The War You're Already In

Homefront The civilian face of modern conflict what happened, what's happening now, and what we can learn. Welcome to Homefront. This is Luke Irving. And Giuliano Stochino-Weiss. This is our very first podcast, episode one, series one. And what we're trying to achieve, myself and Giuliano got together and realized a lot is being discussed about the civilian environment in modern conflict.

And it's a lot of ambiguity and there's a lot of uncertainty of what these things are and what it means. And myself and Giuliano have worked in Conflict environments in the past and our past lives. And we'd like to share that experience and sort of bring in what we understand to current contexts. Right. So before we go into the nitty-gritty, we would like to talk about one specific word. And that one word is the word war.

Nowadays it's really everywhere. Drones over airports, cables cut on the seabed. Fire, cyber attacks, sabotage. It's constantly on the news. There's really hardly a day I can go onto any major news outlet and not find the word war in some form of aspect, called it hybrid war, the grey zone, hybrid threats, and politicians are now using this word almost every day. More interestingly, perhaps, on a personal side, both Luke and I have been receiving questions from friends.

From family. What does war mean? Why is it that it's being talked about all the time? What is hybrid war? Should I be worried? And does it have anything to do with me?

These these are the kind of questions that we've been getting a lot. And I think one of the biggest problems is the actual understanding of the word war. It's part of the problem. What is war? What is hybrid threat? What is hybrid war?

I think you raise a very good point, Giuliano. Like there are there is too much terminology and it does sound distance through being so technical. So what we got, we got hybrid threat, hybrid, gray zone, below the threshold. It just feels this is somebody else's problem and it's a bit distance. It's something like generals and technicians and, you know, professional practitioners would would talk about. And they do, and they obviously use this terminology.

However, I think, you know, that's not going to change and it's important to get a grasp of that. I mean, I'm quite comfortable with hybrid war, although I I don't think it's I don't think it's a perfect definition. Example being a good one I'd like to bring up is like Leon Trotsky reportedly said, You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you. Now I potentially never said that. apparently the earliest documentation of that being said was from the American writer Fanny Hurst in nineteen forty one. But doesn't really matter who said it.

Very interesting point. You may not be interested in it, but it's happening around you. It's sucking you in. That's basically what what you said, or whoever said it. Most of the century, people have been separating between the two. So there was two boxes really.

The first box held the war that you recognized from a history book, so the tanks, artillery, airstrikes, soldiers in uniform, and one state fighting another, typically crossing a border, trots fired. Everybody really knows it started like World War II. Then there was a second box that is well, everything else. Sabotage, assassinations, propaganda, later on cyber attacks, things done quietly by spies or hush hush. Sometimes hired criminals, really. And this was never declared.

In 1948, the American diplomat George Kennan was the actually the first one who called this box something. It was called political warfare. Short, everything short of war. In the old picture, everything in the second box was defined by what war was not. War was on or war was off. And that's the picture we think has stopped working and it doesn't work anymore.

Definitely I I think this is this is where we should sort of dig down a a bit more now that frame and definition of war. Because I think if you look at Ukraine, everyone agreed this is the largest conventional fight taking place in Europe since World War Two. But if you look at the the Russian perspective or the Russian definition, it's a special military operation. They're not at war. And because of, you know, for various reasons and legal, you know, consequences within Russia itself about mobilization, how the country functions, if they're you know, at full scale war. So they've turned this special military operation.

But really, let's it's a it's a full on conventional war. They've invaded another country. Ukraine's defending its own existence. this is as war as your biggest war you're gonna get at the moment and and the example we're gonna probably keep referring to. But if you know, thinking back to my Sanders days, military academy days, and I think this would be replicated for any individual went for a military academy, they would have heard of a guy called von Claudschwitz. the Prussian general from the eighteen twenties and his his sort of main line was war is a continuation of politics by other means.

And the Cloud Schwitz were constantly referred to as sort of like the godfather of academic definition of war and what war is and how it functions and how it works. And it's really interesting you mentioned the dial and not the switch. It is a dial. So on the Klausewitz aspect, what I what's interesting that you you're mentioning this is that politics stops and then war begins. And his word is continuation. So the continuation of politics, right?

