Papers on emerging domains: cyber and technology presented at EISS conferences and workshops, newest first. 2026-06-11T12:00:00Z https://eiss-europa.com/feeds/themes/emerging-domains-cyber-and-technology.xml European Initiative for Security Studies https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2026-ai-driven-cloud-monitoring-and-cyber-situational-awareness-in-european-digital-i 2026-06-11T12:00:00Z 2026-06-11T12:00:00Z Prof. Daniela Mechkaroska Prof. Ervin Domazet

Abstract: Artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud computing, combined with IoT systems through digital interconnection, create virtual environments that merge with physical spaces. The new operational capabilities that these transformations bring to European digital ecosystems create security challenges, governance issues and societal concerns. Existing research on AI-based security solutions focuses on their technical performance, but neglects the effects that these systems have on cyber situational awareness and decision-making, as well as regulatory compliance. This paper examines the improvement of cyber situational awareness through AI-powered cloud monitoring systems and visual analytics tools operating in distributed cloud-IoT environments. The study explores human-AI teamwork in automated systems by analyzing data collected from experimental monitoring platforms and intelligent traffic analysis scenarios to show how this collaboration enables early detection of anomalies and helps people understand cyber events, while organizations work together to respond to security incidents across their shared networks. The analysis explores the practical aspects of governance and operational aspects of European digital environments by assessing their technical performance. The assessment assesses data governance, model transparency and privacy protection, system interoperability, and accountability. The paper, through its interdisciplinary approach, which connects cybersecurity engineering with digital governance and security studies, shows that AI monitoring systems function as socio-technical systems that guide the way organizations assess strategic risks and develop their policies. The results show that critical digital ecosystems in Europe require comprehensive frameworks that combine cutting-edge analytics with governance systems designed to maintain transparent operations for trusted and resilient implementation of intelligent surveillance technology. The research work establishes its value to ongoing digital transformation studies through the connection of technological progress to both practical aspects and organizational elements that drive research development.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2026-classical-geopolitics-in-cyberspace-explaining-cyber-state-behaviour-with-power 2026-06-11T12:00:00Z 2026-06-11T12:00:00Z Lorenz Sommer

Cyberspace is a new domain of state security competition that differs from the conventional and nuclear realms, most notably because states are constantly engaged in cyberspace operations below the threshold of armed attacks. This inclines many scholars to use new approaches, both theoretically and empirically, to measure and explain cyber state behaviour. This paper argues that classical neorealist literature, which assumes that geographic features and military resources predict state behaviour, is applicable to the new realm. Building on this, it proposes that the power position of a state, co-constituted by its vulnerability and resources, can explain offensive or defensive behaviour in cyberspace. The paper maps 31 states engaged in cyber security competition and overall confirms classical geopolitics expectations, where vulnerable and resourceful states (“*land powers*”) behave offensively, while less vulnerable ones (“*sea powers*”) tend to behave defensively. The paper sets a counterpoint to the prevailing “cyber exceptionalism” and contributes to ongoing debates about the offense-advantage in cyberspace, as well as the equalizing effect of cyber conflict on power politics in conventional realms.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2026-cyber-risk-logics-and-their-implications-for-cybersecurity 2026-06-11T12:00:00Z 2026-06-11T12:00:00Z Sarah Backman Dr Tim Stevens

Cybersecurity in national and international security is frequently discussed in an existential register. However, most cybersecurity activities are normal and routine, including diverse practices of cyber risk management. The intricacies of cyber risk and its connection to security and threat politics have received surprisingly little attention in the cyber politics literature. This article addresses this gap through a twofold theoretical proposition. The first argues that cyber risk in policy and practice inhabits a continuum between ‘classical’ risk and security postures. The second proposes the existence of multiple risk logics, located at different points along this continuum. To illustrate this, we outline two distinct cyber risk logics: ‘risk as potential threats’ and ‘risk as uncertainty’. Through an exploratory case-study of cyber risk policy and guidance in the United Kingdom, we find indications of the simultaneous existence of these risk logics, including in specific organizational contexts. We propose that the ‘risk as potential threats’ logic, in particular, acts as a ‘bridge’ between conventional risk and security. We conclude by discussing how differentiating cyber risk logics facilitates a more finely grained appreciation of cybersecurity policy and practice and provides opportunities for disciplinary engagement with the organizational and institutional politics of cybersecurity and ‘the international’.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2026-cybercrime-ai-resilience-by-design-in-the-information-age-tabletop-evidence-on-a 2026-06-11T12:00:00Z 2026-06-11T12:00:00Z Gil Baram

