Asymmetrical warfare: new strategies on the battlefield

4 episodes

1

Guerrilla 2.0: Asymmetric warfare in the tech era
2

Surrogate warfare: has technology opened new doors?
3

Asymmetric warfare: how to respond to hybrid threats
4

Ukraine: disinformation on the battleground of a hybrid war

Épisode 1/4

Guerrilla 2.0: Asymmetric warfare in the tech era

With Richard Robert, Journalist and Author

On October 27th, 2021

4min reading time

Key takeaways

Asymmetric warfare pits states against non-state entities.
These entities have long been defined as being at a technical disadvantage when faced with conventional forces.
But today asymmetric warfare relies on technology and its strategic models are not dissimilar to those of start-ups.

Épisode 2/4

Surrogate warfare: has technology opened new doors?

With Richard Robert, Journalist and Author

On October 27th, 2021

4min reading time

Andreas Krieg

Senior lecturer at King's College London and research associate at the Institute of Middle Eastern Studies

Key takeaways

Surrogate warfare is a way for states to remain engaged in endless wars, which take place in a grey area between war and peace.
It involves outsourcing and delegating armed operations to the market: private military and security companies, rebel groups and militias, non-state actors.
Surrogate warfare also plays out with technological tools and information wars.
The surrogates also include non-human agents, from robotics to artificial intelligence.

Épisode 3/4

Asymmetric warfare: how to respond to hybrid threats

With Richard Robert, Journalist and Author

On October 27th, 2021

4min reading time

Jérôme Clech

Research engineer at ESDR3C (CNAM) and Lecturer at Sciences Po Paris

Key takeaways

Hybrid threats come from states that add information manipulation to conventional warfare, but also from hybrid, criminal or terrorist entities.
Taking these hybrid threats into account calls for hybrid responses: the “war before the war”.
“Augmented prevention” would combine the sword (armed drones, cyber offensives, and offensives in the broader “cyber” field) to act externally and the shield (cyber security and security through cyber) to protect our territories.
Europe needs to increase its capabilities in this area, especially as we now need to update our responses in anticipation of these threats: the challenges posed are technological, legal, and ethical.

Fake news, false information fly into a person. Information war, hybrid war, war in the media space. Cyber warfare, DDoS attack, fakes, hackers and cybercrime, phishing, propaganda.

Épisode 4/4

Ukraine: disinformation on the battleground of a hybrid war

On November 2nd, 2022

7 min reading time

Carole Grimaud

Expert at the Geneva Geostrategic Observatory and Lecturer in Geopolitics of Russia at Université Paul Valéry

Arnaud Mercier

Professor of Information and Communication at Institut Français de Presse (University of Paris 2 - Assas)

Key takeaways

Information is an essential weapon in times of war, especially when the conflict is so close to home.
In France, mainstream information tends to support a singular point of view which can lead people to seek different sources of information.
Russia has created fake sites from where information is relayed by fake accounts to influence mainstream sources.
Fake accounts and fake news are intended to distort the narrative and sow doubt.
It is the image of the West that is being targeted: fake accounts do more damage in societies where anti-Western sentiment is already present.

Contributors

Richard Robert

Journalist and Author

Richard Robert is editorial director of Telos and conducts forward-looking research as part of the Observatoire du long terme (Long-Term Observatory) and the Institut de prospective CentraleSupélec Alumni (CentraleSupélec Alumni Institute for Forward-Looking Studies). From 2012 to 2018, he was editor-in-chief of the Paris Innovation Review. His latest books include: Le Social et le Politique (The Social and the Political), with Guy Groux and Martial Foucault, CNRS Éditions, 2020; La Valse européenne (The European Waltz), with Elie Cohen, Fayard, 2021; Une brève histoire du droit d’auteur (A Brief History of Copyright), with Jean-Baptiste Rendu, Flammarion, 2024; Les Nouvelles Dimensions du partage de la valeur (The New Dimensions of Value Sharing), with Erell Thevenon-Poullennec, PUF, 2024; Les Imaginaires sociaux des smart cities (The Social Imaginaries of Smart Cities), Presses des Mines, 2025. Forthcoming: Sauver la démocratie sociale (Saving Social Democracy), with Gilbert Cette and Guy Groux, Calmann-Lévy, coll. ‘Liberté de l'esprit’ (Freedom of Thought), 2026.