For much of human history, wars were fought with swords and shields. In medieval times, the invention of gunpowder allowed for cannons, muskets and eventually rifles. Then machine guns, tanks, airplanes and drones started defining the battlefield. By the mid-20th century, the advent of nuclear bombs and long-range missiles threatened global annihilation.

Now even the most advanced guns, bombs and missiles are becoming old-fashioned and inefficient.

Russia and China in particular are recruiting specialized groups of hackers, teams of social media influencers and trained saboteurs into their armies—the new “special forces.”

These countries are exploring unconventional methods to sabotage their enemies, such as cyberwarfare, political warfare and information warfare.

This strategy of combining conventional war tactics with irregular methods is known as hybrid warfare.

Hybrid warfare has been around for a few decades, but it gained the most attention in 2014 when Russia annexed the Crimean Peninsula. Russia not only illegally invaded the peninsula with unmarked men, it simultaneously conducted cyberattacks to paralyze Ukrainian government systems and launched disinformation campaigns to justify the invasion.

Today, Russia is refining its hybrid strategies and exploring new ones in response to the West’s support for Ukraine. And the West is unprepared, as nato chief Mark Rutte stressed in an interview last month:

Over the past years, Russia and China have tried to destabilize our nations with acts of sabotage, cyberattacks, disinformation and energy blackmail to intimidate us. nato allies will continue to stand together to face these threats through a range of measures, including greater intelligence sharing and better protection of critical infrastructure.

Those are promising words, but the danger and scale of these “hybrid” attacks is larger than you might think.

Cyberwarfare

Russian hackers in 2021 infiltrated and shut down the largest fuel-transport system in the United States: the Colonial Pipeline. The shutdown raised average U.S. gasoline prices to the highest in six years. Moscow denied involvement and faced no consequences other than a warning from the U.S. that it had crossed a red line.

Similar attacks have occurred since, including a 2022 cyberattack on nuclear research laboratories in the U.S. and a cyberattack in January that caused a Texas water facility to overflow.

China is an also expert in cyberwarfare. U.S. officials say China has installed malware in critical infrastructure from energy grids and transportation systems to water treatment plants and port cranes. Most recently, on Dec. 30, 2024, Chinese hackers infiltrated the U.S. Treasury Department and stole classified information to find out which Chinese entities the U.S. intended to sanction.

With such a large foothold in a variety of systems, China could easily launch large-scale cyberattacks during future conflicts to destroy the U.S. from within.

The same could happen in Europe, where reports show that the same Russian hacker groups that targeted Ukrainian government agencies before the full-scale invasion in early 2022 are now seeking to spy on and sabotage allies of Ukraine around the world. This past year, Russian hackers targeted Germany’s defense and aerospace systems, attacked Estonian government institutions, jammed Norwegian and Finnish gps signals, and much more.

It’s often incredibly hard to determine who exactly is behind these cyberattacks and whether they are a state or non-state actor. This makes it difficult for nato to know how to respond, other than to condemn the actions and call for more “deterrence.”

The same applies to the many other hybrid strategies.

Undersea Warfare

Beneath the oceans lies a fragile network of undersea fiber-optic cables that form the backbone of our Internet. This network is another Western vulnerability exploited by Russia’s and China’s hybrid warfare.

• In 2021, Russia was suspected of being responsible for the disappearance of miles of cables off the coast of Norway.
• In 2023, Chinese ships “accidentally” disabled the only two undersea cables connecting Taiwan’s Matsu Islands to the Internet.
• In 2023, Finnish investigators said a Russia-flagged ship and a Chinese vessel damaged a telecom cable in the Baltic Sea connecting Sweden and Estonia.

In September 2024, U.S. officials warned that Russia is building a specific military unit aimed at sabotaging its enemies’ undersea infrastructure.

Last month, suspicion of sabotage rose even higher after an underwater Internet cable linking Finland to Germany was severed, followed a few days later by another cable linking Lithuania and Sweden. The China-flagged Yi Peng cargo ship, in cooperation with Russia, was suspected of deliberately dragging its anchor for more than 100 miles to cut both cables.

Another undersea power cable connecting Finland and Estonia was damaged in December 2024. Finnish authorities believe a ship belonging to Russia’s “shadow fleet” called Eagle S was behind the damage. Estonia is stepping up patrols in the Baltic Sea in response.

As with cyberwarfare, it is difficult to precisely identify the saboteurs. Hundreds of these cables lie deep beneath the waters, making them difficult to monitor and prone to accidental damage. Russia and China can easily deny responsibility.

In future conflicts, large-scale attacks on cables linking nato countries could seriously affect their ability to access the Internet and communicate internationally, which would make them easier targets for other attacks within the hybrid war.

Disinformation Campaigns and Political Warfare

Another strategy Russia has long had a reputation for is spreading propaganda and misinformation to promote its narrative, especially in former Soviet nations. The most recent examples include important national elections.

On Nov. 24, 2024, the far-right pro-Russia Călin Georgescu shocked Europe when he won the Romanian presidential election. Georgescu has no party; bots and fake TikTok accounts boosted his campaign. So did paid influencers. Pro-Georgescu actors competed to win cash “prizes” on Telegram and passed on instructions about how to get around TikTok’s rules to prevent political manipulation. Some of Romania’s election websites also suffered major Russian cyberattacks.

A Romanian investigative outlet has since reported that the boost for Georgescu did not come from Russia. It was instead from a rival Romanian party, who boosted Georgescu’s campaign because they thought he would be the easiest candidate to beat in the final round of the election.

It’s still unclear which narrative is true, but that’s the point of disinformation warfare: It spreads confusion. Russia may not have even been involved in the Romanian election, but it can still benefit from the fallout—in this case, a European nation canceling the result of an election it does not like.