Digital technologies are entangling cyber risk, digital infrastructure, and governance. This paper argues that AI-enabled cybercrime is best understood as a transformation of the cybercrime ecosystem rather than merely as a set of new technical tactics. It draws on UC Berkeley’s “AI-Enabled Cybercrime: Exploring Risks, Building Awareness, and Guiding Policy Responses” initiative, supported by the Center for Long-Term Cybersecurity (CLTC) and the Berkeley Risk and Security Lab (BRSL), which combines foresight-based scenario planning with empirical tabletop exercises (TTXs) and broader expert engagement (workshops, interviews, surveys). Empirically, the paper synthesizes observations from three convenings: the kickoff tabletop exercise at UC Berkeley (December 2024), the Singapore tabletop exercise (October 2025) and the Tel Aviv exercise (December 2025). Participants from government, critical infrastructure, industry, and academia conducted stress tests of AI-generated malware, deepfake-enabled fraud, and accelerated attack chains. The TTXs explored responses ranging from initial breach investigation to disruption scenarios affecting energy, transport, and water systems. Across the exercises, participants described AI as increasing the “speed, scale, and sophistication” of familiar criminal motives (money, leverage, access) while lowering technical barriers and reinforcing an underground “marketplace” model in which specialized actors coordinate (e.g., access brokers, ransomware negotiators, deepfake vendors). Yet the decisive constraints were institutional and societal: teams debated roles, decision rights, and reporting lines before technical evidence could be validated; communications strategy had to balance transparency against rumor and escalation risks; leaders also emphasized human accountability even when using AI to triage large data volumes. The paper concludes with a resilience-by-design agenda relevant to European security studies and practice: decision models for action under uncertainty, more straightforward public-private responsibility sharing for critical digital dependencies, and crisis-communication doctrines that protect public trust while preserving rights.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2026-do-parliaments-dream-of-cyber-power-parliamentary-scrutiny-in-the-strategic-doma 2026-06-11T12:00:00Z 2026-06-11T12:00:00Z Mattia Sguazzini

Cybersecurity has become central to strategic competition and foreign policy, yet research has focused primarily on executive decision-making, military doctrines, and national cyber strategies, marginalising parliamentary roles in this securitised and technically complex domain. This paper examines how legislatures scrutinise cyber policy in democratic systems. Using the framework of authority, ability, and attitude, the paper conceptualises parliamentary scrutiny as a form of strategic oversight shaped by legal prerogatives, institutional capacities, and political incentives. Building on the literature on parliamentary war powers and intelligence oversight, it shows how cyber policy blurs boundaries between defence, intelligence, law enforcement, and critical infrastructure governance, thereby challenging established mechanisms of democratic accountability. The study relies on an original dataset of EU cybersecurity policies and a comparative analysis of five cases: the United Kingdom, Italy, France, Germany, and Spain. Combining text-as-data techniques, parliamentary metadata, and Institutional Grammar 2.0, it examines who speaks about cyber policy, how extensively, and with which institutional powers. The findings reveal substantial variation in parliamentary scrutiny, shaped by institutional arrangements, strategic ambiguity, and executive dominance. By situating cyber policy within debates on civil–military relations and foreign policy decision-making, the paper advances understanding of democratic oversight in emerging strategic domains.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2026-filling-the-eu-s-identity-void-from-without-and-within-forging-a-geopolitics-of 2026-06-11T12:00:00Z 2026-06-11T12:00:00Z Kurt Bassuener

