Cyber operations can leverage various techniques to deliver effects, that could involve the use of personal data, the influencing of individuals’ perceptions and attitudes, or potentially both. The availability of personal data collected in military cyber operations can be exploited to intimidate adversaries, undermine their morale, spread disinformation, etc.,. It can also be used to manipulate or even cause harm to civilians. Arguably, such uses of personal data cannot be unrestricted, even in the context of modern conflicts. Against this background, this panel will focus on the legal framework for military psychological operations in cyberspace and data protection in times of armed conflict.

This session is dedicated to contributions from practitioners in the cyber security industry. Industry experts will share their experience on the topics of hacktivism, the use of cyber crime resources for national goals, and harnessing natural language processing for intelligence analysis.

Robust port and maritime cybersecurity is essential for national and international security, military readiness, and efficient supply chains. During this session, the EU CyberNet will share experiences from research carried out in cooperation with the CRIMSON project on maritime cybersecurity in African ports and with other EU-funded projects on port security in Latin America. The session describes deficiencies identified in the cybersecurity of ports and the root causes of these deficiencies, which arise from the specific nature of their infrastructure. The experts participating in the panel will share their perspectives on port infrastructure from the points of view of port operators, state supervision, development aid providers, and military planning. The session also introduces the lessons learned from large-scale training organised for West African ports.

Outer space is an area of growing economic and technological importance. It is also a developing theatre of military activity and warfare, which includes the proliferation of counterspace, or antisatellite, capabilities. Against this backdrop, the development of a legal framework for military activities in outer space is of critical urgency. The panel will discuss the principal developments in the relevant areas of international law, as well as assessing the effectiveness of the current legal framework.

This session will present selected topics on cyber security – from implementing post-quantum cryptography in national infrastructure to cyber security as it pertains to unmanned marine vessels.

Niels Bohr said that ‘Prediction is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future’. Nevertheless, we all need to plan for the future. Strategic forecasting and foresight can help policy planners better define the significant and likelihood of future risks and opportunities and offer better responses to them. This panel discusses how strategic forecasting and foresight can be applied to the future of cyber conflict, as well as innovative methods of how to do that.

There is little about the current era of strategic competition that does not tie back, in some way, to the digital infrastructure powering nations and multi-national companies. Be it the planetary scale cloud computing or the emerging bubble of AI services, everything from modern banking to contemporary weapon systems rely heavily on backbone digital infrastructure. The competition for access, control over, and restriction of that infrastructure is carving battle lines even amidst close allies and partners. Within this landscape, access to technologies such as sophisticated semiconductors, AI-enabled large-scale data processing, and cloud computing infrastructure creates both economic and strategic advantages for states and companies.

Computing power will only become more central to core public and national security functions. Thus, states have increasingly sought to respond to this competition over computing power through statecraft, building their own capacity through investing in onshoring (or friend-shoring) key technology manufacturing processes, supporting the development of domestic cloud computing businesses, and allocating government resources to accelerate AI development while seeking to restrict those same resources to others.

This session seeks to update the vital conversation about computing power as a strategic resource.