How cyber warfare is becoming the first strike in modern conflicts | Official Website of Louis Velazquez, entrepreneur, finance guy and tech innovator

It was the night the lights went out in Caracas.

The pre-dawn raid that saw U.S. special operations forces seize President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela and his wife, Cilia Flores, reportedly began with cyber-attacks that cut off power to large areas of the South American country’s capital city to allow planes and helicopters to strike key military sites.

President Donald Trump suggested that the U.S. used cyberattacks or other technical capabilities to cut power off in Caracas, according to Politico.

“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,” Trump said during a press conference at Mar-a-Lago detailing the operation.

Gen. Dan Caine, chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters that U.S. Cyber Command, U.S. Space Command, and combatant commands “began layering different effects” to “create a pathway” for U.S. forces flying into the country, but he did not elaborate on what those “effects” entailed.

Internet tracking group NetBlocks reported a loss of internet connectivity in Caracas that occurred around the same time as power cuts in the country, and Venezuela’s electric energy ministry said that power cuts in some areas of the country were due to U.S. attacks.

Last month, Venezuelan national oil and gas company PDVSA, or Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A., accused the U.S. government of carrying out a cyberattack that led to delays in operations across the country.

Whether or not cyberattacks were the decisive factor in Caracas, the episode highlights how digital warfare has become a standard opening move in modern conflicts.

The U.S. may have used cyberattacks to seize President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela.

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State cyber-attacks a growing threat

“State sponsored hacking cyber-attacks orchestrated by national governments has evolved into a pressing global threat,” the cybersecurity firm DeepStrike said in a Dec. 16 report, with countries such as China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea operating dedicated hacking units for espionage, sabotage, and financial theft

“Unlike random cybercriminals seeking a quick payday, state-backed hackers are more like digital spies and saboteurs operating with government resources and strategic objectives.”

More on tech:

Nearly 50% of global elections between 2023 and 2024 have faced AI-driven disinformation campaigns, according to a Nov. 3 analysis by Capitol Technology University, with deepfakes and automated bots used to manipulate public opinion and destabilize democracies, particularly in the U.S., Taiwan, and Moldova.

“Cyber operations are now integrated with traditional military strategies,” the university said. “For example, Russian actors used destructive malware to disrupt energy infrastructure in Eastern Europe, aligning with broader geopolitical goals.”

During Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks were used against Ukrainian banks, government services, and humanitarian efforts.

Volt Typhoon, a state-sponsored cyber threat group linked to the People’s Republic of China, focuses on espionage and stealth in U.S. infrastructure. Meanwhile, North Korea’s Lazarus Group steals cryptocurrency, with over $1.7 billion in crypto theft attributed to the outfit in 2022.

Chinese cyberattacks on Taiwan’s key infrastructure, from hospitals to banks, rose 6% in 2025 from the previous year to an average of 2.63 million attacks a day, the island’s National Security Bureau said, adding that some were synchronized with military drills in “hybrid threats” to paralyze the island, Reuters reported.

The average number of daily attacks in 2025 jumped 113% from 2023, when the bureau first began publishing such data, with sectors such as energy, emergency rescue, and hospitals seeing the sharpest year‑on‑year increases.

Targeting infrastructures

Nations have been conducting cyberattacks for decades. Moonlight Maze, a data breach of classified U.S. government information lasting from 1996 to 1998, was one of the first widely known cyber espionage campaigns in world history.

Stuxnet, a nation-state-developed computer worm, originally designed to sabotage Iran’s nuclear program, is widely considered to be the world’s first true cyberweapon.

Discovered in 2010, Stuxnet is believed to have been in development since at least 2005. Published reports said that Stuxnet was part of a US and Israeli intelligence operation named Operation Olympic Games, devised by the National Security Agency under President George W. Bush and executed under President Barack Obama.

Cybersecurity will be defined by an AI-driven arms race in 2026, the University of Virginia’s UVA Information Security said, with attackers using autonomous malware and hyper-personalized social engineering for faster, more complex attacks, while defenders deploy AI agents for rapid response.

“Operational Technology (OT) and critical infrastructure will move from an under-the-radar concern to a high-impact threat,” Stephen Boyer, co-founder and Chief Innovation Officer at Bitsight, a cyber risk analytics company, told Solutions Review.

“Nation-state and criminal groups will aggressively exploit the growing number of significant security maturity gaps that still exist between IT and OT systems.”

The targeting of systems like building management and industrial controls—evidenced by threat actors like Volt Typhoon —“will lead to several minor-to-moderate, localized disruptions of essential services that will elevate public awareness of OT risks,” he added.