The Impact and Limits of Sanctions on Russia's Telecoms Industry

The West responded to Russia's large-scale invasion of Ukraine with unprecedented sanctions targeting its entire tech industry. While the sanctions on the telecoms sector have not had the intended destructive effect on Russia’s war machine, they have created significant negative side effects for its populace. Russian propaganda is using them to reinforce its narrative that "the West is fighting Russian citizens, and Vladimir Putin is protecting them.

The future of Cybersecurity in Italy: Strategic focus area

This volume has been created as a continuation of the previous one, with the aim of outlining a set of focus areas and actions that the Italian Nation research community considers essential. The book touches many aspects of cyber security, ranging from the definition of the infrastructure and controls needed to organize cyberdefence to the actions and technologies to be developed to be better protected, from the identification of the main technologies to be defended to the proposal of a set of horizontal actions for training, awareness raising, and risk management

Cyber Threats and NATO 2030: Horizon Scanning and Analysis

The book includes 13 chapters that look ahead to how NATO can best address the cyber threats, as well as opportunities and challenges from emerging and disruptive technologies in the cyber domain over the next decade. The present volume addresses these conceptual and practical requirements and contributes constructively to the NATO 2030 discussions. The book is arranged in five short parts...All the chapters in this book have undergone double-blind peer review by at least two external experts.https://scholarworks.wm.edu/asbook/1038/thumbnail.jp

Towards greater resilience: NATO and the EU on hybrid threats. OSW Commentary 2020-04-24.

In recent years, NATO and the EU have taken greater responsibility for countering hybrid threats. This group of threats covers a wide range of hostile methods used by states and non-state actors. It includes both military and non-military activities, for instance special forces operations and irregular warfare, and also disinformation and cyberattacks. NATO and the EU are involved in facilitating international cooperation on countering hybrid threats and protecting their own structures and institutions against them. In this way, both organisations reinforce the efforts at the national level, since fighting hybrid threats is primarily a task of the member states. Nevertheless, NATO’s and the EU’s actions in this respect are constrained by insufficient financing, and by the member states’ unwillingness to enhance the sharing of intelligence and sensitive information related to, for example, critical infrastructure protection or cybersecurity. The recent spike in anti-Western COVID-19 disinformation campaigns clearly shows that both NATO and the EU could do more to counter hybrid threats

imagining 5g networks: infrastructure and public accountability

This study explores the social imaginaries influencing choices about the architectural design and standards for the 5G mobile network to identify how the network level of the communication infrastructure is implicated in the commercial datafication process. We focus on ambitions to establish global market leadership in the provision of the 5G infrastructure. Based on a multimethod analysis of documentation, press coverage, and a case study of 5G’s radio access network standardization, the analysis provides insight into contradictions within a dominant digital innovation social imaginary that privileges national or regional economic 5G strategies and externalizes risks and threats around 5G networks to foreign actors (mainly China). It also shows how public values, including privacy and freedom from surveillance, as well as transparent public accountability, characteristics of an alternative social imaginary of digital innovation, are suppressed in the process of materializing a new communication infrastructure

Enter the Age of Csywar: Some Reflections on an Emergent Trend

This article uses the current Russian-Ukrainian conflict as a jumping-off point for a broader, preliminary reflection on the continuing evolution of war in the digital age. It is the contention here that we are witnessing an emergent phenomenon of what we might call csywar. Intervening states engaged in csywar—best understood as an indirect, hybrid strategy—seek to attain data, infrastructural, and epistemic dominance over the target state. This article discusses various defensive counter-csywar strategies that target states could pursue, such as fostering data, infrastructural, and epistemic resilience internally, and makes the case for developing deterrent counter-csywar capabilities against hostile intervening states

The new EU screening mechanism for foreign direct investments - When the EU takes back control. Bruges Political Research Papers 84/2021.

The recent years showed a sudden rise in foreign direct investments (FDI) in the European Union, especially from China. This fact could be anecdotical, but globalisation has created unequal positions of power on the international stage. Targeted investments in dual use technologies or strategic sectors can then give a decisive position to a state towards others and hence weaponize interdependence. By adopting the Regulation 2019/452 establishing a framework for FDI screening, the European Union gives an answer to this phenomenon and stands to protect its strategic and critical assets, even if the framework remains solely about cooperation and without giving the European Commission a veto power. Through deterrence and political action, the EU takes back control

The Forgotten Emerging Technology: The Metaverse and Its Cybersecurity Implications

The widespread deployment of 5G devices in the United States will spur widespread use of augmented reality, virtual reality, and mixed reality applications—collectively known as extended reality. The over-commercialization of the term "metaverse" has impeded honest conversations about the implications of an insecure metaverse and the technologies associated with it. While these applications and devices will bring significant benefits, they will be accompanied by numerous cybersecurity challenges. As a result, U.S. policymakers run afoul of repeating past mistakes: failing to secure technology before it ushers in a new era of national security concerns. The U.S. government must work closely with industry, academia, nonprofits, and international partners to begin thinking about these consequential issues