Absolutely. What we're seeing, and what we can see from some of the open reports, is that the Americans, of course, had to deal with the interference in their 2016 election. A British House of Commons committee examined what happened with Russian interference in Brexit, and there have been studies on Russian interference in the Castilian independence movement in Spain.
What we are seeing, or at least what seems to be appearing—and this is something of course that is Dr. Kitchen's expertise—is a focus on areas where society can be divided. This is what everybody refers to when they talk about the weaponization of social media. What the Russians have discovered...And we can't leave the Chinese out, because the Chinese are also heavily involved, or at least that is what comes out of the open literature. They try to divide societies by focusing on the various feeds that exist. This is then followed by a hope that somebody within that society will pick up that cause and become the leader.
It's sort of the issue that Lenin referred to back in the early days of Communism. “Useful idiots” basically tried to divide society. The effort today is actually to have a way of separating and neutralizing any support for the type of collective actions we need.
With regard to other cyber threats, we also know the Russians have shown an increasing capability of being able to interfere in various electronic systems and cyber systems of other states. We've seen this with their ability to influence the Ukrainian electrical system prior to the onset of the war in 2014. We're seeing this in other locations
Once again, it's hard to know exactly how well-defended we've become in being able to harden that part of cyberwarfare. There's no question, whatsoever, that the attention the Russians and the Chinese are giving this is increasing, if the reports from the Americans and British are indications of this capability.