Why Russia is rushing to establish a cyber army

The head of the Ministry of Digital Development intends to further simplify the work of IT specialists by proposing the creation of a cyber force for the army. The army is expected to recruit IT specialists on a contract basis.

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Russia's Minister of Digital Development Maksud Shadayev recently said that it would be a good idea to create IT armies as an alternative to military service. This is a bold and controversial statement from such a high-ranking official. Shadayev's point of view is understandable because since the start of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, Russian programmers have been emigrating to other countries to work - which is not at all beneficial for the country's Digital Development Ministry.

At least 100,000 programmers left Russia in 2022, and the flow is not expected to stop in 2023. They continue to work for Russian companies, but remotely. To mitigate this, the Russian government has introduced a deferment of military service for IT professionals under the age of 30. However, to qualify for this privilege, programmers must work for properly accredited companies, not as freelancers.

On the one hand, the idea is logical and trendy. The Americans have their own cyber command, USCYBERCOM, so why wouldn't Russia build a suitable structure like that?

Many countries have similar structures, including South Korea, North Korea, the United Kingdom, and China. If you dig deeper, each of these major powers has at least one military cybersecurity unit.

It seems that Russia is lagging behind not only the United States, but also the whole world, because the issue of cyber troops is only now being raised. This is not entirely the case, in one form or another, the Russian military has had units engaged in information warfare for ten years now, for example, the Center for Special Projects of the Ministry of Defense. According to public information, Cyber Protection Centers have been established in each military district and have been operating regularly since 2020.

The purpose of these centers is to protect the military's critical infrastructure from computer attacks. In modern conditions, this obviously must be supplemented with the function of destroying potential enemy targets and conducting full-scale information warfare.

But why is the question of creating a special army related to cybersecurity suddenly being raised now? One possible explanation is the large-scale introduction of artificial intelligence into the combat systems of the Russian Army. In early October this year, at the Era Military-Technical Innovation Center, under the chairmanship of Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Industry and Trade Denis Manturov, issues of robotization of military equipment were discussed. In addition, the field of artificial intelligence in the armaments program for 2025–2034 was also raised.

The ERA Military Innovation Center, located in the resort city of Anapa on the Black Sea coast, was built in 2018 to ensure the minimum time for research and implementation of advanced ideas and breakthrough technologies that will benefit the Russian military. There are 15 laboratories, 16 research directions and 320 young scientists. The military scientific complex covers an area of about 17 hectares.

Searching for perfection

Russia’s Minister of Digital Development is not the first civilian official to point out the need for a cyber army in Russia. Last year, Vasily Shpak, Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade of Russia, spoke about this. He approached the issue on a more macro level, proposing to recruit conscripts into the cyber force, like the science companies in the aforementioned Era Center.

In the second year of the Ukrainian conflict, the multi-billion dollar scientific center (Era) should have dominated the innovation scene, but in fact, the Army 2023 exhibition did not have any unique results. The Era’s modest portfolio included only the classic Sarych reconnaissance drone, a training system for combating UAVs with small arms, and a Tissue Pistol portable self-propelled complex for medical services. Or maybe there was no mention of projects that were applied on the battlefield.

Is the cyber army that the Russian ministries mentioned above in the same situation? First of all, it is necessary to clarify what the trendy term, cyber army or information technology army, means. It seems that there is still no clear or widely known definition.

Can a drone operator, or a programmer who hacks an enemy server, be considered a cyber warrior? If we consider cyber warfare as the center, then remote cyber attacks, creating computer viruses, writing software and hardware, creating disinformation and many other things will be some of the important weapons, information-technical weapons.

Cyber forces must become systems integrators of a wide range of military structures, such as computers, space, and technical reconnaissance, from the tactical to the strategic level. It would be good to train programmers and other cyber experts to manage the behavior of social groups and conduct large-scale psychological operations behind enemy lines.

In general, the scope of work of cyber warriors is very wide. The Russian military has long had separate structures that can do everything described above well. Not only in the military, but also in the Russian Security Service, the Russian Intelligence Service, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and the Russian Guard.

Among those lobbying for cyber forces, there is an argument that creating a single command center for all security forces would allow security forces to focus on their core missions, similar to the creation of the US Cyber Command USCYBERCOM, which was for a time under the leadership of the National Security Agency (NSA). However, that is not entirely true. The US intelligence community has too many offices dedicated to information warfare and cyber weapons. For example, the Department of Homeland Security is directly involved in cybersecurity. So is the Defense Intelligence Agency. USCYBERCOM is just a competing structure built on the principle of “divide and conquer”. Unlimited budgets allow the Americans to do so.

What will Russia's cyber army look like?

The reason for the creation of a national cyber army is the need for an alternative structure that can be separated from the IT structure of Russia's power ministries, in order to improve quality and competitiveness.

However, there are doubts about the form of this new army. It is probably a mistake to give programmers who write code to hack enemy servers the benefits and privileges of Russian soldiers. Keyboard warriors cannot be compared to fighter pilots, tank drivers and reconnaissance officers. When it comes to work that risks life and health, programmers are the last. However, it would be unfair to underestimate the contribution of Russian hackers on the information front at home and abroad in the current conflict in Ukraine.

The ideal cyber army is a complex structure, with most of the tasks outsourced to civilian specialists. There are many domestic agencies that are willing to outsource to the Ministry of Defense and other intelligence agencies. In any case, the most effective management is in offices that are familiar with market mechanisms and have highly specialized staff. Building a cyber army from scratch would take years (if not a decade). It would be ridiculous to suggest that conscripts be included in such a model. What can a conscript learn after a year of service as a “combat programmer”?

There is a paradox here. On the one hand, Russia needs a cyber army, and the more soldiers the better. On the other hand, military structures cease to be armies when tasked with purely cyber security.

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