War in the Smartphone Age: Conflict, Connectivity and the Crises at Our Fingertips

Matthew Ford — Associate Professor in War Studies at the Swedish Defence University — examines how the ubiquity of smartphones and digital connectivity has transformed the character of modern armed conflict. Drawing on the wars in Ukraine, Gaza, and beyond, he shows how every soldier, civilian, and observer is now simultaneously a potential intelligence source, a content producer, and an information operator. The battlefield has become inseparable from the information environment, and the information environment has become inseparable from daily life.

War in the Smartphone Age is essential for understanding why the boundary between information warfare and kinetic warfare has effectively dissolved. The same device that a soldier uses to call their family also broadcasts their location to adversary signals intelligence. The same platform that a civilian uses to document atrocities also serves as a channel for coordinated disinformation. Ford's analysis of the Ukraine conflict is particularly valuable: Ukraine has arguably been the first war fought simultaneously on the physical and digital battlefields at scale, and the lessons it offers for understanding the integration of information operations with conventional military action are directly relevant to practitioners across government, military, and private sector contexts.