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Until a few decades ago, there was a very clear differentiation between the military communications equipment, often inscribed with the famous "Caution! The enemy listens", and the civilian technique, influenced by and not infrequently developed from the military one. The generalization of wireless Internet connections, the emergence of smart phones that, weighing only a few hundred grams, put more computing power in the hands of the user than all the supercomputers of the Cold War era, place us in the middle of a new industrial revolution. Now it seems that the civil communication technologies are not only influencing the field of defense, but they’ve become part of a wide range of military applications, the line of demarcation between the two spheres has become translucent, the information and communication war is in full swing, and the entire world is its battlefield.
Espionage: From orbital satellites to smartphones and bionic robots
The satellite has been the symbol of modern espionage since the 60s of the last century. Its ability to cross enemy territory at altitude, risk-free, and photograph any target, was the first major technological revolution in the field of intelligence gathering. The emergence and spread of the Internet is the foundation upon which an espionage infrastructure unparalleled in human history has been created, constituting the second great technological leap in espionage. This was first acknowledged in 2016 by the then coordinator of the American intelligence community, James Clapper. He also drew attention to the fact that the Russian Federation and China had, at the time, surpassed the United States in terms of cyber warfare capabilities.
In espionage, identifying and tracking a target is one of the basic actions. This can be done nowadays by using the tracking systems provided by the target’s smart phone or street or private video surveillance (CCTV) systems. However, there is also an innovative way to supervise a target: the Eyesee bionic mannequin , produced by the Italian company Almax. It has inside a series of analysis systems connected to a set of video cameras located in the eye area of the dummy and through which biometric data is obtained without alerting possible targets. The technology, intended, according to the manufacturer, to obtain data on the buyers’ profiles, is apparently used, according to several sources, for espionage activities. Actions that can be carried out without informing or getting the consent of the official system operator, by using pirated software.
The category of pirated spy software also includes the most advanced system existing up to this point, which is publicly known, called Pegasus. The latest version of the software, developed by the Israeli company NSO Group , can infiltrate a smartphone or tablet device undetected, gaining access to all the information stored on the device. Even more, it can also record calls, copy messages and use the camera and microphone to record in real time. Along with Pegasus, there are a number of pirate software on the market with similar capabilities, of which Hermit seems to be the most widely used. The paternity of the latter leads us to an Italian company, according to some sources, closely related to the NSO Group, called RCS Lab .
In totalitarian regimes, however, the surveillance of the population is carried out (even) today without the constraints of maintaining a certain appearance or conspiratorial level specific to democratic systems. For instance, the People's Republic of China has implemented a population video surveillance system composed of approximately 700 million video cameras, devices produced by civilian companies and connected through servers to artificial intelligence systems that use, among other things, facial recognition algorithms. The situation has an even more dystopian component in North Korea where the authorities, using technology imported from China , have installed surveillance cameras, not only in public spaces, but also in most workplaces and schools.
But China does not limit itself to just surveilling its own population or selling equipment to enable its totalitarian partners and allies to do so. From smart phones with a censorship function, which automatically block phrases such as “Free Tibet” and “independent Taiwan” , to the famous 5G Internet technology suspected of having digital gateways that would allow third parties to penetrate the network and which was banned from procurement in countries such as the United States, Australia and Vietnam , the leadership in Beijing is apparently working on spreading internationally a veritable information "spider web". Its purpose is to obtain data ranging from state secrets and technological innovations to sensitive personal information about certain political opponents. On the virtual and informational battlefield, the People's Republic of China has "amassed its troops" and made its first moves; it remains to be seen whether the West will leave its current defensive paradigm and respond with a series of more decisive actions.
Civilian communications and enemy identification
During the war in Ukraine, for a significant period of time, the Russian forces used GSM communication technology and mobile internet widely and without any restraint. Months after the invasion, Ukrainian forces and Western partners used and disseminated to the media maps showing the real-time use of mobile phone networks by Russians in the occupied areas. From senior officers to ordinary soldiers, they all used, in addition to phone calls, the mobile Internet to access social networks and chat applications such as Telegram. All of these, when not penetrated by adversary hackers, often contained publicly available information.
