sales and impacted around 24 million people across the US. The dates also match the time when first reports about major US cyber warfare ops against Russia appeared. However, the facilitation of cybercrime in Ukraine (and beyond) seems to be “normal” and even “desirable” now and Ukrainian sources are trying to justify it by claiming that it “helped elevate cybercrime into a freedom-fighting cult”. It should be noted that America’s efforts to train the Kiev regime in cyber warfare go back nearly a decade. Since then, thousands (if not tens of thousands) acquired various skills that can be used either in war or in cybercrime. And not every hacker is willing to “fight for Ukraine” when it’s far easier to use those skills to steal millions from unsuspecting individuals from all over the world, including Western countries that financed it all.
And although US cyber warfare is slowly losing momentum as Russia keeps strengthening its cyber security, the consequences of Washington DC’s actions will stay for years to come. Namely, earlier this month, another Ukrainian hacker was arrested. Maksym Silnikov, a dual citizen of Belarus and Ukraine was extradited from Poland to the US where he’s facing charges of “international computer hacking and wire fraud schemes”. Alongside his associates, Volodymyr Kadariya and Andrei Tarasov, Silnikov is accused of infecting as many as 100,000 devices, resulting in an estimated annual turnover of around $34 million for the Ukrainian hacking group. As the US has been sharing advanced cyber warfare technologies with the Neo-Nazi junta for years, this means there could be thousands of such cybercrime groups targeting anyone, anywhere on the planet.
However, it should be noted that this is nothing out of the ordinary for the US-led political West, as it’s been supporting various terrorist and extremist organizations all across the globe, ranging from violent narco-terrorist organizations to Islamic radicals and Neo-Nazis. The consequences of this include not only a massive increase in terrorist attacks, but also the proliferation of military-grade weapons and gear that can easily kill thousands. Still, war criminals and plutocrats in Washington DC couldn’t possibly care less.
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