I will conclude my reading and I will put my own personal thoughts on that and why it has relevancy. For the benefit of Ms. Bendayan, there is relevancy to this, Mr. Chair, so I will continue:
...The popular vision of cyber-war is one in which critical infrastructure, telecommunications, the internet and all connected systems are completely shut down, effectively crippling society. We have seen this to varying degrees in the aforementioned case of Russia's attacks on countries in its neighbourhood, as well as on infrastructure in other countries such as the Colonial pipeline attack in the United States, but nothing to such a complete extent.
However, despite the increasing predictions of this sort of cyber-war—of which there is no broadly accepted definition—it has not made an appearance thus far. There could be many reasons for this, one of which of course is that we simply don't know it's happening; after all, it is often strategically useful in a cyber-attack to remain undetected for as long as possible. It could also be that this simply would not meet the strategic goals of the invasion. In this case, Russia has long considered Ukraine as key to its plans for many strategic reasons, including territory and warm water ports. Ironically, Western sanctions in the wake of the 2014 annexation made Ukraine even more important to Russia's geoeconomic ambitions as part of a land route for energy exports. Based on its goals, this type of complete cyber-war seems unlikely to be useful. This is not to say that cyber has not been used in this conflict; however, these activities have been used in different ways, as a supporting activity of the war aiming to accomplish the two main goals that cyber-activities usually attempt to achieve: propaganda and disruption. ...Cyber-attacks cannot gain territory, but they can disrupt the other side's operations, target infrastructure and civilians and affect public opinion during the process of gaining physical territory. ...These operations are simply better suited to spreading disinformation and confusion and attempting to cause distrust and chaos, bolstering the conventional forces.
Many on this committee may be asking, “When is Mr. Brock going to get to the point?” I will eventually, but there's more to add, Mr. Chair. The next question I want to put to the committee and provide some explanation for is this question: What cyber-activities have we seen so far in the Russian-Ukrainian conflict? As stated in the same article:
Propaganda and disinformation have been widely employed in this conflict, and the reach of these activities has been global. Social media has played a role in conflicts before, though this truly global scale is unprecedented, especially among youth. Young Russian TikTok influencers posted videos with a justification of the invasion—all apparently following the same script. Young Ukrainians also took to TikTok, as well as other platforms such as Instagram, to post their own videos of updates. While many sincerely try to ensure their information is as accurate as possible, this is not always easy—especially with just as many people deliberately spreading disinformation. Some examples include attempts to cause fear and panic; Russians found local Telegram chats and posted false warnings about upcoming bombings to scare citizens away. People created Discord servers for updating and commenting and livestreamed battles online in addition to news footage. Social media was not only used to spread information—whether it was true or not—but to boost morale and push narratives, and much of the information circulating on social media is in favour of Ukraine. Videos and photos of President...Zelensky went viral, from his impassioned speeches—
including his impassioned speech to our Parliament
—about defending the country to the end to posing with his dogs. There were photos of Ukrainian couples getting married on the front lines and citizens crowding the streets wanting to get weapons and join the fight. In Russia as well, videos of Russians protesting the war and getting detained started to circulate, and Ukrainians posted videos of Russian soldiers surrendering or being captured.
Disruption and espionage have been used by both sides, with Russia hacking government ministries and defacing Ukrainian websites even before the invasion. The most substantial cyber-attack so far, which has not officially been attributed to Russia at this time, is the hack [at] Viasat, a satellite communications provider, which impacted other European countries as well as Ukraine. The American company is still working to bring users back online and recently stated that they are still actively defending the service from malicious activities. Russia has also actively blocked Western social media—
including Canada
—and created what is being called a “fake news” law to control the narrative at home. It’s also threatened steep fines for Wikipedia if it does not remove certain information about the war that it considers inaccurate. Meanwhile, Ukraine’s volunteer hackers and other hacking groups, including the group called Anonymous, have also made progress in disrupting Russian government websites and services. So far, however, there have been no largely debilitating cyber-attacks on infrastructure, with the extensive damage done coming from conventional attacks and weapons.
That begs the question, Mr. Chair: If we haven't seen it so far, will we?
Let me continue:
For the foreseeable future, cyber-activities will likely remain in the realm of propaganda and disruptions of communications and services. In this conflict, complete cyber-war does not appear to be strategically useful, though cyber-activities including disinformation will continue. Disinformation will remain a powerful tool, especially as digital propaganda techniques using artificial intelligence become increasingly sophisticated. The environment for cyber-operations and disinformation is increasingly complicated, which has been demonstrated in this conflict; the involvement of new actors, ranging from youth on social media to private companies both large and small, to any civilians engaging with online content, makes for an environment impossible to control and potentially creating a variety of new targets in conflict other than states.
Experts also warn that civilian infrastructure will increasingly be a target of cyber-operations. Sensitive infrastructure, including nuclear weapons, is a serious concern that is especially difficult to discuss considering its highly classified nature. While our interconnected systems are convenient, there is always a risk of compromise.
The risk of cyber-attacks in retaliation for sanctions remains high....
We as a country have sanctioned Russia, as have many other countries in this world. Our chair is probably on the list of several politicians in the 44th Parliament who have been banned. The threat to Canada is real.
The risk of cyber-attacks in retaliation for sanctions remains high, but being the first country to launch a complete cyber-offensive would probably be costly in many ways, and some experts believe it could even lead to the cyber equivalent of mutually assured destruction. It seems unlikely in the current circumstances that cyber-war will come to the West, but it is vital to have cyber-defences on high alert to prepare for any possibility.
I hope that this committee spends some time hearing from experts and witnesses on this very real risk to this country.
Canada's intelligence agencies are preparing for an increase in cyber-threats and warning Canadians to be vigilant in their online activities.
If our security experts are giving us that warning, Mr. Chair, it's incumbent upon this committee to heed those warnings.
The last part of this article that I will read various portions of, Mr. Chair, is titled “How to be Strong, Secure and Engaged in Cyberspace”.
In 2017, the Department of National Defence (DND) released its Strong, Secure and Engaged defence policy, which envisions Canada's armed forces as agile—