Democracy under siege: foreign interference in a digital era

In today’s virtually interconnected world, it is now cheaper, faster and less risky for malign foreign entities to conduct non-kinetic subversion of adversaries. This commentary aims to promote debate about whether digitisation has reshaped foreign interference or whether changes to the conduct of covert subversion operations simply mask what at its core is an unchanged and perennial fixture of geopolitics. It calls into question the concept of foreign interference in a world wherein the boundaries of foreign and domestic are beginning to dissolve in the digital theatre of battle. In this piece, I identify several core ways in which digitisation has revolutionised tactics of interference and argue that this differentiates today’s foreign interference from analogue-era espionage. I also explore how digitisation has expanded the range of potential threats and targets which has exacerbated the notorious cyber attribution problem and poses a unique threat to liberal democracies.