Monday 9 May 2016

Fighting the Silent Cyber Wars?

As diplomatic tensions between Russia and America continue to decline after the fallout over the Ukrainian crisis, Syria and the recent Black Sea incident, America has made a surprising public overture of rapprochement. 

As of March 30th 2016, Russia and America will recommence a raft of bilateral agreements on cyber-security, that had been halted due to the cooling relations. Included in these agreements will be the implementation of a hotline between Russia and America to prevent an escalation of cyber security incidents and the signing of a non-aggression pact in the field of information technology.

Coming on the heels of a cybersecurity pact signed by Russia and China during May last year, it is far from a comprehensive agreement. Russia and Moscow, for example, agreed not to attack each other and mutually prevent the use of modern technology "for terrorist purposes" and "interference in internal affairs", as well as destabilizing "the internal political and socio-economic situation".

Britain and China have likewise created a cyber security agreement which they argue will lead to increased cooperation as have China and the United States.

Why the proliferation of these treaties? Quite simply it is because cyber warfare has emerged from the bedrooms of teenage hackers and criminal gangs to become one of the most impressive forms of covert soft power known in the modern world.

Attack of the Codes


Hitting public awareness in 2007 in Estonia with the three week long Distributed Denial-Of-Service (DDoS) attack against a number of divisions of the Estonian economy including the government, media, and financial institutions, Russia began using a combination of threats, cyber capabilities, proxies, and plausible deniability to harass those with whom they did not see eye to eye.

From there it has snowballed with incidents such as WikiLeaks, the Snowdon Papers, the Sony Hack and the Panama Papers demonstrating the reach of hackers globally. Events like the pre-Christmas attack on a Ukrainian power station, which left thousands of people freezing in the Ukrainian winter, illustrated their power.

Cyber-Warfare Now A Reality

Cyber warfare is now an ongoing threat for countries and multinationals around the globe. It enables aggressors to punish rivals or engage in terrorist activities, as in the case of Russia’s attack on the Ukraine or the suspected US actions to neutralise threats such as Iran’s nuclear program with plausible deniability and little domestic collateral damage.

This reality argues Dr. Philippa Malmgren, a former White House official and presidential advisor, has led to a situation where the three major powers are already involved in a cyber war.

“The difference to warfare of the past is that this is being conducted surreptitiously through cyberspace, rather than through traditional and conventional forms of weaponry.”

Trust No One

As each of the countries try to cooperate the problem appears multiply, despite the treaties and talk of cooperation, countries like Russia and China are not always prepared to play by the rules. Leaving countries like America and Britain to even the playing field.

The result is that no one trusts one another and instead the cyber war increases in its severity as countries engage in a steady stream of attacks and counter attacks, some coming just hours after they have signed cooperation treaties.

As described by J.J. Wirtz in a recent publication by the NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence Cyber War in Perspective: Russian Aggression against Ukraine,

“ it seems an escalation in such intrusions is already underway. Russian state-sponsored hackers are believed to have recently compromised the US Department of State….. Unlike during previous intrusions linked to Russia, on this occasion the digital spies did not back out of the system once they were discovered, but fought back in order to maintain their foothold in the network”

Future Development

Considering the difficulty in monitoring these intrusions and attacks it seems likely that cyber warfare will inevitably become a much utilised weapon in the new grab for international power. In order to count this governments will need to ramp up spending on cyber security, developing their cyber divisions which will hopefully lower the risks of infrastructure attacks and the chaos these will bring.

A version of this is published in The Vision Times

Sunday 8 May 2016

Kazakhstan Prefers Political Stagnation ?


Recently I became a Global Risk Insight Analyst this is a slightly altered version of a recent article, if you enjoy please share, or comment and check out Global Risk Insight.

As the political environment in Kazakhstan becomes increasingly tense due to the government’s recent plan to privatise unused land for investment, it is clear that once more a free and open political dialogue will not be an option for a discontented public.


Instead the authoritarian government of President Nursultan Nazarbayev is executing a soft crackdown on the protests. Starting with the April 28th notification that spreading disinformation about land reform is a crime, the government has gone that one step further on April 29th by detaining the organisers of a press conference and public discussion, scheduled to be held at the National Press Club in Almaty.


So like the hardline crackdown on the Zhanaozen oil workers protests in 2011, that saw 15 people die, it is clear that while these protests signal popular discontent, the momentum surrounding the campaign over land privatisation will be halted by any means necessary. In Kazakhstan, political freedom stands second to political stability which is seen as vital to the administration of nation.


