Hybrid Threats

C3I team is well aware that we live in an era of hybrid threats. Many pundits, scholars and experts in different fields confirm the new security reality shaped by hybrid threats. As a result, terms such as “hybrid warfare”, or “hybrid threats” have become a trendy buzzword used to describe a panoply of seemingly different threats. International organizations such as NATO, EU, and to some extent the UN are already taking steps to counter hybrid threats. However, neither the EU nor NATO appears to have a clear definition of this term and there is no universally accepted definition of this term.

Hybrid based threats are usually associated with terrorist activities and some states’ efforts to accomplish their political objectives. Abusing modern technology both state and non-state actors are employing conventional and unconventional, regular and irregular, overt and covert means and methods in achieving strategic ends thus posing a combination of symmetric and asymmetric threats called hybrid threats. State and non-state actors that are posing hybrid threats are systematically:

• using all instruments of power (Diplomacy, Information, Military-use of force and Economics);
• exploiting modern technologies as vectors to accomplish their goals (including their weaponization);
• corrupting democratic projects and values (both by quasi-liberal market practices launched by government-controlled enterprises/NGOs/CSOs and by producing fake news to undermine trust in democratic governance);
• exploiting democratic weaknesses and vulnerabilities (created by many things, including historical memory, legislation, old practices, geostrategic factors, the strong polarisation of society, technological disadvantages or ideological differences);
• exploining all the dimensions of war if previous methods and means fail to undermine designated opponents’ superiority in conventional warfare.

Converging these methods and means states and nonstate actors are gradually blurring the lines between peace and war, purposefully manipulate international regulations, principles and standards, undermine international institutions and as needed shift across the plausible deniability spectrum.

C3I offers the following expert / consulting services in the field of hybrid threats:

• Organizes and conducts certified training, seminars, workshops, exercises and consultancy;
• Conducts research at the national, regional and global levels;
• Prepares expert opinions, recommendations, guidelines, and manuals.
• Creates and conducts hybrid threats related campaigns.

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