Greg Austin, one of Australia’s top cyber strategists, believes that major cyber powers like the US, China and Russia have begun to think about cyberwar in a different way. While in the past the focus was on developing “policies, processes, and procedures for identifying and responding to a multi-sector cyber attack targeting critical infrastructure”, governments have started to explore more offensive approaches, including plans “to attack each other with multi-wave, multi-vector destructive cyber attacks across the entire civil and military infrastructure of the enemy.” Austin dubs this new thinking “cyber blitzkrieg.”
The cyber expert considers China a prime example of this new approach: “There’s no doubt that the Chinese feel so vulnerable in cyberspace that they feel they’ve got to understand everything about the enemy and be able to strike first.” However, China is not alone according to Austin, who believes that cyber blitzkrieg “is definitely on the military agenda of China, the United States, and Russia.”
Read more: Cyber blitzkrieg replaces cyber Pearl Harbor