And that's exactly the dial that you were talking about. So in a way, I think turned up, the volume up is missiles, tanks and on the front line, and then turned down low is that kind of hybrid war aspect where you barely notice it, especially if you are a civilian. I think there's one aspect that you can actually find between the two is a major difference is nowadays. And that is what sets hybrid war apart. It's not about how much damage it does, but how visible the attacker's hand is. So a tank will typically be having the kind of camouflage and the the the nation's colours, but a for example, a cyber attack will definitely not wear an insignia or the kind of clearly attributable aspects when it comes to an aggression.

Hybrid war is built to be deniable. The country behind it will most typically deny any kind of involvement. It will say that this has nothing to do with them. It was an accident, as we will be showing you later on in the examples that we brought. And it works because the the government who is a victim can't really clearly say without a lot of work into finding out who the perpetrator is, and it really struggles to respond. So in our definition, I think we're gonna say that hybrid warfare is an aggression by one state against another using tools chosen so they can't easily be traced back to it and kept just below the point where they'd count as an armed attack.

And then one last definition that we're gonna talk about And we don't aim to overwhelm you with all the definitions, is that sometimes these two boxes that we were talking about, conventional warfare and hybrid warfare, can merge. In Ukraine, we are seeing missiles, cyber attacks, sabotage, and propaganda all in one campaign. And we are calling this complex war. These are our own working terms, not an official one, but for the purposes of the podcast, we will be using this. So it's One country running a campaign that doesn't think in boxes at all. So Russia's military thinking has no real off switch between war and peace.

And that's the point. I think the perspectives in the West is much more binary. We think of things as on and off. We don't appreciate this dial that dials down and dials off. And particularly since the nineties and noughties, modern Russia has actually hasn't switched us off, which has been accelerated when Putin came to power. A lot of the methodology and the doctrine actually can go all the way back to Soviet times.

It's not just a post Soviet Russia thing. It it actually a lot of these legacy stuff. Funny that present who wasn't a KGB has carried this over and this sort of mindset and the state apparatus is all geared towards it and it's this constant we're at confrontation. The point is they've been playing the game and the West hasn't. And we haven't even realized we're in the game we're playing, and I think that's beginning to change. And systems are beginning to change.

but it's also this realization that there won't suddenly be this full declaration of war. We're just creeping or step by step into further escalation. I think that's what's most concerning. It's like we look back now in the last six months, two twenty-four months, even further into 2022 invasion of Ukraine, or we further back from there, it's just creeping up and it just seems to be getting worse. And I think that is the most concerning thing. And I think, you know, the the thing is.

You can be at peace or think you're at peace, but you can still be attacked. And it's that mindset, you know, there's realization like it's just not on or off. That's the sort of context we're dealing with. So there's not a reason to panic. Not every outage is an attack. It could be something completely separate.

It doesn't mean state on state activity or malign activity. But there is every reason to pay attention and we're gonna now look at I think some recent examples in the last Few months to twenty four months. In Leipzig Halle Airport on the 4th of August 2026, around half eleven at night, a bus driver finds a drone on the tarmac, about the size of a microwave, carrying around 800 grams of plastic explosive. Hours earlier, it had been flown at a cargo plane. It didn't go off, and nobody was hurt. So what's the so what from this, Juliano?

Well, I think the the target it of the attack is the main clue. It's it's a Ukrainian cargo plane, one of the the biggest ones in the world, the Antonov, and that had a role to play in the Ukrainian army supplier chain. And this is also not something that it's it's new. The only thing new about this is that on September first, so just a week later, Germany's Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt said that Russia was responsible for the hybrid attack in Leipzig. And obviously Russia denies it. I think this is interesting because now countries in Europe are getting more and more open to actually call out Russia on this or any other adversary faster than than before.

But I think the aspect that is relevant to us is that the Associated Press has accounted more than two hundred incidents like this in Europe, up from fifty nine in March twenty twenty five. So it's it's more and more, it's happening every day. I think we are reading this in the news every day. And that's the ma w the incidents that make it to the news. Exactly. 'Cause they might not be attributed or understood that they're actually an active criminal intent or sabotage.

