NATIONAL SECURITY, INTELLIGENCE AND DEFENCE PREDICTIONS FOR 2024
“As for future life, every person must judge for themselves between conflicting vague probabilities.” - Charles Darwin
Strategic foresight calls for detailed and systematic analysis of driving forces and trends of change before the development of plans. It is the ability to create and maintain a high-quality, coherent and functional forward view, and to use the insights arising in useful organizational ways. Forecasting is the process of making predictions based on past and present data. Later these can be compared (resolved) against what actually happens. We can look back on predictions made in 2023 to see that we are trending fairly accurately.[1] ?
THE WEATHER FORECAST FOR 2024
A PERFECT STORM
In 2024, we will continue to experience meta-effects from convergence. Watch for a perfect storm to develop from a confluence of global trends and local friction. Mega-cities and densely populated littoral regions will be placed under increasing pressure by scarcity of resources, climate change, and poverty - exacerbated by conflict. Youth bubbles in the population, inheriting historical grievances, with access to weapons and technology, will fuel violence. Humanitarian crisis could very well see a resurgence of a pandemic originating from a war zone. ??Meanwhile, accelerated advancements in science and technology will re-shape defence, intelligence and national security. Disruptive (dual-use technology) technology such as artificial intelligence, drones and the weaponization of social media will figure prominently in 2024. Traditional security, intelligence and defence organizations will be challenged to adapt to emerging non-orthodox national security threats posed by non-state actors engaged in cognitive warfare and more aggressive cyber-attacks. Canada is becoming less relevant to the world and more of a permissive target.
WAR ON TRUTH
The war on truth will remain one of the greatest challenges of our lifetime. The arms race in the information domain will be further escalated by Canada’s adversaries, challenging the West, while staying just below the level-of-armed-conflict. Campaigns across this domain will target industry and society directly while bypassing government detection and security. Hence, the first line of defence will continue to be led by the private sector and platform providers who will be pressured to detect and moderate Mis-Dis-Mal information at scale.
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COGNITIVE WARFARE
Society, industry and individuals will remain proxy targets of cognitive warfare. Most modern influence campaigns will continue to use cyber to propagate the messaging. Conversely, most cyber software attacks will be enabled by social engineering – targeting wetware (the user cognitive function). ?Future conflicts will occur amongst rival states that are hyper-connected digitally across private civilian infrastructure and proximal to hubs of political, military and economic power. While conventional cyber security holds to the notion of secure perimeters, walled gardens and firewalls - cognitive warfare has no geographic borders or time boundaries. Hence, cognitive attacks against the integrity of the data and veracity of information will “jump these air gaps” in even the most secure network. ?The metaverse will place humans at the centre of an immersive and persistent virtual world as we transfer our cognitive load on to devices and into the cloud – henceforward, making us more exposed to cognitive attacks than every before. Insidious threats of disinformation, deception, influence, interference and cyber-attacks from state actors, paramilitary and criminal proxies are national security threats that will need to be addressed together in 2024.
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THREATS TO CANADA’S DEMOCRATIC PROCESS
Canada's democratic process will become increasingly vulnerable to information-based threats[2], with foreign adversaries exploiting technological advancements to undermine the integrity of social-democracy. Cyber threat activity targeting democratic processes will surge globally. Election interference, once sporadic, will become a pervasive and strategic tool employed by foreign adversaries to manipulate outcomes. Russia and China will remain prominent players in cyber threat activities against Canada and will target both critical infrastructure and system of governance. Russian and Chinese definitions as to what defines offensive cyber operations will continue to be much grander than Canada’s doctrine of cyber defence. Sophisticated tactics and pan-domain strategies will pose significant challenges for attribution and defence. Generative AI, including deep learning algorithms, will increasingly being used to create convincing and tailored disinformation. This technology will amplify the scale and impact of influence campaigns. Deepfake videos, produced through generative AI, will pose a substantial threat to Canada by spreading misinformation and attempting to manipulate public opinion. Detecting and countering deepfake content will be a growing challenge but rapid advances will be made to counter these threats in the next year. Foreign adversaries will leverage social (semantic) botnets with AI capabilities to broadcast propaganda and implant discord. These automated accounts will mimic human behavior convincingly, making them difficult to distinguish. New methods of detection will be invented in 2024.