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen declared her ambition to lead a “geopolitical Commission” upon taking office in 2019, at a time when debate over EU “strategic autonomy” was intensifying. Promoted most visibly by French President Emmanuel Macron during Donald Trump’s first presidency, marked by open doubts about NATO, this debate was driven by growing concern over Russian and Chinese influence in the EU’s neighbourhood, particularly in the Western Balkans (WB6). These concerns spanned the information space and critical infrastructure, extending even to EU member states participating in China’s Belt and Road Initiative. Yet despite heightened rhetoric, the EU’s geopolitical development lagged behind its ambitions and remained largely reactive. This gap became evident during China’s Covid-19 “mask and vaccine diplomacy” and, more decisively, following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. These exogenous shocks prompted renewed EU engagement with enlargement. The accession process in the Western Balkans was revived after being stalled in 2019, and pathways were opened for Eastern Partnership countries, notably Ukraine, Moldova, and Georgia. Nevertheless, despite multiple reforms and initiatives, including the 2024 Growth Plan, the EU’s underlying approach toward long-standing Balkan candidates has remained largely unchanged. The return of Donald Trump to the White House in 2025 has further unsettled the international order. US strategic documents now envision a world structured around competing hegemons, the United States, China, and Russia, with Europe relegated to a subordinate role rather than recognized as an autonomous geopolitical actor. The downgrading of democratic values as a policy objective, alongside actions such as the January 2026 US intervention in Venezuela, illustrates this shift. Europe has yet to articulate a coherent response, although divergent visions emerged in 2026 from leaders in Canada, France, and Ukraine. The proposed paper, drawing on data collected within the Geo-Power-EU project, argues that an EU geopolitics grounded in democratic values has a clear demand base among eastern candidates and potentially the Western Balkans. This normative distinction from hegemonic powers represents a strategic asset that should underpin the EU’s approach to enlargement and collective defence.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2026-financial-in-security-tiktok-and-the-far-right-pipeline 2026-06-11T12:00:00Z 2026-06-11T12:00:00Z Clara Jammot

While the relationship between far-right extremism, libertarianism, and neoliberalism has long been established, algorithmic recommendation as well as the lucrative professionalisation of content creation are leading platforms like TikTok to impact how financial (in)security feeds into the far-right’s proliferation. The rise in influencers promoting an individualistic ‘entrepreneurial mindset’ alongside aspirational lifestyles that are rooted in politicized identities has encouraged the consumption of narratives and routines that promote far-right values. Drawing on ontological security theory and discourse analysis, this paper asks: how do the ontological (in)security narratives of finance-related content relate to far-right ideology? Amongst the 3,246 TikTok posts and 19,805 comments analysed for this paper, three main ontological security narratives relate to far-right extremism. The first, and most dominant, interprets the red-pilled concept of ‘breaking out of the matrix’ as the act of achieving freedom from a perceived oppressive financial system by accumulating wealth and material resources. In addition to promoting a neoliberal individualist imperative that aligns with the far-right, this narrative frequently displayed senses of shame due to financial instability. The second narrative draws on far-right conservativism to blend financial aspiration with gender, framing success and financial security as dependent on traditional gender roles (e.g., tradwives) and on extremist masculinist views about romantic partners (e.g., choosing between supportive wives and ‘gold-diggers’). The final narrative focuses on the ‘influencer saviour’ which points to the connection between finance, religion and the far-right – specifically in how users address their own ontological insecurity by relying on, and idolizing, influencers who appear to have achieved financial stability. At a time of financial insecurity, developing this facet of the online far-right is crucial to not only better understand the radicalization processes threatening democracy but also to identify the topics that policymakers can address to counter the rise of far-right extremism.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2026-from-national-incident-response-to-zero-trust-bridging-cyber-defence-policy-and 2026-06-11T12:00:00Z 2026-06-11T12:00:00Z Dmytro Uzlov Vladyslav Vilihura

