Drones, hackers and mercenaries - The future of war | DW Documentary

Summary by Krater

This investigative documentary examines the evolution of shadow warfare, detailing how cyberattacks, private military contractors, and autonomous weapons have transformed modern conflict into a gray area between war and peace.

From the video

Answers: How has modern warfare evolved into shadow warfare involving cyberattacks, private contractors, and autonomous weapons?

• Cyber Warfare
• Private Military Contractors
• Shadow Warfare
• Stuxnet
• NotPetya
• EternalBlue
• SolarWinds hack
• Drone Warfare
• Proxy Wars

What it concludes

• The NotPetya cyberattack caused 10 billion dollars in damages and severely disrupted Ukrainian infrastructure.
• The 2015 Stuxnet cyberattack on Iranian nuclear facilities destroyed 1,000 centrifuges, proving that cyber weapons can have physical consequences.
• By 2020, about half of the US forces in Iraq and Syria were private military contractors.
• EternalBlue, a vulnerability developed by the NSA, was leaked and weaponized by hackers into NotPetya, demonstrating the risks of cyber weapons proliferation.
• Modern shadow warfare relies on plausible deniability, allowing states to wage war below the threshold of conventional military conflict.