And that's exactly the thing, is that I think we're not shocked enough that there is a foreign power who had either sent their own people or recruited somebody on the ground. They have somehow managed to get this plastic explosive in and then had the ability to fly this drone to sabotage an aircraft. This is destroy. destroyed. The it's one of the last one of the last cargo planes that is still able to have this kind of lift capacity. And this is one of those scenarios which I think people are still able to say, Well, this doesn't really affect me.

I'm not part of the war effort. It doesn't include me in the sense that I didn't pay for that aircraft. But going down we we're diving deeper into other examples where it really starts to affect people. So while LightSeek was a sophisticated attack, and concerning 'cause you had the introduction of plastic explosives, you do not need to have that level of resources to carry out very damaging things. An example being if you back in a couple of years ago in Estonia, a tanker, the Eagle S dropped its anchor and dragged its anchor for ninety kilometres, severing or damaging electricity and communications cables between Finland and Estonia. Julian, do you have any more information on that?

Yeah, I remember this day quite fondly. It was Christmas Day twenty twenty four and I was glued. To the news while the Christmas preparations were going on. You geek. Yes, indeed. On the Christmas dinner.

Not watching that. But okay. Is there a you know, there's ways and ways to to survive a family family Christmas. but the point is, fifty-five million, that was the repair cost of this one anchor. The capacity between the two countries that the sharing of power has dropped to less than its third. Interestingly so, the lights stayed on.

So there was no power cuts. And I was thinking back of my Ukraine days when I was then there were these very long power cuts. It's gonna be the same. However, either by design or by chance, the grid really managed to keep lights on, both in Estonia and Finland. And then I remember one of my family members asking Why is this so important? Like why yes, I we see the cost, we understand that, but why are you so concerned about this?

And I actually didn't have a a good answer at the time. At the moment, I didn't manage to to give like a snappy answer. You couldn't frame it. Exactly. But now that I researched this, thinking back of this, it's that by February twenty twenty five, the average electricity prices across the Baltic states had doubled from January. And that means that a simple dragging of an anchor, not only did it cost 55 million euro to repair, but also it cost the consumers an average of 187 euro per kilowatt hour, so more than double in February and then March until it was restored, for a total cost of a consumer cost of being another 50 million euro.

So a total cost of damages. North of 100 million euro. By one anchor. 100 million against one anchor from one ship. And I think this is where it's a direct attack on economy. This is undeniable that it's costing the Finnish and Estonian people it's in their wallets, this hybrid threat or this act of aggression.

I'm gonna stop you there, Judy on it. I'm just gonna say, but it the point is it is deniable because. Who's to say that tanker didn't do it by accident? Where was that tanker flagged? I don't know if you have that detail. So let's talk about the Eagle S.

It's just a regular supply ship, tanker ship. forgive me, I I is it a container ship? I I don't know these things. But point is, a commercial chartered vessel. Exactly. So on on Wikipedia I have Eagle S was a crude oil and oil products tanker that sailed under the flag of the Cook Islands.

So once again there's that deniability. those damn Cook Islands kicking off. Exactly. But I I I would love to have had a chat with with the crew. I'm not sure that they would have had necessarily a Cook Island accent. And that's exactly the kind of deniability that that Russia has been really using throughout the last years.

And you could see you know as a result. You know, I think Sweden, the Baltic states, Finland, they've been a lot more proactive. I I think Norwegians as well, Danes, you know, everyone have an interest or coastline in in that area in intervening. Because I they have seized a few that I know there's separate stuff with tankers being seized 'cause of the Ukraine war and sanctions, but there's also been interdictions where people have or they're suspected of about to do sabotage. Effectively it's sabotage. It's scary how it's just a normal commercial vessel But being used at a particular point in time with just its anchor having such a profound impact on infrastructure.

Now, we talked about something super high techie, plastic explosives. I don't really know what it means. Then we talked about the usage of a tank. Okay. Great. Point is sophisticated.

