At NATO defense ministers’ meeting in Brussels on June 18 Hegseth called for a reboot of the alliance into a NATO 3.0 capable of deterring modern threats and making Europe take primary responsibility for its own conventional defense. This NATO 3.0 envisions Conventional warfare, cyber, space, drones, and AI as their primary focus. As the Article 5 of the NATO talks about attack on one country means attack on all the member countries, this will now also be applicable in terms of cyber warfare. If a country attacks any NATO country using cyber tools, article 5 of NATO will automatically come into effect and NATO collectively will mount the cyber retaliation. The era of advanced technology, Artificial Intelligence, Information technology has made the 21st Century a battleground, where you do not have to step into the field to attack your enemies but at the comfort of your home you can corrupt their data and destroy them! Not that it is an ethical practice but we are all moving towards that era: The Cyber warfare Era! To look at an example you can refer to the incident where a 15-year-old named Jonathan James was able to get inside the U.S. Department of Defense’s computers and install a backdoor within its servers. He then used the backdoor to intercept internal emails, some of which had usernames and passwords inside. James then used his access to the DOD’s system to steal NASA software used to support the International Space Station. Technology, as fast as it is growing at the very same pace, is becoming a threat to human civilization ! CrowdStrike,a Texas-based cybersecurity technology company reports that AI-enabled hackers increased their attacks by 89% year-on-year in 2025, boosting the skills of both less sophisticated operators and advanced ones.In today’s world war is not fought with bullets but with bytes!
Shreya Das, National Defence
25th June 2026, New Delhi
Modern day warfare is evolving, earlier people fought over resources land, air, water but now the war is for digital dominance! Where the United States, India, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Israel have become the most heavily contested digital battlegrounds. According to data, the United States is the most targeted country in the world accounting for 40-50% reported ransomware victims and cybercrime incidents globally, largely because it has the world’s largest concentration of valuable digital assets, corporations, and critical infrastructure. The larger the economy the larger the attack threat ! The threat is so severe that we see a 15 year old boy Jonathan James was able to hack into one of the most renowned organizations in the world NASA. There is not one , but thousands and thousands of people, especially people in our enemy state who are capable of doing much worse and can hack anyone’s personal computer or network to extract the information they need. According to data it was found nearly half (47%) of state-sponsored attacks against US tech companies came from a single North Korean group tracked as Famous Chollima. If we go back in history we will find more such instances of the same. Let’s take the 2007 Estonia cyber attack for example. In the spring of 2007, Estonia fell under a cyber attack campaign lasting a total of 22 days. The attacks were part of a wider political conflict between Estonia and Russia over the relocation of a Soviet-era monument in Tallinn. This widely linked attack to Russia had for days, government websites, major banks, and media outlets disappeared from the internet. It was the first major example of a country being digitally choked.
Next look at the 2010’s Stuxnet! Stuxnet is a highly sophisticated computer worm designed to target and physically damage real-world industrial infrastructure, specifically Iran’s nuclear program by western alliance mainly United States and Israel. Stuxnet did not simply steal information. It secretly changed the speed of uranium-enrichment machines, damaging them physically while showing normal readings to the operators. Cyber warfare had moved from spying to direct physical destruction.
Next let’s look at Iran who came out with the 2012 Shamoon malware. Shamoon (also known as Disttrack) is a devastating wiper malware discovered in 2012 that is designed to cripple IT networks by permanently wiping data and overwriting the Master Boot Record (MBR). It was famously unleashed on August 15, 2012, against Saudi Aramco( a oil company of Saudi Arabia), crippling approximately 30,000 corporate workstations and forcing the energy giant to revert to manual operation. A hacktivist group calling itself the “Cutting Sword of Justice” claimed responsibility. They cited retaliation against the Saudi royal family for regional political conflicts.Former U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta famously referred to the incident as the most destructive cyberattack on a private business to date.
Next comes the example of The 2015 Ukraine cyber attack, which was the first publicly acknowledged successful cyberattack on a national power grid, was carried out by the state-sponsored hacker group “Sandworm” from Russia. This also showcased how civilian life can also be targeted during a cyber attack. By remotely taking control of electrical systems, they shut down parts of the power grid and left more than 2,30,000 people without electricity.
A very recent example is the year 2022. Just one hour before Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022, a major cyberattack struck the KA-SAT network of the American satellite communications company Viasat . The attack disabled thousands of satellite broadband modems in Ukraine and across Europe, disrupting vital military and civilian communications. American, British and European Union intelligence agencies concluded that the Russian military intelligence agency (GRU) was behind the attack.
Now the list goes on and on, but what’s more concerning is that in the future is even more scary! When we examine the global picture, a clear pattern emerges. Some countries suffer most from cyberattacks, while others are known for carrying them out. Data collected by Specops Software and supported by independent research groups shows that from 2006 to the present, the United States has been the most targeted country in the world, accounting for nearly thirty-nine percent of major cyber incidents. The reason is simple: the U.S. has the world’s largest economy and one of the most connected digital infrastructures.
India also stands out. It ranks among the most targeted countries and has become an important frontline in cyber conflict. India’s rapid digital growth, huge financial sector, and strategic importance in the Indo-Pacific region make it an attractive target. In addition, India’s border tensions with China and Pakistan have often been followed by cyber activity. One example is the 2020 Mumbai power outage, which disrupted India’s financial capital and was linked by several independent researchers to Chinese state-backed groups during the Galwan Valley standoff. Looking ahead, the nature of this threat is changing once again. We are moving from human-controlled cyber operations to machine-speed warfare. Artificial Intelligence is becoming part of offensive cyber tools. Future malware may not need constant human control. Instead, it could automatically find weaknesses, adapt to security measures, and exploit vulnerabilities faster than human defenders can respond. The targets of future cyber conflicts will also expand. Modern military operations, global trade, and financial systems rely heavily on satellites in Low Earth Orbit. A coordinated cyberattack against satellite systems or GPS networks could disrupt precision weapons, confuse navigation systems, and severely affect global shipping.
At the same time, water treatment facilities, high-speed rail networks, and smart power grids remain vulnerable. In future conflicts, ordinary people may experience the effects of cyber warfare directly in their daily lives. If hackers gain control of a major chemical plant or hydroelectric dam, the result could be similar to a missile strike except it would be carried out through a keyboard from thousands of kilometers away. One of the biggest challenges today is that international law has not kept pace with technology. Agreements such as the Geneva Conventions and the UN Charter struggle to define what counts as an armed attack in cyberspace. Is deleting data an act of war? Is shutting down a power grid a war crime? While governments continue debating these questions, the world’s major powers have already acted. They have turned the connected systems that support modern life into potential weapons. We must stop assuming that the next major war will begin with explosions, declarations, or armies crossing borders. The first shots may already have been fired. They could be hidden inside servers, sleeping within power grids, or quietly running through lines of malicious code. In this new age, the most powerful strategist may not be the one with the largest army, but the one who controls the digital systems that shape modern reality.With NATO 3.0 shifting its focus on conventional warfare, cyber, space, drones, and AI it will be interesting to see how the global cyber conflict unfolds!
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