Posting photos from the battlefield or behind the front, images of military equipment, supply convoys and artillery firing positions, provided material of extraordinary importance to Ukrainian analysts who could thereby observe the directions of concentration and advance, strong points and weaknesses of the enemy, the presence of priority targets in certain areas, etc.
The popularity of the online messaging application Telegram in the ex-Soviet space brought a series of problems for Ukraine with the attack on February 24, 2022. The program developed by brothers Nikolai and Pavel Durov in Russia was found to be used, according to the Ukrainian authorities, for activities of online espionage, which is why, starting last month, Ukraine banned the use of Telegram platform on all electronic devices and computers belonging to the state.
From the first day of the invasion, the Internet proved absolutely vital for the Ukrainian forces, both for keeping the connection between units and command centers, and for informing and alerting the civilian population. The collapse of civilian Internet networks in some areas as a result of Russian bombing and jamming appeared to have the most disastrous effects. However, the involvement of the Starlink company, just two days after the beginning of the invasion , radically changed the situation. The high-speed Internet provided by Elon Musk's satellite network has not only managed to keep the military's chain of command and control coherent, but more than that, it has provided the technical basis for the development of a revolutionary new category of weapons, Starlink-guided naval drones. Of these, the Magura V5 model proved to be the most successful, as of the 14 Russian ships hit by such drones, 8 were sunk. The importance of the Starlink mobile internet system goes beyond the conflict in Ukraine: its effectiveness in the military field convinced the United States of the need to use a similar system for military communications, which is why SpaceX started the development of the Starshield program.
Civilian communication technologies (as) weapons in contemporary warfare
Identifying the target is only the first step in the neutralization action. Until about a decade ago, this was usually achieved by conventional means, from the classic artillery strike to various "smart" missiles; today, however, weapon systems also have guidance methods that are as cheap as they are effective and that are based on civilian communications technology.
In late 2023, Ukrainian authorities discovered, inside a downed Shahed-136 drone, a sim card belonging to the Ukrainian mobile operator "Kyivstar". By means of that card, the drone was connected to the GSM network in Ukraine and through this, the precise guidance to the target was achieved. In the time since then, Russian researchers have continued to develop this novel guidance system. In an article published last month, British expert Jack Watling drew attention to the fact that the Russians had mounted antenna systems on these drones and that via the Ukrainian GSM network telemetry data is sent that is later used for geospatial calibration of the next wave of drones .
In connection with this type of suicide drones, a seemingly bizarre situation was encountered last month when, during the attack on September 25, Ukrainian forces shot down a Geran drone (the Russian version of the deadly Shahed drone) that was equipped with a mobile internet terminal of the Starlink type. According to Ukrainian experts, it is very possible that the telecommunications equipment in question was captured in Ukraine and reused by the Russians as a guidance tool for the drone.
The weaponization of civilian communications technology reached a new level just a few weeks ago when, on September 18, 03:30 local time, hundreds of pagers went off simultaneously in Lebanon. The following day, a similar number of radio transceivers, the famous "walkie-talkies", also exploded, leaving dozens dead and hundreds injured. Behind this operation, as suspected from the first moments, were the Israel Defense Forces.
But how were these civilian devices militarized? Even though the details behind this operation are not yet fully known, it appears that after the October 7, 2023 attack, Hassan Nasrallah ordered Hezbollah members to stop using smartphones for fear of interception. Instead, the group's leader ordered the use of a system largely considered antiquated and abandoned in the West, namely pagers. The organization did not have the necessary quantity, which is why they resorted to purchasing a large number of new devices from the international market. The company from which Hezbollah bought the pagers is headquartered in Budapest, but, according to the New York Times , it was nothing more than a front created by Israeli intelligence services to be used in this operation.
The generalization of the use of civil communication technologies for military purposes brings with it the "cheapening of war" in parallel with the increase in the lethality of weapon systems lacking in complexity and which, in many cases, are taken and adapted from simple industrial products available on the free market. The dependence of the majority of contemporary people on digital means of communication and entertainment puts us in front of the possibility of dystopian developments, with free will and critical thinking being in danger of being numbed by propaganda and disinformation from authoritarian or totalitarian state players.
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