In defense scenario planning, a plausible feared future may comprise the coalescence of three geostrategic issues: unchecked tensions between China and the United States, armed conflict over Taiwan, and an escalating gray-zone contest between China and claimant states in the South China Sea. This triumvirate could result in a maritime crisis, characterized by a situation on the precipice of regional conflict, in Southeast Asia.
Seeing how conflicts are unfolding in Ukraine and the Middle East, a maritime crisis in Southeast Asia could have cyberspace aspects. How can the region prepare?
Pre-War Scenario
If an armed conflict happens over Taiwan, the Taiwan Strait could be a proxy battleground between China and the United States. China would increase its military presence in the South China Sea to project power and deter U.S. military forces based in the Philippines or re-supplying in Singapore.
Chinese maritime forces in the South China Sea would be in the crosshairs of U.S. military forces, possibly within 72 hours after the conflict begins. If China mounts a blockade of Taiwan, the United States might conduct operations at the Straits of Malacca and Singapore as a counterblockade to interfere with shipping to China.
Concurrently, there could be an increase in cyberspace operations in Southeast Asia linked to competing actors, especially China and the United States, who are the world’s leading cyber powers. Reasons for these operations include dissuading regional countries from aligning with one major power against the other, influencing public opinion regarding the diplomatic and defense stances of regional countries, digital espionage, or using unsecured digital infrastructure in Southeast Asian countries as a launchpad for cyberattacks.
Digital Challenges of Regional Maritime Crisis
A maritime crisis could have a multidimensional impact on the region by affecting each Southeast Asian country’s diplomatic, informational, military, and economic interests. Cyberspace could feature significantly in this crisis as a cross-domain factor affecting these national interests. Cyberspace could also feature at the regional level, as competing actors in the crisis may want to influence the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to ensure that the grouping does not challenge their strategic goals and that ASEAN’s diplomatic processes produce outcomes advantageous for their strategic interests.
There is a need to anticipate and plan for the implications of cyber challenges concerning a regional maritime crisis. Challenges related to cyberspace that would stem from a regional maritime crisis could be twofold: digital warfare and digital sanctions.
The first-order challenge is digital warfare or cyberspace operations. It entails a broad spectrum of activities from minor disruptions – such as website and social media hacking, phishing attacks for digital espionage, and online disinformation campaigns that may coincide with cyberattacks and physical incidents at sea – to significant disruptions of critical maritime infrastructure and the computer and communications systems of civilian, coast guard, and naval vessels. Some activities may be the work of proxy cyber actors who act either on behalf of a state or independently. The more serious the maritime crisis is, the more severe the cyberspace operations will be.
Given Southeast Asia’s vast geographic spread and the plausibly diverse political positions that each country there might take, the maritime crisis might play out differently across the region.
Geographic areas farther from the disputed waters of the South China Sea and Taiwan could see cyberspace operations comprising espionage and information campaigns to shape and influence public opinion and political decisions. Competing major powers might use a hybrid of cyberspace operations with conventional maritime force posturing to maintain strategic advantage or intentionally influence diplomatic relations.
In the online battle of narratives, each major power would frame its actions as preserving regional security and the interests of regional countries while accusing the other of undermining peace and stability. Attempts by one major power to raise the alarm on cyberattacks could be criticized by the other as a disinformation campaign.
Cyberspace operations could be most severe in geographic areas closer to the disputed waters of the South China Sea and Taiwan, which would constitute the epicenter of armed conflict. Military confrontations at sea and air could happen in tandem with more disruptive cyberspace operations affecting critical services with the intent to weaken the resilience of civilian populations and the militaries’ will and capability to defend. Besides civilian digital targets such as populations and ports, cyberspace operations could target functions essential to military operations such as telecommunications, navigations, digital infrastructure services, and maritime domain awareness. Underlying these operations is also the assumption that cyberspace is a vital element of sea power.
The second-order challenge is digital sanctions, which could affect the economies of Southeast Asian countries. An armed maritime conflict involving China and the United States could encourage both major powers to be far less restrained in imposing more and harsher sanctions and counter-sanctions relating to digital technologies and services. The purpose of these measures is to target each other’s economies and military-industrial bases and deny access to dual-use digital technologies, such as semiconductors and cloud computing, which enable their military systems and cyber power.
The impact of such sanctions could reverberate across Southeast Asia. For example, in 2023, ASEAN and China launched the initiative Enhancing Cooperation on E-Commerce, which includes artificial intelligence (AI) and cross-border trade. Digital sanctions by the U.S. to target China could hamper such initiatives, similar to how the withdrawal of Western digital services and the SWIFT ban on Russian banks aim to digitally isolate Russia from global markets.
What if the United States tries to expand sanctions on semiconductors to include Chinese companies operating in Southeast Asia? It is plausible that the U.S. is monitoring how Chinese tech companies are using transhipment hubs and Southeast Asia’s neutrality to circumvent U.S. semiconductor export restrictions. In the same vein, Washington might consider options against Chinese cloud service providers, such as Alibaba and Huawei, in Southeast Asia if these could curb China’s cyber power.
Preparedness of Southeast Asia
The risk of war in the Asia-Pacific is increasingly real. Therefore, it is timely for regional countries to contemplate their preparedness vis-Ã -vis the cyber-military and digital-economic implications of a maritime crisis in Southeast Asia that would result from an armed maritime conflict involving the major powers, Taiwan, and claimant states in the South China Sea.
In addressing the risks of cyberspace operations, Southeast Asian countries need to strengthen their digital resilience through the right combination of digital technologies, operational concepts and procedures, human capabilities, and civil-military cooperation. Regional civilian initiatives such as the ASEAN Regional Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) may have to coordinate strategies and efforts with defense-related initiatives such as the ASEAN Cyber Defense Network (ACDN) and the ADMM Cybersecurity and Information Centre of Excellence (ACICE). ASEAN should assess how the complementarity of ACDN and ACICE should come into play during a regional crisis.
And given the multidimensional impact of a maritime crisis and the importance of trade to the region, there may be more calls for ASEAN as a grouping to overcome the taboo of discussing the impact of armed conflict on the defense and economic sectors.
The bottom line: a maritime crisis would have far-reaching repercussions on Southeast Asia’s ambitions to promote a digital economy and a secure and stable cyberspace. What should regional governments do? There are no easy answers, but Southeast Asian countries should start planning for the scenario.