Voluntarism and Cyber Support in Wartime: Pro Bono, or Cui Bono?

Abstract

Abstract: Ukraine's resilience to Russia's cyber onslaught can be attributed in large part to a historically unprecedented outpouring of technical and cybersecurity support from Western commercial partners. However altruistic such support may have been in spirit, a more robust, front-line understanding of wartime cyber offensives is itself a valuable commodity—one that uniquely incentivizes and enables the Western technology sector to examine, interpret, and ultimately shape the role of cyber operations in armed conflict. This shift is historically unprecedented in the modern era. We contrast this experience with World War I and II, when the US government served as the key intermediary between industry and the warfront. Russia's war on Ukraine demonstrates that private industry has now supplanted that role in the cyber domain. Whereas efforts to mobilize industry during previous wars struggled to draw upon intelligence assessments of battlefield needs, industry now has a very clear view—in some cases, the exclusive one—of how the war is proceeding in cyberspace. As Western governments now seek to systematize cyber assistance for future crises, we argue that they must also grapple with the new political economy of wartime cyber telemetry—one which relegates states to a far more auxiliary role than they have long been accustomed.