The ongoing armed conflict in Ukraine has become an unprecedented stress test for national cybersecurity systems, exposing both the capabilities and the limitations of existing cyber-defence architectures under sustained adversary pressure. This paper examines two interrelated dimensions of cybersecurity governance that have acquired acute relevance for European security: national-level prioritization of cyber incidents, and the adoption of zero trust architecture (ZTA) as a paradigm shift in organizational security. First, the paper presents a multi-factor methodology for prioritizing cyber incidents, intended for use by national CERTs such as CERT-UA. The methodology integrates the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) with Ukraine's national criticality levels through a hierarchical structure that provides structured tie-breaking via multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA). The paper proposes a simulation-based evaluation framework for assessing the methodology's effectiveness in handling high-volume incident streams while preserving a decisive and transparent allocation of resources—a critically important capability for states operating under persistent cyber threat. Second, the paper analyses the concept of zero trust as a promising security paradigm for European critical infrastructure. Based on a systematic review of international ZTA models and practical enterprise-deployment experience, it identifies the principal barriers to adoption – in particular awareness gaps, shortages of skilled personnel, and organizational complexity – and proposes practical recommendations for policymakers and security practitioners. By bridging operational-level incident response with strategic architectural transformation, this paper contributes to an interdisciplinary dialogue at the intersection of cybersecurity engineering, security governance, and defence policy. It offers empirically grounded conclusions relevant to European states seeking to strengthen their cyber resilience amid a shifting threat landscape shaped by statesponsored cyber operations, digital-infrastructure dependencies, and the imperative of collective cyber defence within NATO and EU structures.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2026-from-precision-to-existential-risk-hypersonic-weapons-and-the-erosion-of-the-con 2026-06-11T12:00:00Z 2026-06-11T12:00:00Z Mr Tahir Azad

Recent hypersonic weapon technology advances have changed military power, challenging conventional and nuclear warfare distinctions. Hypersonic glide vehicles and cruise missiles, promoted as precision, speed, and deterrence, are compressing decision-making timelines, circumventing missile-defence architectures, and blurring strategic stability-underpinning escalation thresholds. This paper examines how hypersonic weapons break the conventional–nuclear divide and introduce existential risk even without nuclear payloads. The paper has three main points. First, hypersonic weapons undermine warning and response systems, increasing pre-emptive action and launch-on-warning incentives. Second, their integration with advanced intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, and emerging AI-enabled command-and-control systems increases misperception, automation bias, and accidental escalation, especially in fragile deterrence regions. Third, prestige politics, defense-industrial competition, and perceived vulnerability drive hypersonic development, similar to nuclear arms racing. The paper uses the Ukraine war, the May 2025 India–Pakistan confrontation, and the Iran–Israel escalation to demonstrate how missile defence saturation, drone integration, and precision-strike doctrines are accelerating offensive dominance. Hypothesising hypersonic weapons as a “conventionally armed strategic force” with WMD-like effects contributes to military innovation and strategic studies. The paper sheds light on how emerging technologies are changing global security environments and complicating arms-control and risk-reduction efforts by placing hypersonic weapons at the intersection of conventional military innovation and existential security risk.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2026-governing-cybersecurity-and-the-politics-of-state-control-in-the-digital-age 2026-06-11T12:00:00Z 2026-06-11T12:00:00Z Moritz Weiss Ms Yagnyashri Kodaru