Yeah. Then we talked about illegal and Guess who's the geek here, yeah? So th there we go, Royal Engineers. Hey, I my Christmas dinner was not occupied by this. Anyway. Right.

so the point is, sophisticated attack needs money, expertise to get that done. Then two, you still need a tanker. But I think where it gets even crazier are these quickly recruited Quick money and then let's dumb that person kind of attacks. I'm I'm sure there is a better name for this, but there is there is something that I wanna be staying in in in Estonia August fifteenth of twenty twenty six. A fire at Milrem Robotics, which builds robots sent to Ukraine, is attributed also as hybrid war. Estonia's security service says it was commissioned by Russian security services.

Three suspects from Latvia have been arrested. It's really rarely spies. It's not the conventional 007s who go in and or I guess the 007, as they say in Russian, seven, who actually go into and do these these jobs. These are people who have been recruited from Latvia, these are people who are in need, they have money problems, they are targeted online, and then that's an e they they don't even know that word that you use, sabotage. They are just thinking that they're getting some money for an easy arson attack. But it is sabotage.

So we talked about Germany, we talked about the Baltics, but things can also happen closer to home. And the same year of the tanker attack in in in twenty twenty four, I think it was March twenty-four, there was a warehouse in London, and that warehouse was associated with providing components, parts to Ukraine. And it was mysteriously burnt down, causing about a million pounds worth of damage. But I think what's particularly interesting with this case is not so much the warehouse itself and what was in the warehouse, although that is important and interesting. It is those who carried out the attack. the organizer was only 21 years old.

and he was rec he recruited friends who are, I think, the similar age, and then a friend of a friend. and apparently about six of them were involved. Their ages range between 20 to 23. So really young guys. Later turned out, I should say quote the the court case in October 25. Dylan Earl was jailed for 23 years, 17 of them in custody.

And the other perpetrators got between eight and thirteen years. and that they ordered the court to the vic pay the victims of the the warehouse damage about 160,000 pounds. This is in the era where quick money is is endemic, people are chasing quick money, it's a threat to our citizens. These these young guys had no idea that they were actually committing something almost as close as treason, an act of sabotage. Commissioned by a foreign country. They just thought it's quick money to set a fire.

Moving away from Estonia and the and the and the Eagle S, well I imagine that at least the captain and some of the crew pretty knew what they were up to. The incident in London is is particularly concerning and we don't know all the details and the full facts, but arson's a serious crime anyway. But the motivation being for just a quick bit of money to win, but go firebomb this. But actually they're part of a bigger strategic game, effectively been manipulated to carry out an act of sabotage, causing a lot of damage. And obviously, as I said, Arson is serious. the firefighters had to respond, the families involved who owned the property, the companies involved, etcetera.

Criminal damage. And luckily no one was hurt, but absolutely could have been lot worse. And these guys d don't see the game they were played in. I think the aspect in this is that this is somebody's sons. These are could be flatmates, could be somebody you might have set next to on a bus. And again, not trying to scaremonger.

But it's people who might just desperately need money and they're easily recruited by these super coercive means. But with the super coerciveness, there's an ease of it that I found scary. And it's something that I do believe that governments have a responsibility to talk about this threat. I know that the security services all around Europe are very actively tracking these kinds of sites where people could be recruited. However, I do think that there is more to be done on the conversation with the citizens that this is a kind of threat. It's much bigger than you think.

So if something looks too good to be true, to quote a great film, it ain't from Inglorious Bastards. But still with the Eagle S, still with the Latvia arson attack and the ones in London, there are people who have to. be caught people who actually execute the crime, but when cyber and cyber attack comes in, it's even more difficult to attribute the perpetrator. So moving on to cyber security, and this is really important because this remove there's no people involved directly. It's not a crew of a tanker, it's not manipulated people online carrying out arson. This is just malicious intent conducted from another territory online.

So the example using in April 25 in Norway, hackers managed to open a valve of the Bremanga Dam. Water poured out about 500 liters a second for about four hours before Norwegians were able to to turn it off. Norway's security s security chief said the aim was to cause fear and chaos among the general population. And clearly very serious incident because it is a critical piece of infrastructure that can cause flooding. So essentially one court of line managed manages to do the same thing what we saw in Ukraine in twenty twenty-three. When although by conventional means the Novakahovka Dam was burst open through an attack, and then thousands and thousands of people were living or had to evacuate due to the homes being flooded, essentially what happened was a fluvial tsunami.

