Hybrid Warfare 2.2: Where Biothreats Meet Irregular Operations and Cyber Warriors in the 21st Century

The concept of Hybrid Warfare has gained prominence in recent decades. It is a novel terminology, but the concept is detectable since antiquity: Ancient Chinese, Ancient Greeks and the Jews of Exodus were all well familiar, so well to have let us know. Similarly, bioagents have been used malevolently since always. What is novel is that these two, in the present context, are not only interfacing smoothly, but in an enhanced context: The Hybrid Warfare, which has now enriched its portfolio, from actions of provocation, insurgency, economic warfare, special operations, proxy warfare and social destabilization to the Residual domain, the cyberspace, while the conventional, 3D space expands. Now the Space and the Deep are included in the topography of the friction zone.
In this, the bio- factor becomes not only relevant but also an amplifier: using the technology malevolently, all the advances made to combat disease may be used to cause, further, or perplex and complicate disease. Improved or totally novel or even alien germs may replace explosives in bombs, shells or suicidal /kamimaze drones and taint bullets and fragments. Microrobots may deliver cancer cells to targeted individuals to foster cancer, or specific supergerms for an infection to rage unchallenged. And what happens if the mechanism of these cancers and infections is intentionally provided with an Abort signal? Global extortions would become probable, not just possible.

Far from Science Fiction, this dystopia becomes more probable by the day. The Artificial Intelligence simply makes it easier to occur. Technology allows manipulation and intervention in levels and extends only imagined in the Past, but the application of these capabilities is clearly of dual use, with the destructive potential leveraged by the complexity of the social and state structure. Within this book, we explore the “How” (occasionally the “What” also) in some of these instances. From cyber terrorists to aggressive bioindustrialists and “democratized” ballistic and cruise missile technology, it could be coined as "The Book of Modern Mayhem”.