The French Revolutionary Wars saw the mass mobilisation of citizens for a common goal, known as the levee en masse strategy. This strategy in now being employed on the world stage once more by both hostile regimes that are challenging the rules-based international order and states that are defending international peace and security. These opposing forces have demonstrated their ability to employ the levee en masse strategy in the cyber domain of warfare.

In preparation for the Winter Olympics, the Chinese government recruited citizens from all walks of life and trained them to be white hat hackers to help protect Chinese network infrastructure. The ability of state actors to rapidly mobilise their cyber workforces illustrates a very real cyber capability overmatch favouring hostile regimes such as China.

Hostile regimes are using huge Defence and Governmental capabilities at scale and mobilising beyond conventional state cyber levers to add reach and mass, such as the Russian Government mobilisiing criminal actors in support of state capabilities.

Citizens have also begun to mobilise themselves to respond to state coordinated aggression. In response to a Russian cyber-attack on Ukraine in 2022, the 'IT Army of Ukraine' mobilised 159K people in less than 24-hours to ward off the attack.

Current and emerging technology should be leveraged to enhance this proven workforce mobilisation strategy. Technology can enable straightforward command and control, communicate clear outcomes to those mobilising, and where necessary provide ethical and operational boundaries.