Ukrainians who played "enemies" lost to NATO by a narrow margin during cyber exercises

Ukrainian specialists narrowly lost in a NATO cyber exercise to test the Alliance's readiness to counter the disinformation campaigns that Kyiv has been facing on a daily basis since the start of Russia's full-scale invasion. this writes Financial Times.

"On a recent day, the fictional country of Perantsa was plunged into darkness by a cyber attack on its energy grid from an authoritarian neighbour that had long laid claim to its territory," the FT says one of the scenarios of the new cyber exercises.

The information attack by a fictional hostile country was simulated at the NATO-Ukraine Joint Analysis, Training and Education Center (JATEC) in Bydgoszcz, Poland. It is the only NATO institution staffed and managed jointly by representatives of the Alliance and Ukraine. One-third of JATEC's 60 staff members are seconded from Kyiv, including members of the Armed Forces, Ministry of Defense, and intelligence services.

The three-day simulation included online campaigns aimed at inciting discord and disorienting the local population in a serious crisis. In addition to the power outage, the participants also practiced two other scenarios: how the authorities would communicate in the event of a large-scale flood and a situation where hackers took control of the banking system.

Ukrainian officials played the role of the villains in the game: during the exercise, they flooded social media with messages generated by artificial intelligence, blaming the government's incompetence and corruption for every crisis and offering to send aid to people in need.

"Perantsa can’t help, but Karti does," read one of the messages posted on the website of the fictional country's authorities.

Instead, the team representing Perantsaresponded with calls for national unity and warnings looting and other public order violations.

According to the jury of scholars and disinformation experts, the Ukrainian team lost only by a small margin in two scenarios.

For Ukraine, participation in war games and the exchange of military data are valuable ways to engage directly with NATO, even though it is unlikely to join the Alliance in the near future.

Many of the interactions within JATEC take place behind closed doors. Ukrainian representatives their experience in areas such as drone swarms, electronic warfare, and decentralized command structures. In return, Kyiv gets greater access to NATO software and engineering capabilities.

Regarding the new cyber exercises, the experts the FT spoke to acknowledged the limitations of such exercises, which can only partially replicate the Russian disinformation campaigns perfected over the past decade.

The exercise was funded by the German army and used a digital war games platform developed by the French IT company Atos. Lieutenant colonel and director of the Bundeswehr Digitalization Center Yvonne Rötter noted that Berlin supports such exercises partly because it recognizes its own weaknesses.

The military noted that Ukrainians "a very realistic view of how the opponents work and communicate... so yes, in that regard we can learn from them."

According to the official, the Ukrainian representatives were more creative, showed better AI skills, and generally acted faster during the exercise. However, their team ultimately lost, probably because they were unable to maintain a consistent narrative built around a small number of core messages, Rötter suggested.

At the same time, one of the Ukrainian participants in the exercise disputed this conclusion, noting that in real life, the main messages change daily: "Just look at what Russia is doing."