The New Hybrid Warfare Frontier: Sabotage, climate, and the Era of Unattributable Attacks
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European security faces an escalating threat – not just from conventional military force, but from a sophisticated and increasingly insidious form of hybrid warfare. For Czechs, this isn’t a theoretical concern. The 2014 explosions at ammunition depots in Vrbětice, which killed two people and caused over a billion crowns in damage, served as a stark warning. But Vrbětice, as devastating as it was, now appears to have been a harbinger of a far more widespread and complex campaign of sabotage that has intensified dramatically as Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Escalating Sabotage Across Europe
the scale of the threat is now undeniable. Richard Moore, the head of the British secret service MI6, warned in November 2024 of a “stunning and ruthless campaign” of Russian operations. This assessment was echoed months later,in May 2025,when the Norwegian National Security Strategy explicitly identified Russian sabotage as a primary threat to the country. These aren’t merely perceptions; hard data confirms the trend. Recent reports indicate that 86% of all suspicious Russian hybrid incidents in Europe have occurred as 2022,with a sixfold increase in incidents in 2024 alone.
The nature of these attacks is also evolving.Initially focused on military targets like ammunition warehouses, the campaign is increasingly targeting critical civilian infrastructure. Interrupted underwater data and energy cables, arson attacks on factories and logistics centers, interference with GPS signals impacting air transport, and even damage to water supplies are all interconnected pieces of a intentional strategy. The objective, according to intelligence assessments, is clear: to sow chaos, exacerbate internal tensions within European nations, divert resources and attention away from supporting Ukraine, and ultimately demonstrate the unsustainable cost of aiding the attacked country.
beyond Cyber and Information: The Looming Threat of Climate Intervention
As European states bolster security and intelligence cooperation to counter these conventional hybrid tactics, a more unsettling question arises: what comes next? Security analysts are beginning to contemplate a scenario once relegated to the realm of science fiction – the weaponization of climate itself. The possibility that cyberspace or the information sphere might become another front in this hybrid war is no longer dismissed out of hand.
The concept of geoengineering, or climatic engineering, while seemingly futuristic, is rooted in established scientific principles. It encompasses a range of technologies designed for large-scale, deliberate interventions in the Earth’s climate system. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) acknowledges the blurry boundaries of this field, noting that definitions depend heavily on the scale of deployment and the intent of those employing the technology.
While localized weather manipulation – such as cloud seeding in the United Arab Emirates to induce rainfall – is already commonplace, the true geopolitical risk lies in methods with planetary impact. These fall into two main categories: carbon dioxide removal and solar radiation management (SRM).Removing carbon dioxide is currently too slow and expensive for large-scale application, requiring revolutionary changes to the global economy.
However, SRM – the practise of reflecting sunlight back into space – is far more readily achievable, and therefore, more concerning in the context of potential weaponization. “This method has recently been discussed in connection with possible climate adjustments,” notes climatologist Ladislav Metelka from the Czech Hydrometeorological Institute. The principle is straig
The US government has, in the past, explored climate engineering research. The Stratospheric Controlled Perturbation Experiment (SCoPEx), a Harvard University project, was designed to test the feasibility of SRM by releasing aerosols into the stratosphere. though, this program, housed within the NOAA agency, faced cuts and dismissals under the Trump administration, leaving its future uncertain.
The psychological impact of even the threat of climate manipulation is critically important. The idea that someone could secretly “play with the weather” is deeply unsettling,even among political adversaries. Recent resistance to small-scale climate research experiments in California demonstrates this sensitivity. Several states with Republican administrations have even passed laws regulating climate influence via aircraft-discharged chemicals, fueled by the unsubstantiated “chemtrail” conspiracy theory. While fringe, this theory is gaining traction within the polarized US political landscape.
Ignoring the risk of climate engineering abuse simply because it sounds far-fetched would be a grave mistake. The potential for destabilization, coupled with the lack of international regulation and the inherent difficulty of attribution, demands serious consideration.
