War Scenarios and Cyber Infrastructure Resilience
Executive Summary
The widespread Internet outages experienced in 2025 raise legitimate questions about the potential involvement of nation-state actors testing Western cyber defenses. As digital systems underpin almost every aspect of modern life, it is essential to view our Internet and IT infrastructure as a critical part of national security and essential services.
This analysis examines the strategic vulnerabilities of modern cloud-dependent infrastructure from a military perspective, proposing a Survivable Resilience Framework (SRF) to address systemic weaknesses in the face of deliberate external attacks.
Strategic Context: Digital Infrastructure as Military Target
🎯 High-Value Targets
Global cloud providers and CDNs represent concentration points analogous to military choke points
⚠️ Nation-State Testing
2025 outages may indicate adversaries probing Western cyber defense capabilities
💥 Cascading Disruption
Single-provider compromise impacts banking, logistics, healthcare, and public safety simultaneously
🛡️ Survivability Gap
Modern infrastructure lacks military-grade resilience despite supporting critical national functions
Military Targeting Doctrine Applied to Digital Infrastructure
Traditional Military Targets
Military history shows that in times of war, adversaries target key nodes and choke points to maximize disruption with minimal effort:
- Transportation Hubs: Rail and road junctions, ports, airports
- Manufacturing Centers: Industrial capacity and supply chain nodes
- Energy Infrastructure: Power generation, refineries, transmission networks
- Water Distribution: Treatment facilities and distribution networks
- Communications: Broadcasting stations, telephone exchanges, data centers
Digital Equivalents in Modern Warfare
In a digital context, the strategic targeting doctrine translates to major service concentration points:
| Target Category | Digital Equivalent | Impact if Compromised |
|---|---|---|
| Transportation Hubs | Content Delivery Networks (Cloudflare, Akamai, Fastly) | Global website and application inaccessibility |
| Manufacturing Centers | Cloud Infrastructure (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud) | Business operations, SaaS services, data access disrupted |
| Energy Infrastructure | DNS Root Servers and Major Resolvers | Internet navigation failure, service discovery breakdown |
| Communications | OAuth/SSO Providers (Auth0, Okta, Azure AD) | Authentication failure across multiple services |
| Supply Chain Nodes | Package Repositories (npm, PyPI, Maven Central) | Software development and deployment paralysis |
Strategic Significance
The very success of these platforms has made them high-value strategic targets. Their size, interconnectivity, and ubiquity mean that disabling or compromising even one can cause disproportionate disruption—impacting everything from banking and logistics to healthcare and public safety.
Internet Survivability vs. Service Availability
The ARPANET Legacy
It is likely that the Internet itself would remain operational in a widespread conflict scenario. The original ARPANET and its successors were designed for survivability and redundancy under duress. The core routing protocols (BGP, OSPF) and packet-switching architecture inherently support route-around capabilities when network segments fail.
Critical Distinction
Internet connectivity ≠ Service availability
The network infrastructure may function while the services running on top of it fail catastrophically.
The Unanticipated Dependency Problem
What was not anticipated when designing resilient network protocols is the extent to which today's Internet functionality depends on a complex lattice of third-party services that were never designed with military-grade resilience in mind:
- Software-as-a-Service (SaaS): Business applications hosted on third-party infrastructure
- Cloud Infrastructure: Compute, storage, and database services in multi-tenant environments
- DNS Resolution: Centralized naming services required for service discovery
- CDN Layers: Content distribution networks handling static and dynamic assets
- Authentication Services: OAuth and SSO systems controlling access to multiple platforms
- Payment Gateways: Financial transaction processing dependencies
Vulnerability Assessment
Multi-Tenant Cloud Services: Shared infrastructure enables cross-customer impact from single compromise
Authentication Centralization: SSO provider failure locks users out of multiple services simultaneously
CDN Dependency: Content distribution failure renders websites and applications unusable
DNS Resolution: Name resolution failure prevents service discovery despite network connectivity
Survivable Resilience Framework (SRF)
A Survivable Resilience Framework (SRF) must be developed to explicitly recognize and address vulnerabilities within multi-tenant cloud services, dependency chains, and single points of systemic weakness. The framework comprises five core pillars:
1. Redundant Multi-Cloud Strategies
Avoid single-provider dependencies through deliberate architectural diversification.
- Active-Active Deployment: Services running simultaneously on multiple cloud providers
- Geographic Distribution: Data and compute resources distributed across sovereign boundaries
- Provider Diversity: Utilize fundamentally different technology stacks (AWS + Azure + on-premise)
- Automated Failover: Real-time health monitoring with traffic redirection capabilities
- Cost Optimization: Balance redundancy costs against risk exposure
2. Decentralized DNS and Routing Models
Implement local fallback modes to maintain service discovery during upstream failures.
- Local DNS Caching: Extended TTL and persistent cache for critical services
- Alternative Name Resolution: Hosts files, mDNS, and service mesh discovery
- DNS Redundancy: Multiple resolver providers with different infrastructure
- DNSSEC Implementation: Cryptographic validation preventing cache poisoning attacks
3. Independent Data Replication
National and sectoral data sovereignty with offline accessibility.