Digital technologies have become deeply entangled with the fabric of contemporary societies. Data infrastructures and cybersecurity practices underpin not only economic activity but also state authority and national security. This growing entanglement gives rise to a central question: how are states reorganizing their authority structures and cybersecurity policies, when digital infrastructures are simultaneously strategic assets and commercial commodities? To address this question, we develop a comparative framework investigating how states design cybersecurity policies across institutional and technological contexts. We distinguish between centralized or fragmented authority, on the one hand, and capacities-based or rules-based cybersecurity policies, on the other. These distinctions serve us as a typology of state control over cybersecurity. First, ‘controllers’ possess the ultimate authority and capacity to command and control. Second, ‘custodians’ set agendas and align a variety of government actors without delegation. Third, ‘incentivizers’ influence third-party behavior indirectly through mostly material and legal incentives. Fourth, ‘managers’ exercise delegated authority over day-to-day implementation. We argue that the evolution of these models is shaped by the interaction of two factors: the demand for securing cyberspace and technological complexity. Empirically, we take a longue durée and focus on a single rising power, India. We analyze the temporal evolution of cybersecurity governance within India from 1950 to 2025, with a focus on information and communication technologies (ICT) – the backbone of all digital infrastructures. We identify four phases, each corresponding to one of our four types of state control. Our case study illustrates the politics of digital infrastructures. While less state control redistributes power to firms embedded in critical infrastructures, but also creates incentives for regulatory capture, states simultaneously seek to retain control through coercive backstops and “kill switches”. The paper thus speaks to broader debates on the hybrid ordering of security in the information age.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2026-knowing-cybersecurity-the-epistemic-infrastructural-power-of-big-tech 2026-06-11T12:00:00Z 2026-06-11T12:00:00Z Tobias Liebetrau

Big tech companies authoritatively produce data, information, and knowledge about cybersecurity threats to individuals, businesses, and states. But how do they render international cybersecurity phenomena knowable? Through which practices, means, and devices is this knowledge generated? This paper argues that examining the epistemic infrastructural power of big tech companies addresses these questions. Drawing on International Relations and Science and Technology Studies scholarship highlighting infrastructure’s role in knowledge production, the paper first conceptualizes epistemic infrastructural power. Second, it integrates this conceptualization with big tech companies’ unique position forming the infrastructural core of digitized societies, economies, and lives, alongside existing analysis of their security governance role. This develops a conceptual lens enabling exploration of diverse empirical manifestations of big tech epistemic infrastructural power, particularly regarding cybersecurity knowledge production and performativity. This matters politically because cybersecurity knowledge production is not a neutral or a-political endeavor, but a type of practice that co-constitutes entities and relations in the world by naming, categorizing, producing, and presenting specific realities or truths, serving as references for governance and policy decisions and practices. Third, the paper demonstrates this analytical framework's value by exploring Microsoft’s cybersecurity knowledge production during the Ukraine war. Extensive use of Microsoft products in Ukrainian public and private digital infrastructure enabled the company to collect, monitor, and analyze data about malicious network activities, positioning Microsoft as a significant gatekeeper and communicator of war-related cybersecurity knowledge. The paper concludes by reflecting on what governance object cybersecurity becomes through these dynamics and discussing wider implications for global security governance. The analysis reveals how big tech companies’ infrastructural position grants them distinctive epistemic authority in defining cybersecurity threats and shaping corresponding governance responses, raising critical questions about knowledge power in contemporary international security.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2026-narrative-amplification-plot-structures-and-emotions-on-vkontakte-tsargrad-s-pop 2026-06-11T12:00:00Z 2026-06-11T12:00:00Z Alexandra Brankova Ms Dalia Pablo Ortiz

This paper explores narrative amplification and plot structures on VKontakte by focusing on Tsargrad Society and Tsargrad TV’s channels. Key narratives and their sub-stories are presented, accounting for platform amplification patterns measured through the number of likes, analysis of posts, and affiliated comments. This study further develops the concepts of amplification and narrative resistance. VK is the largest social media platform in the Russian Federation, and it is being gradually integrated into a government-led multipurpose application, Max (like WeChat in China). Relying on data scraped from two VK channels, Tsargrad Television and Tsargrad Society (June 2021 – June 2023), the study offers a glimpse into the narratives of more extreme nationalist media outlets, their dissemination, and domestic audience engagement (reactions and comments). Theoretically, the paper is anchored in ontological security studies, narratives, and constructivist approaches to international relations (Steele, 2008; Hagström, 2019, 2022; Wendt, 1992). Mixed-methods approach is adopted as user engagement patterns are explored through descriptive statistics identifying most amplified narratives and periods with high activity. Additionally, narrative analysis is applied when analyzing posts with highest number of reactions and their affiliated comments. The findings reveal a substantial and sharp increase in the number of reactions on Tsargrad TV after February 2022. Two key narrative plot structures dominated Tsargrad’s VK communication after the start of the Russian full-scale invasion: hero-versus-villain and internal traitors. The affordances and audio-visual communication of VKontakte enhance the emotional impact of these stories, mediating pride, loss, grief, affect, or contempt. The paper is concerned with the role of digital media and information in non-military warfare and mobilization (Galeotti, 2023; Jonsson & Käihkö, 2025) whilst reflecting on the role of non-human agents in narrative amplification.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2026-quantum-resilient-satin-and-european-digital-sovereignty 2026-06-11T12:00:00Z 2026-06-11T12:00:00Z Dr Gürkan Gür

