Technology giants control the global security
The events in Ukraine have challenged the principles on which the world security system was built. Economic sanctions, the first financing of arms supplies in the history of the EU, the creation of an international coalition and maneuvering energy flows - the essence of these actions was to unite and use the full range of political levers as instruments of struggle. However, it soon became clear that traditional state mechanisms are unable to counteract global challenges, and in the age of technology any confrontation takes new, hybrid forms. The current conflict in Ukraine was the first in history large technology companies to play a strategic role in ensuring security and defense.
"Strategic Compass" reveals new global threats
At the end of 2022, the European Union approved the "Strategic Compass" defense concept, which defines an action plan to strengthen security and defense policy until 2030. The instruments of power are not only soldiers, tanks and airplanes, but also technologies that are now shaping the new architecture of the world order. Recognizing the current geopolitical context, the European Union identifies hybrid strategies, cyberattacks and information interference as the main threats to its own security. Successful defense to these threats is impossible without close cooperation with modern technological giants.
The positioning of technology companies as independent international entities is based on their capabilities and potential. They act independently, most often at their own expense, using their own critical infrastructure and have their own powerful levers of information influence. In fact, they are on their way to gaining sovereignty.
In response to the new reality, states are seeking to synthesize their interests with business to form a powerful international alliance. After all, as the past year has shown, lack of access to technology can be a matter of life and death.
The European Union has already "hybridized" military and civilian investments in technology by establishing the EU Hub for Defense Innovation at the European Defense Agency in May 2022.
With the rapid development of new and often disruptive technologies and their fast weaponisation, innovation has become a geostrategic factor shaping the international security environment and the global balance of power.
The idea of developing military technological capabilities through cooperation with civilian actors within NATO was first mentioned in a report by the Defense College in 2019. It was noted that improving technology and developing artificial intelligence would help the NATO alliance to maintain and increase its "military superiority", stand at the helm of maintaining global security for many years. But a similar entity in NATO appeared three years later, in April 2022 - the Defense Innovation Accelerator for the North Atlantic (DIANA). The alliance set three items as priorities in 2023: energy sustainability, secure information sharing, and surveillance.
Interestingly, the U.S. had a similar analog long before, in 1958. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) under the U.S. Department of Defense is a research organization that studies innovative technologies related to military operations and the protection of national security. DARPA is world-renowned for its developments in health care (pandemic prevention), the computer network ARPANET, stealth technology (ways to reduce the visibility of combat vehicles) and some other projects. Although there has been no official confirmation of this, many media claim that Project Management is preparing to supply Ukraine with new, previously unknown weapons.
The role of corporations in the conflict in Ukraine
Arms supplies by Western countries have become the military basis of the conflict in Ukraine, but even more important role has been played by technologies that made it possible to counter hybrid forms of attack. First and foremost, we are talking about so-called "private space." Maxar Technologies and Capella Space have provided the AFU with access to intelligence programs for area monitoring, navigation, and images, many of which are used for information attacks. Ilon Musk's Space X provides the Ukrainian government and armed forces with Internet access through its low-orbit satellite service. And while company officials insist on the fact that their infrastructure can only be used for humanitarian purposes for uninterrupted communication, Starlink is widely used by the military for targeting missiles.
Microsoft has also come to Ukraine's defense, working from the beginning to move the Ukrainian government's critical infrastructure to cloud servers in order to detect cyberattacks and protect information.
I don’t think there is a company that has been more involved in defending Ukraine than Microsoft. We’ve committed $239 million of technology and financial assistance; $107 million of that went to literally move the government and much of the country of Ukraine from on-premises servers to the cloud. And I think that ability to disperse services and data to the cloud, and really put them in data centers that we run across Europe, has been one of the indispensable elements in defending Ukraine.
Amazon, which massively supplied hard disks for copying information, also started working with the Ukrainian digital infrastructure. According to open sources, thanks to Amazon, a total of 10 million gigabytes of Ukrainian governmental and economic data have been saved, and 100 national registers are still being digitally supported. In this case, to talk about "protection" of information can be conditional, as private companies have actually become owners of information that forms the basis of national security of the country.
In December 2022, the Ministry of Digital Economy of Ukraine and Amazon signed a memorandum of cooperation in the field of digital transformation for 2023, in addition, the company trains 11 thousand Ukrainians in IT-specialties within the framework of the program launched with the support of the Polish government.
Meta Corporation provided information assistance to Ukraine by setting up a special operations center to "respond as quickly as possible and eliminate hate content". The digital platforms Twitter, YouTube and Google restricted access in Europe to the TV channels Russia Today, Sputnik news, Moskva Media, Zvezda, VGTRK and others (about 50 cases of blocking in total).
In addition, Google helps Ukraine on another front: an app was created to notify of air alerts, Ukrainian forces tracked the movement of Russian troops using Google Maps, and free software to protect against cyberattacks was expanded. But after a year, it became clear that Facebook's technical restrictions are working not only against Russian publications, but also Ukrainian ones: the site blocks publications by keywords, making Ukrainian content invisible. And the blocking of Russian channels by YouTube and Google has already been recognized by the court as illegal in most cases.
Those companies that did not support the Ukrainian side in the conflict were automatically listed by the Ukrainian government as "international sponsors of the war". To date, these are about 22 companies, including Xiaomi, Leroy Merlin, Procter & Gamble, Auchan, Delta Tankers Ltd, Bonduelle and others. The Chinese company Xiaomi strongly opposed this assessment: the company's products are used only for civil and commercial purposes in more than 100 countries, and every consumer in the world has the right to access communication and information on the Internet.
The conflict in Ukraine was the first in history which clearly demonstrate the role of technology in defense and security. Today, successful defense against hybrid threats is impossible without cooperation between the state and large technology giants. The critical infrastructure of companies has become a protective shield on the ground, in space and inevitably in the media. Thus, the competition of holdings has moved from a purely economic plane to a political one, making them important subjects of international peace and security.
