Lessons from Russia’s cyber-war in Ukraine

Shaping the battlefield. Darius, king of Persia, did it in 331BC, with caltrops strewn where he thought his enemy Alexander the Great would advance. The Allies did it in 1944, with dummy aircraft and landing craft intended to fool Germany’s high command into thinking their invasion of France would be in the Pas de Calais, not Normandy. And Russia attempted it on February 24th, when, less than an hour before its tanks started rolling into Ukraine—on their way, they thought, to Kyiv—its computer hackers brought down the satellite communications system run by Viasat, an American firm, on which its opponents were relying.