This contribution presents and discusses quantum-resilient Space–Aerial–Terrestrial Networks (SATIN) as a crucial enabler of European future-proof digital sovereignty, strengthening secure communications, resilient critical infrastructure, and reinforcing Europe’s leadership across satellite, drone, and terrestrial networking domains.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2026-selling-the-future-of-war-discursive-power-and-military-innovation 2026-06-11T12:00:00Z 2026-06-11T12:00:00Z Nicolas Krieger

How do ideas about military technology become politically influential? This paper sets out to examines how competing visions of military technology emerge, gain dominance, and shape German defence planning. It focuses on public debates surrounding ‘classic’ (armour, artillery, etc.) and innovative military technologies (autonomous weapon systems, AI targeting, UAS/UGV, etc.), and analyses whether shifts in discursive prominence are reflected in formal defence planning and procurement decisions following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Germany’s Zeitenwende. The paper advances an ideational political economy account of military innovation. It argues that under crisis and uncertainty, narratives structure how security problems are defined and which technological solutions appear urgent and legitimate. Private actors, like neo-defence start-ups, promote solutionist narratives presenting innovation as strategically necessary and economically efficient. Through discursive coalitions and epistemic authority claims, certain ideas structure agenda-setting and prioritization in defence planning and procurement while others remain marginal. Empirically, the paper combines large-scale text analysis through Discourse Network Analysis, document analysis, and elite interviews. The core dataset includes roughly three million German newspaper articles (2020-present), defence strategy documents, procurement decisions, capability programmes, and defence firm materials. I trace narrative evolution with Discourse Network Analysis, identify coalitions, and measure shifts in idea dominance (classic versus innovative military technologies), linking these temporally to defence decisions, to demonstrate how ideas become politically influential. This paper aims to answer how competing ideas about military technology shape agenda-setting and procurement in German defence policy and makes three contributions. Empirically, it provides the first systematic, longitudinal mapping of military innovation framing and prioritisation in German defence debates since 2020. Theoretically, it demonstrates how ideational power and solutionist narratives shape security sector prioritization. Methodologically, it shows how discourse network analysis can connect large-scale public debate to defence planning, with implications for understanding how commercially driven narratives influence national security policy.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2026-telegram-in-russia-s-information-strategy-evidence-from-serbia 2026-06-11T12:00:00Z 2026-06-11T12:00:00Z Anna Seliverstova