Stability or Chaos


For Kazakhs, after witnessing the chaos from the democratic upheavals and civil strife that has plagued the Ukraine, Georgia, and Kyrgyzstan the stability offered by the political regime of Nazarbayev provides a sense of security. As one opposition candidate for last year’s parliamentary (Mazhilis) elections stated in the Diplomat,


“In Kazakhstan you give up some rights in exchange for security. You give up pluralism and the right to say what you want, but that’s how it is, and we are doing ok.”


But there is little strength in the Kazakh political institutions. The super-presidential system means that the political system is weak and ineffectual, with parliament being a rubber stamp to the President’s wishes and the judiciary being similarly controlled.


Clan and Patronage Politics



Kazakhstan is a product of its own birth; formed from the ashes of the Soviet Union’s bureaucratic nomenklatura system and a clan based society, Kazakhstan has a long history of utilising secondary political channels like identity (clan) or patronage networks for true political dialogue and decision making in the country.


The risk is that these networks operate only for the good of themselves instead of the good of all and this creates little trickling down of riches and political power to those outside of the networks, often causing dissatisfaction with the ruling power. The President’s answer to this problem is the appointment of members from his patronage network to positions of power like regional governors (Akims), who then act as intermediaries to resolve issues, such as land reform, away from the public eye. The most recent use of this system appeared in the land privatisation protests on Friday where the Almaty governor Bauyrzhan Baibek, Nazarbayev’s one time former deputy director of administration, offered to parley with the detained protestors over the issues.


Nazarbayev, on the whole, is a popular leader. Called by the titular Elbasi (father of the nation) in recent presidential elections he was returned with 97.5% of the vote with a voter turnout of 95.22%. Despite the valid scepticism around such figures by many political observers, including the OSCE, Nazarbayev’s popularity is genuinely high among many of the populace because of the continuity that he offers. As another member of the opposition party, Ak Zhol, stated “whether we like it or not, Nazarbayev is our future,… we live in a dangerous world, and Kazakhstan has not experienced any terrorism or civil war, thanks to Nazarbayev.”


Economic Surety



Thus in spite of this lack of political pluralism and entrenched authoritarianism Kazakhs are not rushing to force political change and this has had the unexpected side effect of providing Kazakhstan with the best chance of making it through the recent economic downturn.


According to a recent GRI article by Ian Armstrong, President Nazarbayev micro-management of the of the country’s economy has enabled him to orchestrate a variety of changes that will diversify the nation’s financial system away from its origins as an energy based rentier economy and turn it into Central Asia’s strongest market.


From initiating measures in the 2014-2015 period that ease the ability to do business in Kazakhstan for small and medium investors to attaining a much sought after membership to the WTO, Nazarbaev has managed his country’s economy to enable it to attract lucrative deals with competing major powers and multinational corporations. As is evidenced by the advance of big western brands into Kazakhstan in 2016; from Starbucks and MacDonald’s to the French supermarket firm Carrefour. Kazakhstan is seen as a promising investment opportunity for newcomers despite the fact that the economy is predicted to shrink in 2016 for the first time in two decades.

Furthermore, President Nazarbayev has also managed to navigate the intricate international diplomatic waters surrounding Russia and China, his strongest neighbours in the past 4 years. Traditionally a weak point for Kazakh leaders the balancing of international powers has often led to a weakening of their own position. Nazarbayev has so far bucked the trend by  diversifying Kazakhstan’s economic projects with other major powers such as Saudi Arabia, India, Iran and Europe.

Reform ?…Maybe Later


Kazakhstan has a fairly laid back attitude to the pace of political development. Currently Nazarbayev’s management of the country is placing it in an enviable position which will only bolster his legitimacy in the eyes of the nation. This fact is well known amongst his opposition, thus with the majority of the population leery of agitating on a large scale for political reform and the current economic crisis being foremost in their minds, development will instead be focused on keeping the country stable and secure.


This attitude along with the President’s utter control over the political system will see off political change in the near future. Given Nazarbayev is 75, this may not be as long as many would believe (although in a recent lecture Nazarbayev did encourage scientists to discover the key to immortality). The danger then is in the power vacuum that would follow the death of such a strong leader.


Currently Nazarabev has not publicly declared who will be his heir apparent. Many fingers are pointing to his eldest daughter who currently heads up the Presidents party Nur Otan. But there relationship is complicated by her ex-husband's power grab and his recent suicide in an Austrian jail. Other members do not have the popularity to hold together the many factions and clans that exist in Kazakhstan so there is every possibility that the country could face a difficult transition and a messy struggle for power between those at the top of the clan and patronage networks. Until this time reform will be an afterthought.