It's just the cyberization of the economic, psychological, and ideological warfare that has existed... Well, probably since always, but I've heard of at least to the 1600s and the birth of the modern nation-state.

Nations have always jockeyed for economic advantage, harmed the cohesion of rival nations (eg, psyops and funding dissidents), and advanced groups in those nations ideologically sympathetic to themselves. Sometimes it spills in to small scale conflicts or actual revolutions or wars.