And again, what's shocking about this is how simple it could be. And I dunno, do you think this was more of a stress test or a capability or show of force? Yeah, I I think it's Probably a mixture of all those things you mentioned. you know, I don't know what the politics was like at the time, between Norway and and Russia, I think was again labeled for this particular attack. But that could demonstrate what, by the way, if you wanna play this game, we can do this. so it achieves, you know, achieves the aim of like sharing intent.

And again, this is something super Easy to deny, even more difficult to actually show that it was Russia or Iran or any other adversary behind this. People who would have been the victims of this attack are ordinary people. Ordinary people, just like the people who have been working at JLR. I'm bringing this up and passing it on to you because you are a proud owner of a Land Rover Defender. And you were mentioning this that JLR has also been so Jaguar Land Rover has also been target of a cyber attack. Now, I don't know if it was I'm not sure.

Was it ransom or was this also at the end something connected to a state attack? 2025, there was a cyber attack on JLR and it stopped car production for about five, six weeks. Cost JLR about 1.9 billion pounds, it's estimated. Clearly not making cars, they can't sell cars. Smaller supply chain, smaller companies feeding into that supply chain, they don't get business. So huge knock-on effect, not just in the company JLR, but also these smaller companies, satellite companies that provide services and components to JLR.

Reckon about five million pounds was lost today, but later down the line, because of lack of profit, and certainly it's a tough operating environment in many conditions, but this cyber attack certainly wouldn't have helped. JLR has had to manage, manage has had to shed. 4,000 jobs, I think from a total workforce of 30,000. And it's been quite big news here. So the UK's largest car manufacturer is had it making huge cuts, partly to blame for bad stuff like in the past, like the cyber attack. Cyber is also one of the leading causes for flight disruptions, which is incredibly annoying when you're trying to get somewhere and then you are canceled due to a cyber attack.

But airports are also victim of other kinds of hybrid threats, for example, the presence of drones, which we are gonna be talking about in a separate episode. At the beginning of the episode, I mentioned that the label doesn't really matter whether it's hybrid threat, hybrid war, asymmetrical warfare, or political warfare. We are getting to the point where it's just war. People are being affected in the millions. And we are going to a situation where in Europe we're seeing Ukraine that is experiencing conventional warfare and hybrid warfare. Countries that are close to Russia are seeing an extreme level of hybrid threats.

Again, it's safe to say I think at this point that it's hybrid war. And then countries more to the West are seeing an escalation of hybrid war. I'd like people to know more about this because I think community resilience is perhaps the only way to effectively respond and be able to overcome these threats. And for people to return to their lives and get on with their lives in a normal, normal way. If we think back about the famous posters from World War Two in the UK, keep calm and carry on. That's our message.

For now, but we'd like to add one simple segment to that. It's keep calm, get informed, and carry on. To wrap things up, we've discussed, we try to frame what hybrid war is, loads of different terms: gray zone, isometric war, hybrid warfare, given recent examples of direct sabotage, indirect sabotage, manipulation, and then cyber attacks, they economic and on infrastructure. So it gives you a flavour of what's happened. This is all these are all pretty recent examples, certainly the last sort twenty four months. So this is happening and Homefront, this whole podcast is to just increase that awareness and to try and understand the discourse of all this and what it means for everyday people doing everyday lives and the the civilian side of it.

That's why we're here. I hope you enjoyed it. We will definitely get into more deeper issues, more technical stuff as we go on. I know Juliana, if you want to close out the episode. Just to say that we have a website which is homefrontpod.com. We'd like for you to get in touch.

For that, you can use hello at homefrontpod.com. We also are on X or Twitter. Get in touch with questions or topics that you'd like us to talk about. And just stay tuned for more wherever you get your podcast. This has been Homefront Podcast. I'm I'm Luke Irving.

And Juliana Stochino-Weiss. See you next time. Take care.