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ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
AI applications (like ChatGPT), based upon large language models, signaled a punctuated advancement in the science and common usage of AI across society in 2023. Artificial Intelligence and big data will continue to transform multiple aspects of our society faster than we can establish norms of behaviour, policy and law in 2024 – waking up to find ourselves a decade behind overnight. GenerativeAI will drive adversarial innovation for offensive cyber operations, influence and deception. Deep fakes will fool most people, most of the time. ?AI will also transform the intelligence business. Private intelligence companies will the first to adopt and implement AI for collection, analysis and reporting. Meanwhile, AI will facilitate threat-hunting, attribution and detection of AI-generated MDM. The use of AI in disinformation campaigns is expected to evolve, with adversaries employing more sophisticated techniques to manipulate public opinion and disrupt democratic processes. 2024 will see an arms race for artificial intelligence for military and intelligence purposes amongst Canada’s partners and competitors.
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ACCELERATION OF INNOVATION
Cyber power will continue to double every ten (10) months whereas the power of AI will advance in a fraction of this time. There will remain substantive challenges; most notably public sector procurement’s ability to acquire next-generation capabilities and talent at the speed of our adversaries. Canada’s deep-technology sector will enable applied research and innovation essential to the economic prosperity of our country, but will falter without procurement vehicles or a buy-Canadian-first policy. Meanwhile, both adversaries and competitors will exploit our private sector and your supply chain and productize Canadian IP.??Competitors will continue to weaponized their deep tech sector as a component of strategic national power.
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PROXIES AND PRIVATEERS
Today’s news cycle is headlining: information and cognitive warfare, propaganda, disinformation, foreign influence and interference - all of which are accelerated by cyberspace and enabled by the industrial ecosystem of our adversaries. We will continue to watch proxy wars such as played out in Ukraine, which will become normalized.? The West will likely find themselves more often confronting non-state actors, private military companies, terrorist or criminal groups in control of countries. ?In this fast-paced game, Canada’s adversaries will have some strategic advantages[3], above all, their willingness to field a full team by leveraging their sovereign industrial base and acquiring services at operational tempo. There will be a reconstitution of the Wagner Group[4] under Pavel Prigozhin with more direct control by the Kremlin. This ascendancy signals both change continuity. Expect a strategic expansion, commitment to the existing missions supported by a renewed recruiting drive. The Russian information warfare ecosystem will continue to be elusive, both vast and complex - consists of nested layers of corporate entities, vicarious state-owned research institutes, military units, universities and soviet-era research facilities associated with the state security apparatus.??Complicating matters, the Russian state will actively encourage and employ criminal hackers. Similarly, troll farms for dis-information and influence operations will work independently from decentralized actors and crowdsourced campaigns.?Russia and China will continue to colonialize of the African continent and will militarily threaten Canadian mining operations in the region. Meanwhile, the Chinese global grand strategy (Road and Belt Initiative, Thousand Talents Plan, United Front, Military-Civil Fusion, Three Warfares) is a juggernaut for which Canada does not yet have a counter-strategy.
China’s road and belt initiative is intended to shift the balance of economic, technological and military global power. The Polar Silk Road is a key part of this global strategy. The Thousand Talents Plan recruits leading international experts in scientific research, innovation, and entrepreneurship. United Front Work gathers intelligence on, manages relations with, and attempts to influence or intimidate, individuals and organizations in Canada, using industry, government, military, intelligence services and organized crime. China’s Military-Civil Fusion Strategy has companies become direct benefactors of intelligence. China’s Three Warfares strategy is a political and information pre-kinetic warfare calculus of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) encompassing media or public opinion warfare, psychological warfare and legal warfare.
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ARCTIC SECURITY
The pan-domain threat to Arctic security will develop[5]. However, Canadians will be slow to fully appreciate the complexities of the threat. The Arctic region, once considered remote and isolated, has now become a global arena of interest owing to its rapidly changing environment and increased accessibility. As various stakeholders turn their attention to the Arctic, the region will face an array of security threats across multiple domains including those related to shipping navigation, fishing, oil exploration, telecommunications infrastructure, mobile devices & apps, space and ocean surveillance, foreign investments, influence on cultural initiatives, disinformation and political interference - shedding light on the complex challenges this region faces. Russia’s Ice Curtain and China’s Polar Silk Road will most likely contest the environment from sea floor to space while continuing to conduct cyber, influence and interference campaigns against Canada. The Arctic will demand a delicate balance between harnessing its opportunities and addressing the complex security concerns that threaten the environmental, economic and political future of the region. Arctic states, will generally be committed to peaceful cooperation and the rule of international law with diplomacy, negotiation, and cooperation remain the preferred approaches. However, it is unlikely that Russia and China will abide by world order norms. Therefore, it is crucial for Canada to stand on guard, remain vigilant and protect its interests, to ensure the stability, security and prosperity of the region across all domains.
