Kick things off with Okta's Chief Security Officer, David Bradbury then hear from the Grugq, our opening keynote presenter.

This talk describes strategic cyber warfare, including great power conflicts from a strategic level that includes cyber, and cyber operations from within a prism that includes great power contest. Under this lens, individual cyber operations are less interesting, and are advancing towards strategic objectives. Cyber operations can now achieve results typically reserved for kinetic warfare.

Existing discussions of CyberWar are severely hampered by focusing on cyber battles at the tactical or operational level, rather than the strategic level of war. Strategic cyber warfare, aka persistent engagement, is based on principles that have been around for a long time (e.g. Fabian strategy), but only recently formalised as doctrine in the West. None of this is new, but the cyber dimension collapses information spheres, geolocation, and gatekeepered communities. The main impact of this is flattening the resource requirement differences between a state, a corporation and a person.

Small groups of people can take actions that are as effective or more effective than states.