Historical Cyber Operations

Stuxnet reference, Israeli strikes on Iran, graphite bombs, Operation Desert Storm cyber effects

The discussion highlights how major world powers leverage both physical and digital means to disable enemy infrastructure, citing the U.S. military’s historical use of graphite bombs to neutralize power grids in Iraq and Yugoslavia. Beyond kinetic attacks, participants point to sophisticated operations like the Stuxnet virus and recent Israeli strikes on Iran, which reportedly blinded air defenses through a blend of cyber-warfare and ground-level sabotage. However, the effectiveness of these tactics is not guaranteed, as evidenced by Russia's limited success in such operations and a general skepticism toward political hyperbole regarding secret technological expertise. Ultimately, these perspectives suggest that while the ability to "turn off" a city is a strategic goal for many nations, its execution remains a complex and occasionally inconsistent reality.

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> What if you could simply turn off the power grid of Kyiv or Moscow in anticipation of a strike?

I expect every major world power has a plan to (attempt to) do precisely that to their enemies.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphite_bomb

> The US Navy used sea-launched Tomahawk missiles with Kit-2 warheads, involving reels of carbon fibers, in Iraq as part of Operation Desert Storm during the Gulf War in 1991, where it disabled about 85% of the electricity supply. The US Air Force used the CBU-94, dropped by F-117 Nighthawks, during the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia on 2 May 1999, where it disabled more than 70% national grid electricity supply.

I would not, however, take "Trump said something" as indicative of much. "It was dark, the lights of Caracas were largely turned off due to a certain expertise that we have, it was dark, and it was deadly" is both visibly untrue from the video evidence available, and is the precise sort of off-the-cuff low-fact statement he's prone to.

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Something like this more or less happened during the initial Israeli strike on Iran ?

From what I remember reading, they were able to gain air dominance not because Iranian air-defense was bad, but because it was put almost completely out of service for a brief period of time by people on the ground - be it through sabotage, cyber-warfare, drone attacks from inside, allowing the Israeli jets to annihilate them.

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Read about Stuxnet

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Russia tried. They haven’t managed to do anything very serious.

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