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FOREIGN INTERFERENCE
Foreign influence and interference, are problems that we have been admiring for quite some time. In 2023, the topic was highly-partisan and centred around investigating the government’s response to allegations of political and election interference. Reports underscored that elected officials have been willfully ignoring the problem for decades.? Last year, the prime minister’s national security adviser said AI-powered misinformation and disinformation campaigns are a “threat of a generation” but the government’s ability to do anything about it is “quite limited.” In 2024, our intelligence agencies will find a more receptive audience. The foreign interference discussion will become more sophisticated and broadened include: espionage, influence and Mis-Dis-Mal Information (MDM), shaping critical infrastructure, undermining trust in the electoral system fueling domestic violent extremism and cyber-attacks across all of Canadian society. The solution will necessarily involve public private partnerships and directed investment with industry.
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RESEARCH SECURITY
Foreign ownership, control, influence, interference and espionage will continue to lead to covert knowledge transfer that will contribute to advancements in the military, security, and intelligence capabilities of states or groups that pose a threat to Canada and harm the Canadian economy, society, and critical infrastructure.? Government research labs and Universities will be compelled to address national security threats from research partnerships, joint programs, and foreign interference. Ideological motivated extremism, disruption of classes and intimidation of students and staff on campuses will lead to renewed discussions and protocols which more clearly distinguish free speech and protest from hate speech and bullying. Unconventional espionage cases in early 2024 will establish new precedence for foreign students
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FOREIGN INTELLIGENCE
Canada has worked under a shared model of foreign intelligence collection since the Second World War, heavily relied on allies for intelligence, while the global environment has become more complex and gaps in intelligence have widened to the point where Canada is strategically disadvantaged. The need for a government foreign intelligence agency has been very well documented[6] and will become more acute for global situational awareness, competitiveness and to remain relevant within defence and intelligence alliances in 2024. Meanwhile, the security and foreign intelligence needs of the private sector will be satisfied exclusively through OSINT and commercial sources.??
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MILITARY TACTICS AND IRREGULAR-HYBRID WAR
The World will continue to watch the military campaigns unfold in Ukraine and the Middle-East. Modern warfare tactics and technology will undergo an introspective analysis from perspectives of irregular-hybrid-warfare, adaptive dispersed operations, the use of mercenaries, the rapid fielding of dual use technology and use of civilian infrastructure like Starlink for military effects. Irregular warfare will become more ‘regular’ in 2024 as we will witness violent struggles amongst state and non-state actors for legitimacy and influence over the relevant population(s)/land involving conflicts in which enemy combatants are not regular military forces of nation-states. It will not be without moral hazards and complexities. Irregular-Urban warfare, such as we have seen in Gaza will challenge precepts of the international the Law of Armed Conflict (LOAC) most commonly cited principles of international humanitarian law governing the legal use of force in an armed conflict including: military necessity, distinction, proportionality, humanity and honor as well as the definitions of non-combatants and targeting rules, as the conflict is investigated, deconstructed and openly debated.
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领英推荐
POLARIZATION OF SOCIETY
Civil society will continue to grapple with issues of the day, norms of behavior, and collective social values with acute oscillations left and right of centre. Government and industry, who are not prone to rapid cultural change, will find themselves between a rock and a hard place - pushed and pulled often in contrary directions and hence challenged to respond without upsetting some group. Legitimate lawful protests may devolve into blockades, acts of civil disobedient or intimidation. Protesters and activists at opposite ends of the spectrum will clash more frequently both on social media and on city streets in Canada. The Gaza-Israeli conflict will continue to polarize both alt-right and alt-left. Russia, Iran and China will work covertly to fuel discord and division in the West by supporting all extreme views. Unfortunately, antisemitism will peak in 2024 from the far-left and right, Islamic extremists and nation states like Russia and Iran. Russia will continue to influence alt-right religious organizations, white supremist ideology, the peace movement and anti-government protests. Both Russia and China will use mis-dis-mal-information as a weapon to disrupt democratic socio-political framework.
