The Fourth Battlefield: The Growing Role of Cyber Operations in Global Conflict

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Cyberspace is now the fourth domain of military conflict.

Geopolitics can be summarized as the behavior of a country or region influenced by its location in time (history and current events), and space (geographical proximity to other countries or regions). Those geopolitical actions are also influenced by the state of the economy and the psychology of its leaders.

Geopolitical disagreements between countries are usually settled by diplomacy but sometimes by physical force of arms. The latter is usually a kinetic war involving, as necessary and available, land (an Army), air (an Air Force) and the sea (a Navy).

Over the last few decades, cyberspace has been increasingly co-opted into these conflicts as a fourth force. This article is a discussion on the confluence and effect of using adversarial cyber activity to support kinetic force of arms in solving geopolitical conflict. It is, in short, a discussion on geopolitics and cyberspace.

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