An Cosantóir

An Cosantóir March / April 2025 www.military.ie/magazine 24 | JOINT COMMAND & STAFF COURSE CYBERSECURITY & HYBRID THREATS: THE PAST SEVEN YEARS - AND THE NEXT In January 2015, a couple of years before I started instructing on the Senior Command & Staff Course (SCSC), I gave the first lecture to the Junior Command & Staff Course on emerging security challenges. That year, with great accuracy, the Defence White Paper by Defence Minister Alan Shatter made clear the new types of challenges we were to be facing. The definition of 'national security' had considerably changed over the previous two decades; threats had become less visible, more diverse, and unpredictable. Examples included regional conflicts, organised crime, terrorism, and state failure. Between 2017 and 2024 (the SCSC becoming the Joint Command & Staff Course in 2018), the OF-3 officers who undertake the JCSC benefited from the expertise of a broad range of instructors from government, business, international organisations, academia, and the military. They represented world-ranking academic institutions such as Arizona State University's Thunderbird School of Global Management, Oxford University's Blavatnik School of Government, and Lancaster University's Department of Politics; leading consultancies such as Wise Law Melbourne, Layer 8 Cybersecurity, and Digital Business Ireland; businesses such as Airbox Systems, Rivada Networks, Barclays Bank, and Regeneron Pharmaceuticals; and military and governmental organisations including the Irish Data Protection Commission, Royal Australian Air Force, UK Cabinet Office, US State Dept, Royal Military College Canada, US Joint Special Operations University, US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, LA County Sheriff's Dept, UK Joint Services Command and Staff College, Hellenic Military Academy, German Federal Foreign Ministry, US FBI, the Bundeswehr, NATO, National Cyber Security Centre Ireland, Parents for Peace Canada, the Marshall Center, Partnership for Peace Consortium, US Navy, and the NATO / EU Hybrid Centre of Excellence. The EU - including the European Security and Defence College, the ENISA cybersecurity agency, European Defence Agency, and European External Action Service (EEAS) also provided invaluable teaching. Expert instructors who had recently led organisations such as EEAS, the EU's police agency Europol, the US National Security Agency (NSA), and UK's National Cyber Security Centre, all shared their critical and invaluable expertise. The wide range of instructors were invited because the threats we face are becoming ever broader and less predictable. 'Hybrid' security challenges - which are both 'military' and non-military' - are increasingly diverse but much more prevalent. Cybersecurity was identified by former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright in her report 'NATO 2020 New Strategic Concept', as one of the key defining hybrid issues. Cybersecurity is the security of Cyberspace - the online environment in which we all now live and work. Cyberspace clearly provides invaluable societal benefits - far too many to mention here. However, technology is indifferent to concepts of right and wrong (at least it is for now, in these early days of Artificial Intelligence.) Cyberspace can be a facilitator of progress - or an enabler for nefarious actors seeking to cause harm. We saw this clearly with the 2021 cyber attack on our HSE health service. As we explored in previous editions of An Cosantóir, cyberspace is utilised by criminals, malign states, and terrorist actors. Cyberspace is the primary enabler for terrorism. Indeed, Sir Alex Younger, former director of the UK Secret Intelligence Service, states terrorism needs to be defined as a "technique", regardless of its "author". Cyberspace enables groups, including Isis and the extreme far right, to initiate or 'inspire' terrorist activities. Terrorist organisations and their supporters disseminate online propaganda creating a false narrative - particularly effective in enabling 'lone wolf' terrorism which is incredibly difficult to detect before an incident. Online radicalisation also has a direct effect on the Defence Forces and the security of the State both here in Ireland and in the many regions of the world in which we operate. Indeed, the consequences of the successful Isis online radicalisation and recruitment of one of our own serving personnel in 2015 could have been catastrophic. The EU Internet Referral Unit (EU IRU) based within Europol's European Counter Terrorism Centre, states that terrorist use of the internet and social media "has increased enormously over the course of recent years". (EU IRU detects and investigates malicious content on the internet and in social media). The US FBI has established the Countering Violent Extremism Program (CVE), which aims to help young people identify and avoid "poisonous propaganda", especially in cyberspace, where violent extremists "are flooding social media with slick recruiting videos and persuasive calls to action." Cyberspace facilitates the use of low-cost offensive technology by hostile non-state actors, which would have been impossible just a few years ago. A modern smartphone featuring GPS, accelerometers, gyroscopes, and motion detectors can be weaponized to enable an improvised explosive device, unmanned aerial vehicle, or an improvised missile. Advanced weapons can be manufactured using 3D printing with plans obtained online. Terrorists can now acquire the latest technology - not for the billions spent on national defence budgets - but for a few hundred dollars. Since 9/11 al-Qaeda, Isis and their affiliates have continually adapted to this changing environment. The attacks in Iraq, Jordan, and Syria against the US, the Hamas atrocities of October 2023, and the Iranian backed Houthi ARTICLE BY DINOS ANTHONY KERIGAN-KYROU PHOTOS PROVIDED BY DINOS ANTHONY KERIGAN-KYROU Russia utilised online social media to influence the 2016 Brexit referendum Organisations that provided invaluable and crucial instruction to the JCSC on Cybersecurity and Hybrid Threats

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