- National Data Repositories: Critical datasets replicated within sovereign boundaries
- Sector-Specific Backups: Healthcare, financial, government data with local copies
- Immutable Storage: Write-once-read-many systems preventing ransomware impact
- Air-Gapped Archives: Offline copies for catastrophic recovery scenarios
- Regular Testing: Periodic restoration drills validating recovery procedures
4. Zero-Trust Architecture with Offline Fail-Safes
Security models that function during Internet disruption for critical command and control systems.
- Local Authentication: Identity verification without cloud dependency
- Cryptographic Authorization: Token-based access with offline validation
- Network Segmentation: Critical systems isolated from general network
- Manual Override Procedures: Documented processes for human-in-the-loop authorization
- Offline Capability Testing: Regular drills simulating Internet unavailability
5. Regular War-Game Simulations
Test response capabilities and continuity under realistic attack scenarios.
- Red Team Exercises: Adversarial testing of defense capabilities
- Sectoral Coordination Drills: Multi-organization response simulation
- Cascading Failure Scenarios: Testing response to multiple simultaneous outages
- Communication Testing: Alternative channels during primary system failure
- Recovery Time Validation: Measuring actual vs. expected restoration timelines
Implementation Priorities by Sector
| Sector | Immediate Actions | Strategic Objectives |
|---|---|---|
| Government |
• Deploy sovereign cloud infrastructure • Establish air-gapped backup systems • Mandate SRF compliance for contractors |
National cyber resilience strategy with legislative backing and funding allocation |
| Healthcare |
• Local patient record replication • Offline diagnostic system capability • Emergency communication protocols |
Medical service continuity during Internet disruption without compromising care quality |
| Financial Services |
• Multi-cloud payment processing • Offline transaction authorization • Manual reconciliation procedures |
Maintain transactional capability and settlement processes during infrastructure attacks |
| Utilities |
• OT/IT network segregation • Local SCADA system control • Manual override capabilities |
Critical infrastructure operation independence from Internet-connected systems |
| Telecommunications |
• Diverse international connectivity • National backbone redundancy • Emergency routing protocols |
Maintain connectivity infrastructure despite targeted attacks on specific providers |
Nation-State Threat Assessment
Evidence of Reconnaissance Activity
The 2025 outages exhibit characteristics consistent with systematic infrastructure probing:
- Sequential Targeting: Major providers affected in progression suggesting deliberate selection
- Recovery Observation: Attack timing allows adversaries to measure response capabilities
- Multi-Vector Testing: Different attack surfaces explored (DNS, CDN, authentication)
- Subtlety: Incidents plausibly attributable to technical failures rather than attacks
- Intelligence Gathering: Dependency mapping revealed through cascading failures
Strategic Implications
Warning Indicators
If nation-state actors are indeed testing infrastructure resilience, the reconnaissance phase precedes operational deployment. Organizations and governments must treat these incidents as advance warning of potential future attacks with hostile intent.
Adversary Capabilities
- Resource Availability: Nation-states possess significant computational and personnel resources
- Long-Term Planning: Multi-year campaigns establish persistent access and backdoors
- Supply Chain Infiltration: Compromise at development or distribution stages
- Zero-Day Exploitation: Advanced persistent threats leveraging unknown vulnerabilities
- Coordinated Operations: Simultaneous multi-target attacks overwhelming defense capabilities
Conclusion: Preparing for Deliberate Attack
Only by acknowledging the Internet's current fragility—and structuring national and sector-level continuity strategies accordingly—can we ensure that digital society remains operational under conditions of deliberate external attack.
Core Principles
- Assume Breach: Design systems expecting compromise rather than hoping for prevention
- Eliminate Single Points of Failure: Redundancy and diversity at every layer
- Maintain Offline Capability: Critical functions must operate without Internet connectivity
- Regular Testing: War-game simulations reveal vulnerabilities before adversaries exploit them
- International Coordination: Allied nations sharing threat intelligence and response strategies
Call to Action
The Survivable Resilience Framework provides a roadmap for organizations and governments to systematically address these vulnerabilities. Implementation requires:
- Leadership Commitment: Executive and political recognition of cyber infrastructure as national security priority
- Resource Allocation: Funding for redundancy, diversification, and testing programs
- Regulatory Mandates: Compliance frameworks requiring SRF implementation
- Public-Private Partnership: Collaboration between government, industry, and academia
- Cultural Change: Shifting from efficiency optimization to resilience prioritization
Final Assessment
The question is not whether digital infrastructure will face deliberate attack during future conflicts, but when. Organizations and nations that implement the Survivable Resilience Framework today will maintain operational capability while others face catastrophic service disruption.
Preparation is not optional—it is a strategic imperative for national security.
Integration with Survivable Hybrid Cloud Research
This war scenarios analysis directly informs the Survivable Hybrid Cloud research program by:
Research Contributions
- Threat Model Expansion: Extending from accidental outages to deliberate adversarial attacks
- Defense-in-Depth Validation: Military targeting doctrine supporting multi-layer resilience approach
- Critical Infrastructure Focus: Prioritizing sectors with national security implications
- Testing Methodology: War-game simulations as research validation technique
- Policy Recommendations: Translating technical findings into actionable government guidance
Future Research Directions
- Quantitative modeling of SRF implementation costs vs. disruption risk reduction
- Sector-specific resilience frameworks tailored to healthcare, finance, utilities
- International comparative analysis of national cyber resilience strategies
- Technical implementation guides for zero-trust offline fail-safes
- Simulation platform development for automated war-game scenario testing