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DOMESTIC EXTREMISM
Domestic Ideologically Motivated Violent Extremism (IMVE), Politically Motivated Violent Extremism (PMVE) and Religiously Motivated Violent Extremism (RMVE) will become increasingly enigmatic. We can expect ongoing influence, interference and manipulation of homegrown groups/movements within Canada by foreign actors. Polarized views on the left-right spectrum will ironically converge in areas of tactics and shared ideology and targets. IMVE/PMVE/RMVE will become indistinguishable in many cases. For example, it will become harder to distinguish Islamist doctrine from that of dominionism, or alt-right from hard-left in the future. Russia, Iran and terrorist groups, again will be working behind the scenes and online to generate animosity and recruit members. Right-wing extremists will perpetrate the majority of all attacks and plots in 2024. The threat being notably from white supremacists, anti-government extremists and involuntary celibates (or incels) but left-wing extremism will likely increase this year – especially in non-violent actions, disruptive protests and intimidation tactics. Identity politics and social justice movement will be hijacked by domestic extremism and foreign interference with attacks on free speech, cancel culture, intolerant and antisemitism. There will likely be an increase in direct ‘black bloc’ tactics members of the extreme left in anti-government activism, digital activism, doxing, harassment, physical violence, destruction and vandalism. There may very well be a repeat of attacks using improvised explosive devices and other homemade weapons. ?Some will go so far left that they will end up on the extreme right. The actions and effects of Antifa movement will be ironically similar to those of QAnon. Russian will take advantage of these extreme ideologues and deliberately conflate the two. At least half of security intelligence resources will be devoted to fighting extremism in 2024.
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CYBER DEFENCE
The Internet-of-Everything (IoE) and social media will have created a frictionless surface (Metaverse) between the physical, cyber and human terrains, as well as persistent synthetic worlds. Social botnets augmented by AI capabilities are likely to become more adaptive and resilient, necessitating continuous innovation in counter-measures. We will need to be on the lookout for national infrastructure-crushing Internet-of-everything (IoE) botnets that are capable of launching distributed coordinated denial of service attacks simultaneously on cyber, IoT devices and social networks. ?Cyber deception will be adopted by more organizations as effective means of proactive defence. Cyber deception has already been established as best practice to the extent that it is mandated in policy and standards is supported in law. There will also be an emphasis on persistent engagement amongst allies and re-opening of the strike-back strategy[7] by industry. Meanwhile, major Cyber defence programs will be challenged owing to doctrine, authorities, speed-of-procurement, talent retention and rapidly evolving threats.
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OSINT
Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) will become critical for achieving enhanced understanding in a fast-moving world of ubiquitous open data and sophisticated commercial intelligence (CSINT) sources and services.[8] OSINT/CSINT will continue to demonstrate extraordinary capability to deliver unique, tailored intelligence that is fast, precise, accurate, actionable and affordable for military and civilian applications.?OSINT will shape intelligence tradecraft as well, either enhancing or challenging it in every form of intelligence. In 2024, over 90% of end-reporting of classified intelligence will be derived from open and commercial sources. Allies and adversaries will outsource sizeable workloads and requests for information (RFI). The creation of a centre-of-excellence for OSINT, professional codes-of-conduct and the need for an intelligence contracting mechanism (supply arrangement) will be a focus of our attention as a country, while the media, the research community and industry have fully embraced OSINT. The definition of Publicly Available Information (PAI) in Canadian privacy legislation will be forced to evolve out-of-necessity to align with common practice and international standards.
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INDUSTRY
In 2024, commercial Intelligence will yield a leap in speed and efficiency in owing to AI, secure cloud computing, access ubiquitous big data sets, the rapid development of open tools and crowdsourcing top-talent (on-demand) globally – realizing the concept of adaptive dispersed operations. Correspondingly, we will continue to experience a rise of both open and commercial intelligence[9] and the dominance of cyber, soft power and influence in global affairs, national security and military power. We are entering the age of influence and information where open data is the currency of the intelligence business. This information domain is predominantly owned, operated or curated by the private sector. In 2023, the war in Ukraine has shown that commercial intelligence can achieve the similar, and complementary, outcomes as conventional intelligence sources and methods with speed and efficacy. Hence, in 2024, we will see a continued rise of industry[10] in cyber, intelligence and military operations, particularly amongst Canada’s allies and adversaries.
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[2] https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/cyber-threats-canadas-democratic-process-analysis-dave-mcmahon-8wawe
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[10] https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/rise-industrial-power-21st-century-regulation-public-dave-mcmahon
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Bad Ass Expert: Extremism & Ideological Violence ? Doctoral Candidate ? Master's Terrorism Studies/Master's Sociology ? Dog Whisperer
10 个月Nice piece. Not a fan of using CSIS's acronyms, but we'll see how those work out. Domestic extremism, insurgency, and political and social resistance will definitely be big, likely utilizing some of the other categories, as they form into more sophisticated, formalized movements. Keep an ear open for ideologically-themed violence, where single-issue supporters become key to other groups' efficacy.