Lights out, game over: The cyber blitz that blinded Maduro

Mumbai: The humid night of January 3, 2026, witnessed Caracas skyline not dissolving into chaos amidst fighter jets or falling bombs; it simply vanished. At precisely 2:00 AM, the Venezuelan capital's southern districts plunged into an abyssal darkness. One minute later, at 2:01 AM, US special operations helicopters touched down at Fort Tiuna to execute Nicolás Maduro's extraction. When backup generators sputtered to life and confusion cleared, the operation concluded with surgical precision. 

For New Delhi's strategic community, this sixty-second gap between cyber-induced blackout and kinetic boots-on-ground—should terrify more than any nuclear test or naval exercise. It signifies the definitive arrival of a new doctrine where code is not merely support, but primary breach mechanism. Operation Absolute Resolve wasn't just a capture mission, it was a hybrid warfare masterclass rendering "air superiority" obsolete in favour of reality superiority—a paradigm shift as fundamental as the transition from cavalry to tanks. 

To grasp this event's gravity, we must look beyond arrest headlines and stare into technical methodology's abyss. This wasn't a blunt force trauma attack physically destroying infrastructure; US Cyber Command didn't bomb substations. Instead, they performed a silent logical lobotomy on Venezuela's national power grid. Lights extinguished because the grid's nervous system—the Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) networks—was tricked into believing suicide was the only way to save the patient. The digital equivalent of a neural pathway rerouting itself into self-destruction. 

Attackers employed "Living off the Land" techniques with sophistication that borders on artistic. They avoided uploading heavy malicious code triggering antivirus alarms; instead, they used grid's own administration tools against it. By harvesting valid credentials from engineers months prior—likely through supply chain compromises or targeted phishing campaigns that bypassed conventional security measures—American cyber operators logged in as legitimate users. They moved through Corpoelec's digital corridors like ghosts wearing employee badges, leaving no trace of intrusion. When the moment arrived, they didn't "hack" in Hollywood's sense, they simply issued a valid IEC 60870-5-104 protocol command to open circuit breakers, exploiting the very language designed to protect. 

This protocol is power grids' global Achilles' heel, including India's legacy infrastructure. Pre-cyber warfare era design prioritized speed over security, often lacking basic authentication mechanisms. It assumes network users are friends in a digital world where adversaries wear the same masks as allies. US operators exploited this fundamental trust, sending "Trip" commands remote terminal units obeyed without question—like soldiers following orders from a commanding officer they've never met. 

For Indian policymakers, the chilling detail is effects "layering"—a term borrowed from military strategy but redefined in the digital context. Operation demonstrated unprecedented US Cyber Command and Joint Special Operations Command synchronization, creating a temporal ballet where physical and digital domains moved in perfect harmony. Previously, cyber attacks served strategic espionage or slow-burn sabotage—like Stuxnet slowing Iranian centrifuges over months, a digital erosion rather than sudden collapse. In Caracas, cyber became tactical close-air support weapon, the ultimate expression of what strategists call "effects-based operations." 

Imagine the coordination required to sever a city's power exactly sixty seconds before helicopter landing. This demands cyber operators, thousands of miles away in Maryland, integrated into mission planning's heartbeat—the digital equivalent of a surgeon's hands guided by eyes across continents. They're not IT support; they are the breach team, digital shock troops creating conditions for physical intervention. This digital-physical domain fusion is what India's theatre aspirations must pursue, yet we remain years from such interoperability, trapped in legacy systems designed for a different kind of war. 

India's critical infrastructure implications are stark and multifaceted. We've long worried about "foreign hand" in hardware, but Venezuela operation proves ownership of logical layer eliminates compromised hardware needs—a lesson that should resonate with our "Make in India" ambitions. US forces didn't just cut power—they likely manipulated grid's sensing capability at a fundamental level, creating what cyber warfare specialists call "sensor spoofing." By hijacking data streams, they made National Load Dispatch Center screens show "Normal Operation" even as darkness fell—a digital illusion more powerful than any physical deception. This psychological paralytic freezes defenders in confusion, wasting precious response time debating glitch versus attack while the real operation unfolds beyond their comprehension. 

