Warfare in the modern world is no longer confined to front lines and trenches - with our highly connected, digital societies presenting different targets for attacks from enemy nation-states
12:21, 12 Dec 2025Updated 12:21, 12 Dec 2025
The UK is facing the "gravest threat since the 1930s," but if war broke out, it wouldn't look like it once did. President Putin and his ministers have said Russia has no desire to go to war with Europe, but at the same time, they've made it clear that if certain "red lines" were crossed by the UK and its European allies, they would "respond" to these "hostile steps".
President Trump is pushing for an end to the war in Ukraine, suggesting a peace proposal that would include large swathes of land surrendered to Russia and limits put on the Ukrainian military. This is not something that President Zelensky is likely to accept - but tensions continue to rise internationally as Trump demonstrates he is willing to take a hands-off approach to his traditional allies like the UK and other European nations, with the President really dubbing the continent as "decaying" and "weak".
The NATO chief, Mark Rutte, issued a stark warning that Russia could attack a member country in the next five years, saying: "Russia is already escalating its covert campaign against our societies. We must be prepared for the scale of war our grandparents or great-grandparents endured".
Whilst the NATO chief has commented about the scale of potential conflict, it's important to remember that warfare has inherently changed form since the Second World War. Drones now play a major role in war zones, and the nuclear capability of both Russia and the NATO member states means that the sense of "mutually assured destruction" that surrounded tensions during the Cold War remains in place when it comes to either side launching a nuclear attack.
Our highly connected, digital societies now present new targets for enemy states, however, that could quickly disrupt everyday life and leave civil society in disarray. Ongoing disruption of the internet and mobile phone networks would be, these days, a bad sign that war could be poised to begin.
There are, of course, other reasons that signal might drop, but sabotaging the UK's communication networks would do more than mean you can't text your parents or group chat. The ability to make payments would also be disrupted, limiting the public's access to essential items like food, and the distribution networks that get food around the country could break down, fast.
Electricity could also be threatened, and this is all due to a sprawling network of undersea cables that power our technology-dependent society - which a Russian spy vessel, the Yantar, was alleged to have recently been caught checking out. The Yantar is "widely believed to have scoped out these cables for potential sabotage in a time of war, which is why the Royal Navy has recently invested in a fleet of underwater drones equipped with integrated sensors," per the BBC.
Our data, the energy we use, and much more travel through this network of undersea pipelines and cables - so "We must assume that networks will be targeted first," Security Journal UK has said.
"Adversaries no longer need to physically attack to cause harm," the Journal explains. "They can cross borders in the cyber domain in ways that are impossible in the physical world, using cyber operations to pre-empt phases of conflict or as a core part of war fighting."
"What they target are networks, data systems, communications, and command-and-control as they are the lifeblood of operations across all physical domains."
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has accused the UK and other European allies of Ukraine of being "openly destructive" to the peace talks, whilst heaping praise on Trump for his efforts to end the conflict that has been raging since 2022.
Experts have told the Mirror that they are concerned the UK is facing "its greatest military threat in a generation" and that failure to prepare properly for what might come could be a fatal error.
"The reality is that the UK, and by extension, the world, faces its greatest military threat of a generation. Failure to take definitive action to prepare for a worst-case scenario could be our greatest mistake," explains Dr Arnab Basu, CEO of Kromek.
Professor Anthony Glees of the University of Buckingham, an international relations expert, says, "We in Europe know that this is our gravest hour since the 1930s," adding that the "days are over, full stop" when the UK could rely on the US to staunchly defend its traditional European allies.