Cyber Attacks = Effects Amplified by State Sponsorship States are using the tools of cyberwarfare to undermine the very foundation of the Internet: trust. They are hacking into banks, meddling in elections, stealing intellectual property & bringing private companies to a standstill. The result is that an arena that the world relies on for economic & informational exchange has turned into an active battlefield. Cyber-operations are emblematic of a new style of competition… In operation after operation, many of them hardly registered by the wider world, states are weaponizing the Internet. All these incidents occurred in a gray zone of conflict – below the threshold of outright war but above that of purely peacetime behavior. Michèle Flournoy & Michael Sulmeyer – Co-Founders, WestExec Advisors, Foreign Affairs, 9/18 Internet Trends 211 2019