- EURASIAREVIEW.COM - A la une - 30/Jun 01:05

Unsecured Fronts: How Hybrid Warfare Influences Strategic Competition – Analysis

By Nicholas A. Weber Modern warfare has undergone a profound transformation. Modern adversaries, whether capable of traditional methods of warfare or not, now readily engage in hybrid activities that fuse political, economic, military, and informational disciplines into extremely effective, rapid, and low-cost operations with strategic effects. These new warfare strategies, if unaddressed, will usher in an age of national security uncertainty in which US dominance (established by innovation, wealth, expertise, and geography) will be perpetually threatened. Until comprehensive legal, technical, and defense countermeasures are developed, the United States remains exposed across both its military and civilian sectors. The battlefield has expanded. Participating in strategic competition has never been easier due to low “buy-in” cost. No longer confined to traditional theaters of war, it now includes farmland, shipping containers, substations, and telecom relays—any space where adversaries can operate under the radar, they will. At the heart of this trend lies the principle that physical proximity to sensitive infrastructure enables an adversary the opportunity to conduct operations with disproportionate strategic gains. Land near military installations can host surveillance equipment, signal intercept platforms, or serve as launch sites for expendable, one-way munitions. Civilian infrastructure—transformers, cables, or utility networks—can be Trojan horses for sabotage, pre-installed to degrade national resilience at a place and time of the adversary’s choosing. These tactics reflect the logic of hybrid warfare: blending conventional and unconventional tools to achieve political and military objectives before and after the threshold of war. What was once considered benign—real estate transactions, transformer sales, commercial shipping—now carries the potential to become a vector for organized crisis and strategic leverage. Chinese Trojan Horse Infrastructure In May 2025, a Reuters report detailed an investigation by the US Department of Energy that revealed several high-voltage transformers manufactured in China were deployed across the US power grid and contained hidden communication capabilities. The devices reportedly provide ‘backdoors’ that allow remote access into the grid, yielding the potential to disable or disrupt services at a moment’s notice. This would, theoretically, allow China to queue a large-scale infrastructure crisis while simultaneously delaying the US government or US military’s ability to respond to threats or begin mobilization. The 2024 Annual Threat Assessment from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) indicated that such vulnerabilities were likely the result of intentional adversary operations, and represent a growing Chinese hybrid warfare capability. The incident demonstrates that adversaries do not need direct military confrontation to undermine US dominance or defense readiness; they can accomplish it through seemingly routine infrastructure integration, itself the result of loose legislation. Critical Infrastructure Vulnerabilities In addition to cyber operations or material Trojan horses, China’s non-conventional sabotage also poses a growing risk to infrastructure critical to the national security apparatus. Between November 2024 and February 2025, the United States and allied intelligence services identified a Chinese sabotage campaign in which, on three separate occasions, Chinese vessels targeted and destroyed undersea telecommunications cables. These cables connect the digital economies and military commands of key allies. Operating under plausible deniability, Beijing used maritime platforms to disrupt global communications infrastructure and extort resources of its adversaries. While not direct actions against US property or interests, the operations reflect a growing propensity in Beijing to engage in hybrid activities below the threshold of war. Undersea cables, like land purchases near defense facilities, represent critical infrastructure that adversaries can target preemptively in the gray zone and before open conflict. The physical access and time-on-station required to conduct such sabotage underscore the operational value of proximity, including covert basing, staging, and freedom of navigation. Ukraine’s Operation Spiderweb On June 1, Ukraine initiated Operation Spiderweb, a large-scale, hybrid warfare campaign that targeted Russia’s strategic bomber force. The operation saw the deployment of one-way attack drones–from concealed positions inside Russia. The drones, deployed from crates on trucks staged near Russian bases, struck strategic aircraft, such as Tu-95 bombers, across five Russian airbases. The Ukrainian case highlights how physical access—secured through commercial, covert, and low-profile means—is an enabler of modern hybrid operations. It also displays the advances in technology that provide efficient, low-cost, and easy-to-use solutions to conventional and unconventional warfighters. Prior to Operation Spider’s Web, ODNI officials suggested in the 2025 Threat Assessment that aligned strategic adversaries, deeply suspicious of the United States, are likely to develop similar capabilities near US infrastructure, military bases, and government facilities with the purpose of destruction or sabotage in the event of conflict. Israel’s Operation Rising Lion On June 12, Israeli forces conducted Operation Rising Lion to strike Iranian infrastructure, key personnel, military sites, and nuclear facilities due to Iran’s state sponsorship of terror, proxy wars, and nuclear proliferation. Much like Ukraine’s Operation Spiderweb, Israel’s operation included Mossad’s deployment of drones and missile launchers from covert sites inside Iran. The ordnance, when deployed, was controlled by embedded operatives and delivered to strategic targets such as munitions factories and air defense batteries. The key facet being that they were all planned, organized, and deployed within Iran and within strike range of Israeli Defense Force (IDF) targets, facilitating accurate, rapid, and efficient strikes to targets by the Israeli Air Force. This demonstrates how new warfare tactics can yield strategic effects, especially when employed as shaping operations for conventional forces. Legislation’s Role in Hybrid Warfare Strategy While battlefield technologies continue to evolve, the U.S. remains hamstrung by political and legislative apathy. Critical infrastructure procurement often lacks adversary screening. Land near military bases remains unprotected under federal law. And while measures like the Protect Our Bases Act (2023) were introduced to restrict land purchases by foreign adversaries, legislative momentum has stalled due to economic, political, and civil liberty concerns. Such inaction is n...