Top of the Day

 

Confronting Gendered Harm in Cyberspace is not a Matter of Social Justice — It’s a National Security Imperative

 

(Pavlina Pavlova – Just Security – 17 February 2025) As the United Nations Open-Ended Working Group on Information and Communication Technologies (OEWG) convenes the 10th substantive session in New York, cyber operations by state-affiliated groups and cybercriminals increasingly target the infrastructure and services essential to daily life. These large-scale attacks place substantial pressure on national security, particularly when interdependent sectors experience cascading disruptions. While populations at large feel the impacts, not everyone is affected equally. Context matters: a victim’s identity can determine the type of attack, its likelihood, and its consequences. Women, in particular, face heightened risks if breaches expose sensitive data or cause outages in critical public services. Despite the worsening threat landscape, United Nations (U.N.) cyber norms remain gender-blind, undermining States’ ability to protect all citizens. – https://www.justsecurity.org/107353/gendered-harm-cyberspace-not-social-justice-a-security-imperative/

 

Munich Cyber Security Conference 2025 – Estonian spy chief: ‘Hybrid schmybrid, what’s happening is attacks’

 

(Alexander Martin – The Record – 17 February 2025) The head of the Estonian Foreign Intelligence Service has criticized the “misleading and soft” word “hybrid” being used to describe Russian acts of sabotage and subversion across the continent. In a late panel discussion on Saturday at the Munich Security Conference, Kaupo Rosin protested the use of the word which has been applied to a range of hostile activities that are deemed to be deniable or below the threshold justifying an armed response. – https://therecord.media/estonian-spy-chief-russia-hybrid-attacks-are-real-attacks

A Bird’s-eye View of the Paris AI Action Summit: Regulation, Power, and Alternatives

(Lucas Anjos – Global Tech Institute – 13 February 2025) The recently concluded AI Action Summit, held in Paris, France on February 10-11, emphasized the widening difference between the AI strategies of the Global North and the common concerns of the Global South. While world leaders, major tech CEOs, and policymakers debated regulatory frameworks and economic competitiveness, usually advocating for a mutually exclusive view of regulation vs. innovation, the summit largely mirrored previous gatherings in its focus on maintaining the dominance of established players. Some would argue that there was a slight shift to more immediate risks (instead of a heavy focus on existential ones), including to the environment. – https://techglobalinstitute.com/announcements/blog/a-birds-eye-view-of-the-paris-ai-action-summit-regulation-power-and-alternatives/

 

The AI-Nuclear Nexus: New CNAS Report on Managing Artificial Intelligence and Nuclear Weapons amid U.S. Rivalry with China and Russia

 

(Center for a New American Security – 13 February 2025) Following Vice President JD Vance’s speech at the Paris Artificial Intelligence Action Summit and ahead of the Munich Security Conference, the Center for a New American Security released an important new report, ‘Averting AI Armageddon: U.S.-China-Russia Rivalry at the Nexus of Nuclear Weapons and Artificial Intelligence’ by Jacob Stokes, Colin H. Kahl, Andrea Kendall-Taylor, and Nicholas Lokker. The authors argue that the nuclear order among major powers has fundamentally shifted. In particular, the People’s Republic of China is building up its nuclear arsenal to make it numerically larger and technologically more sophisticated. As a result, the bipolar nuclear order—led by the United States and Russia—has started to give way to a more volatile tripolar one. That shift is taking place concurrently with rapid advances in artificial intelligence, including for military applications. Those two trends converge in what this report calls the “AI-nuclear nexus.” – https://www.cnas.org/press/press-release/the-ai-nuclear-nexus-new-cnas-report-on-managing-artificial-intelligence-and-nuclear-weapons-amid-u-s-rivalry-with-china-and-russia

 

Assessing National Information Ecosystems

(Alicia Wanless, Samantha Lai, John Hicks – Carnegie Endowment for International Peace – 11 February 2025) Often driven by misunderstanding, fears abound over how new technologies will change an information ecosystem. They might, and they might not. Either way, it’s extremely difficult to know what those changes will be without first understanding what an ecosystem was like before the introduction of those new technologies. In other words, to know how a system has changed, one must first know what constitutes the system and its prior state. This paper proffers factors that can constitute baselines for assessing national information ecosystems that can be measured across decades, geographies, and cultures. Assessing these factors over time and comparing them among countries can foster understanding of the impacts of new regulations, conflicts, and technologies. Perhaps more importantly, such an approach offers an objective analysis of information ecosystems, which is much needed in these politically charged times. The framework can also be used to identify existing gaps in knowledge, guiding policymakers and researchers on funding and research priorities to establish baselines of national information ecosystems. As those baselines are established and maintained, comparative analysis between ecosystems can generate insights on policy interventions to redress threats within them. – https://carnegieendowment.org/research/2025/02/assessing-national-information-ecosystems?lang=en

IA : vers une domination énergétique des GAFAM ?

(Frédéric Jeannin – Institut de Relations Internationales et Stratégiques – 10 February 2025) « L’intelligence artificielle (IA) est la nouvelle électricité ». Cette phrase prononcée par le chercheur Andrew Ng en 2017 illustre l’envergure qu’a prise l’intelligence artificielle dans nos sociétés. Non sans appréhension, elle a progressivement pris une place prépondérante dans nos processus de production et nos divertissements, jusqu’à devenir quasi vitale sur des questions de santé ou de défense. Cette citation est aussi éloquente quant au lien qu’entretient l’IA avec la transition énergétique, car face à la complexification de nos réseaux électriques, seuls les outils numériques les plus perfectionnés semblent en mesure de conjuguer l’intermittence des renouvelables avec nos besoins accrus en énergie. – https://www.iris-france.org/vers-une-de-domination-energetique-des-gafam/