A month prior, in the former Soviet state Georgia, there is some evidence Russia rigged elections through intimidation, vote buying, double voting and physical violence. The much-hated pro-Russia Georgian Dream party “won” the election, but protesters have taken to the streets since to call for a legitimate, pro-Europe government.

Similar Russian political manipulation, often amplified by China, has also spread to the rest of Europe and the United States.

In September, the European Union uncovered a Russian influence campaign known as DoppelGänger. The campaign used artificial intelligence to create disinformation and spread it in Europe’s media through a network of cloned websites, fake articles and social media accounts.

The same month, a media company linked to six conservative U.S. podcasters was indicted because it was secretly funded by Russian state media employees. The company made videos that were “often consistent” with the Kremlin’s “interest in amplifying U.S. domestic divisions in order to weaken U.S. opposition,” the indictment said. This marked the third presidential election in a row in which Russia has attempted to interfere in U.S. politics.

More Irregular Warfare

The above examples are just scratching the surface. Many other smaller and often unnoticed ways of sabotage have recently contributed to the hybrid war against nato. These include:

• Russia plotted to set fire to planes headed to the U.S. and Canada by shipping incendiary devices to dhl logistics hubs in Germany, Poland and the United Kingdom.
• A suspicious Russian Orthodox Church in central Sweden was built close to an airport and other critical national infrastructure. The church was recently linked to a Russian intelligence operation to surveil and gather information.
• Russian saboteurs set fire to a German factory belonging to a defense contractor.
• Two dual German-Russian nationals were arrested on suspicion of spying for Moscow to disrupt Western military aid to Ukraine.
• Russia plotted to kill the boss of Rheinmetall, Europe’s largest manufacturer of arms.
• Suspicious “surveillance” blimps linked to Russia were seen on the eastern border of nato with Estonia.
• Russia and China have invested in satellite-slaying technologies to sabotage or destroy nato satellites.

These types of attacks are attractive to the Asian giants for good reasons: They often avoid direct confrontation, they involve no loss of troops, and there is often lack of conclusive evidence. They also blur the lines between war and peace, as they undermine the enemy without the two powers being officially “at war.” The irregular nature of the attacks makes a typical tit-for-tat retaliation unlikely.

That is what hybrid warfare is all about: destroying the enemy from within without facing the consequences.

A Coming ‘Hybrid’ Attack?

Your Bible says a large-scale global war is imminent, during which the main powers could use many of the above strategies. The Scriptures also reveal who will be the main target of this hybrid war.

Ezekiel 4:1-5 prophesy of a coming siege on “the house of Israel.” Anciently, this referred to the 10 tribes of Israel that separated from Judah and set up their own kingdom in the 10th century b.c. These people were besieged and taken into captivity more than 100 years before Ezekiel write his book. Why would God have Ezekiel prophesy about something that had happened a century earlier? The prophet was clearly referring to a future event.

As Herbert W. Armstrong proved in his book The United States and Britain in Prophecy, the majority of the descendants of Israel today are in America, Britain and a handful of other nations (request a free copy to prove this for yourself). This means Ezekiel’s prophecy is aimed primarily at America and Britain.

The rest of Ezekiel 4 provides graphic detail about the terrible suffering soon to come on the modern nations of Israel. The story flow continues in Ezekiel 5:2. Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry has explained that this prophecy describes a third of America dying as a result of an economic siege. Another third will die as a result of a military attack.

In his 2014 article “Where America’s Race Riots Are Leading,” Mr. Flurry wrote:

Society will be burning with race wars, crime, chaos and murder. This first third—including 100 million Americans—will experience atrocious deaths. This siege is part of the “great tribulation” that Jesus Christ prophesied in Matthew 24:21.

Verse 2 shows what follows for the people who remain: “[A]nd thou shalt take a third part, and smite about it with a knife ….” This second third of our peoples will be conquered militarily. This is a prophecy of a military attack. …

America is already weak and bitterly divided today; once that division explodes into widespread violence, it will be easy for a foreign power to lay siege to it—and then to attack.

In order to achieve such a large measure of destruction against such a powerful nation, America’s enemies will need more than just conventional weapons of war. Put together with Ezekiel 4 and 5, Ezekiel 7 indicates hybrid warfare: “They have blown the trumpet, even to make all ready; but none goeth to the battle: for my wrath is upon all the multitude thereof” (verse 14).

Mr. Flurry wrote about this particular passage in 1995: “It seems everybody is expecting our people to go into battle, but the greatest tragedy imaginable occurs! Nobody goes to battle—even though the trumpet is blown! Will it be because of a computer terrorist?”

America’s overreliance on technology could prove to be its Achilles’ heel leading to its demise, Mr. Flurry explained. “Exploiting this vulnerable point could trigger the greatest shock in the history of warfare,” he wrote in 2005.

Imagine the scenario: American soldiers run out of food, water, electricity and fuel because essential infrastructure has been hacked. The high-tech communications and weapons systems they heavily rely on have been infiltrated. The undersea cables connecting them with their international allies have been severed. Misinformation campaigns have deceived and divided its people into turning against each other. Combined with a traditional attack of military forces, the destruction would be devastating.

Fortunately, God allows this punishment for a hope-filled purpose: to help us repent and turn to Him. All people will “know that I am the Lord.” (Ezekiel 5:13; 6:7, 10, 13, 14; 7:4, 9, 27).

Finally, all of mankind will have the opportunity to get to know God, and He will be able to re-create Himself in man.

To learn more about these prophecies, request your free copy of Mr. Flurry’s book Ezekiel—The End-Time Prophet.