The next war has already begun. We are just not fighting back yet. While national security debates focus on Russian aggression in Ukraine or a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan, these are conventional scenarios. The more urgent conflict is already underway—hybridized intelligence warfare. 

Unlike traditional battles, these wars are fought across TikTok and Instagram feeds, encrypted messaging apps, proxy criminal networks, and supply chains. Additionally, such warfare is not typically conducted by military assets. Its game pieces are a combination of intelligence, security, and law enforcement assets.

Despite this, our wargaming and policy planning remain fixated on tanks and missiles. The problem is not that those threats are fictional—they are, of course, very real—but that our institutions are structurally blind to the ongoing forms of conflict that don’t look like traditional war. 

The recent Ukrainian drone attack on Russian air force assets is a case in point. While it caused serious physical damage to Russia’s bomber fleet, its more important function was symbolic and informational. The operation was led not by the Ukrainian military but by the SBU—Ukraine’s domestic intelligence and security service. The strike was quickly publicized through edited footage designed for global platforms. This was not war in the traditional sense—it was messaging through sabotage, weaponized for X/Twitter.

This is the emerging norm. Covert manipulation of key institutions—economic, political, and social—is no longer just a means to facilitate battlefield victories; it has become an end in itself and the main event. Russia, China, and others have created and operationalized a playbook that includes cyber intrusions of critical infrastructure, digital propaganda psychologically reshaping societies, and strategic corruption to hollow out institutions from within. All are operationally organized by intelligence, security, and law enforcement assets. Not military assets.

Russia’s use of criminal proxies exemplifies this hybrid warfare. The Kremlin leverages

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