In the early hours of April 14, 2018, a Saturday morning, the United States, France, and Britain launched a coordinated strike on Syria. The attacks targeted several sites in the country, which included the Barzeh Research Facility near Damascus and two sites in Him Shinshar west of the city of Homs: a chemical production facility and storage bunker.
The joint strike was in response to a recent attack by Syrian forces in the Douma region that allegedly utilized weaponized chemicals. “I ordered the United States armed forces to launch precision strikes on targets associated with the chemical weapon capabilities of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad,” Trump said late Friday, just as the missiles were falling on their targets. Responding to questions about the strike, US Defense Secretary James Mattis said that although “right now this is a one-time shot,” he believed the move “sent a very strong message” to the Syrian regime regarding America’s position of chemical weapons use. All three of the targets were related to Syria’s chemical weapons production, according to US military reports.
The follow-up question everyone is of course asking is where this leaves the diplomatic complexity surrounding Syria.
As noted in other analyses of events in the country, the war (or more accurately jumble of many wars) in Syria is unique in the number of interests that are at play, from the Iranian-Israel conflict to the long schism between Turkey and the Kurdish people. Any action or response to an event in the country by any player must be approached with extreme prudence. Any move can produce rippling consequences through the web of interconnected conflicts going on in the country. We’ve already seen this play out in a few big instances.
The Turkish invasion severely offset the vanquishing of the remnants of ISIS in the country by diverting Kurdish troops on the Syria-Iraqi border to the north of the country to meet president Erdogan’s forces. Iran coming onto the scene to assist its Shiite allies back in 2013 triggered the attention and eventual wrath of Israel. This in turn brought about the first instance of direct attack by IDF forces on Iranian military assets just two weeks ago. In Syria today, any strategic move is not about confronting one adversary, but rather disrupting an entire snake pit of controversy and then dealing with the repercussions.
Following the attack, Russia seems to have found a way to respond that will circumvent this problem.
Even when a retaliatory attack on Syria was still in the theoretical stage, it was clear that any strike by Western allies on Syria in response to Douma was going to be, for all intents and purposes, an attack on Russia. Donald Trump made this most explicit (surprise) when he carelessly made another major policy statement through Twitter, warning Russia that American missiles are coming “nice, and new, and smart.”
Russia vows to shoot down any and all missiles fired at Syria. Get ready Russia, because they will be coming, nice and new and “smart!” You shouldn’t be partners with a Gas Killing Animal who kills his people and enjoys it!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 11, 2018
While none of the ordinances launched last week came close to any Russian installations in Syria, everyone understands that the attack was not taken lightly by the Kremlin. The offense at the bombing of its Syrian ally was further compounded by the fact it took place as US-inflicted sanctions continue to wreak havoc on Russian firms and markets.
Speculation about what a Russian retaliation might look like began to appear almost immediately after Saturday’s attack. There were some indicators that Russia would get violent in a sort of tit-for-tat response. Russia’s ambassador to Lebanon, Alexander Zasypkin, for instance, stated that Russia would target the platforms from which the missiles were fired. This, however, looks like a relatively low possibility. As analysts have pointed out, such a move would be a drastic escalation of tensions, even for Russia. Additionally, from a purely strategic perspective, any attack on US or other allied assets in the Mediterranean would almost certainly fail given the relative strengths of coalition forces and Russian assets in the Syrian theater. Indeed, so far the Russian reaction to the strike has been relatively low-key, at least on the surface.
While the rhetoric of Russian diplomats and leaders will continue to stay toned down and a military response will almost certainly not happen, there are clear signs the Kremlin is planning more covert retaliatory options in the digital sphere. By focusing on this arena, Russia may be able to inflict serious damage on its Western adversaries without directly upsetting its physical zone of operations in Syria.
The first reports of possible Russian targeting in the cybersphere came earlier this week when British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson told media that the UK must “take every possible precaution” against any potential Russian counter-measures. When asked about the possibility that Russia could launch cyber-attacks on the National Health Service or electricity grid, Johnson responded: “When you look at what Russia has done, not just in this country, attacks on TV stations, on the democratic processes, on critical national infrastructure, of course we have to be very, very cautious indeed.” Dovetailing Johnson’s statement, the UK’s National Cyber Security Center (NCSC), an arm of the signals intelligence agency GCHQ, also released a warning the same day that the threat of a cyber-attack against Britain is now “at its highest possible level.”
The NCSC’s warning didn’t come by itself. In an unprecedented jointly issued statement, the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and British GCHQ warned that Russian government-backed hackers have been carrying out a widespread campaign to uncover vulnerabilities of millions of public and private users in both the UK and the US. The method used by the cyber criminals has been to breach systems via internet routers with weak passwords. Hackers took advantage of the fact that routers often remain in their default settings after setup and feature extremely weak access codes. The alert urges network device vendors, ISPs, public sector organizations, and private corporations of all sizes to read it and act on the recommended mitigation strategies, which is something that even private users should probably consider doing as well.
Reports by the above agencies indicate that the purpose of this campaign has been two-fold: first, to simply access valuable intellectual property that can then either be utilized or leaked publicly. The second goal seems to be to gain control of as many internet-connected devices as possible and harness their collective computing power for future attacks. One way in which this compromised network of devices could be deployed is by breaking more secure authentication methods like complex, lengthy passwords. Another could be assembling a “bot army” to execute a distributed denial-of-service attack, in which numerous requests are sent to a site simultaneously, overwhelming the system and rendering it disabled.
An important point highlighted in the joint statement was the fact that government investigations have identified many targeted organizations to be within critical infrastructure sectors, such as electrical power and communications. While these malicious scans have reportedly been going on since at least 2015, agencies have not been able to assess how many users have been affected.
These latest reports strengthen earlier claims of the White House accusing Russia of similar nefarious activities aimed at the US in the cyber sphere. In mid-March, the administration openly accused Russia of conducting a series of hacking attempts aimed at disrupting US power grids. The FBI and DHS both reported a “multi-stage intrusion campaign by Russian government cyber actors” that had targeted the networks of companies belonging to a wide variety of industries, including energy, nuclear, commercial, water, aviation, and manufacturing.
What’s indicated in these reports is that Russia may have achieved some significant leverage against its opponents in Syria, and more importantly, leverage that it can actually use. Striking at the infrastructure grids of adversaries will be able to carry the weight Russia wants to deliver, without further complicating the situation on the ground in Syria. This may prove an invaluable tool for Russia in light of America’s seemingly long-term commitment to the Syrian conflict.