We must consider Venezuela's air defence neutralization with greater scrutiny. Country possessed formidable Russian S-300 and Buk-M2 missile batteries systems making airspace impermeable on paper, yet rendered impotent by what military theorists now call electronic paralysis. The 150 aircraft operated with impunity not because Venezuelan defences were weak, but because they were blindfolded. They didn't destroy every radar; they severed eyes-brain connection through a combination of electronic warfare and cyber intrusion. By disrupting datalinks and corrupting routing tables via BGP and DNS manipulation—essentially rewriting the digital language of communication—the air defence network fragmented into isolated components. Radar operators might see blips, but severed digital links prevent track transmission to missile batteries, rendering systems as useful as eyes without optic nerves. 

This conversation reaches our doorstep with increasing urgency. India's power sector undergoes massive digital transformation—smart meters, automated substations, renewable integration—all expanding attack surface while simultaneously creating vulnerabilities we've yet to fully comprehend. If state actors move from harassment to hostility, can we detect "sleeper" presence using our valid credentials? The question isn't whether such capabilities exist within our systems, but how deeply they've already infiltrated the digital foundations of our national infrastructure. 

Venezuela operation exposes "Air Gap" myth fragility—the comforting fiction that critical systems are safe because they aren't connected to the internet. US likely breached these systems through multiple vectors, including supply chain compromises where hardware arrives with embedded malware, or third-party maintenance contractors who unknowingly become Trojan horses. Every vendor update, remote diagnostic session, technician laptop connected to PLCs is potential vector in an interconnected world where no system truly stands alone. 

The illusion of isolation creates the most dangerous vulnerabilities. Moreover, Caracas restoration speed—power returned within two hours—reveals strategic objective shift. Permanent destruction would rally population against attackers, causing humanitarian crises that undermine political objectives. Goal was temporary paralysis—a digital equivalent of a knockout blow rather than fatal wound. This "reversible cyber warfare" makes it seductive for policymakers, lowering war thresholds by creating options that fall between diplomacy and kinetic response. Turning off a country's radar or power grid without bombing increases intervention temptation, creating what strategists call "plausible deniability" in an era where attribution remains more art than science. 

Grey-zone warfare blurs peace-conflict lines, creating strategic dilemmas for escalation-control-dependent nations like India that must navigate increasingly treacherous waters. Analysing January 3rd fallout, Raisina Hill's lesson is clear and inescapable. Cybersecurity can't be relegated to IT ministry departments or treated as technical compliance issues—it's national defence's core function in an era where the battlefield has no physical boundaries. Future officers must understand data packet latency alongside ballistic missile trajectories, network protocols as well as artillery ranges. The warrior of tomorrow is equally comfortable with code and calibres, digital domains and physical battlefields. 

We need to aggressively hunt for "logic bombs" within grids—malicious code designed to activate under specific conditions—not just conventional malware. We must question legacy protocols' trust in trains, dams, and power plants, recognizing that systems designed for reliability may be catastrophically vulnerable in an adversarial context. Most importantly, we need to understand that future wars' first shot won't be heard—it will be the freezing screen's silence, malfunctioning sensor's confusion, and city darkness falling just before real war begins. The transition from peace to conflict will be measured in milliseconds not months. 

Maduro's capture was a political earthquake yes. But for military doctrine tectonic plate watchers, the real story wasn't handcuffed man. It was realization that next world war's switch is already installed in our walls, waiting for someone to flip it—a digital Pandora's box from which there is no return. Caracas darkness shed light on terrifying new reality: we all live in glass houses, stones replaced by code, and the architects of our destruction may already be inside our systems. The question is no longer whether such attacks are possible, but when they will become inevitable—and how we might prepare for a conflict where the first casualty is truth itself. 

Brijesh Singh is a Senior IPS Officer and an author (@brijeshsingh on X). His latest book on ancient India, “The Cloud Chariot” (Penguin) is out on stands. Views are personal.