Digital platforms have become central arenas of contemporary geopolitical competition, blurring the boundaries between the virtual and the physical, the informational and the political. This paper examines Telegram as a key element of Russia's contemporary information warfare and influence operations, focusing on its role in shaping political discourse in Serbia. While Telegram has often been portrayed as a neutral or even emancipatory communication tool due to its encryption and resistance to state censorship, this paper argues that the platform has been effectively integrated into state-aligned information operations, functioning as a semi-informal extension of Russian strategic influence. Drawing on an original dataset of over 140 pro-Russian Telegram channels operating in Serbia, the study combines network analysis, discourse analysis, and agenda-setting theory to map how narratives related to the war in Ukraine and domestic electoral politics are constructed, amplified, and localised. The findings demonstrate that Telegram enables a dense, transnational propaganda ecosystem that operates beyond traditional media regulation, leveraging platform affordances such as anonymity, rapid reposting, and low moderation to shape public agendas and political perceptions. Rather than relying solely on official state media, Russian influence is diffused through a hybrid network of media outlets, individual influencers, and radical political actors, allowing for plausible deniability and narrative flexibility. The paper contributes to debates on digital transformation and power by showing how digital infrastructures function as strategic assets in contemporary international politics. It highlights the political consequences of platform governance gaps and the growing importance of messaging applications in cyber-enabled influence campaigns. By situating Telegram within broader discussions of digital sovereignty, hybrid warfare, and information security, the paper speaks directly to ongoing debates about the global, political, and societal implications of digital technologies in the information age.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2026-vectorial-analysis-of-hybrid-warfare-directionality-interaction-and-systemic-eff 2026-06-11T12:00:00Z 2026-06-11T12:00:00Z Fabio Duarte

The concepts of 'hybrid warfare' and 'hybrid threats' have expanded into a wide, heterogeneous set of typologies, primarily centred on instruments and actors. As the range of activities labelled “hybrid” continues to grow, existing approaches increasingly struggle to explain how diverse hybrid actions combine, interact, and generate systemic effects below the threshold of direct armed conflict. This article introduces a vectorial analytical framework for the study of hybrid warfare, conceptualising hybrid actions as directed coercive vectors operating across one or multiple domains and targeting specific institutional subsystems. Building on existing hybrid-threat taxonomies, the framework models each activity according to its direction, magnitude, temporal profile, and degree of coordination with other vectors. This vectorial approach enables systematic differentiation between unidirectional, bidirectional, and multidirectional forms of hybrid pressure and provides a structured means of analysing their cumulative and non-linear effects. Rather than proposing a new definition of hybrid warfare, the article advances a meso-level analytical model that bridges descriptive typologies with decision-oriented analysis. The framework is illustrated through empirical vignettes drawn from contemporary and prospective hybrid-threat target arenas, demonstrating its utility for comparative analysis, simulation and scenario development, and the structured assessment of institutional resilience.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2025-competitive-cyber-statecraft-of-the-middle-ground-a-neoclassical-realist-model 2025-06-26T12:00:00Z 2025-06-26T12:00:00Z Arthur Laudrain Joe Devanny

As cyberspace becomes a central arena for geopolitical competition, middle-ground countries — those neither strictly aligned with Western nor Eastern spheres of influence — play a growing role in shaping cyber governance (Gartzke and Lindsay, 2015; Nye, 2022). Traditional neorealist frameworks, which emphasize balancing and bandwagoning, fail to explain the diversity of cyber sovereignty approaches among these states. This paper applies neoclassical realism (NCR) to analyze how elite perceptions, economic dependencies, and security considerations mediate systemic pressures, leading to varied models of cyber statecraft (Rose, 1998; Kitchen and Tirosh, 2021). The study identifies four distinct cyber sovereignty approaches: strategic alignment, where middle-ground and other smaller states integrate into dominant digital ecosystems for economic benefits (e.g., Ireland, Luxembourg); sovereignty assertion, where states impose digital restrictions based on nationalist or security concerns (e.g., India, Indonesia); selective engagement, where states participate in norm-setting while hedging between major blocs (e.g., ASEAN, South Africa); and pragmatism, where states adopt fluid digital partnerships to maximize flexibility (e.g., Brazil, UAE) (Mueller, 2017; Segal, 2018). By examining the domestic political drivers behind these choices, this paper challenges the liberal assumption that states will internalize global cyber norms through multilateral institutions (Drezner, 2004; DeNardis, 2020). Instead, it argues that economic fragmentation and regional coalitions are shaping the future of cyber governance, with middle-ground states acting as key decision-makers rather than passive rule-takers (Gopinath et al., 2025), contributing to de-centering international relations (IR) (Zambrano Márquez, 2020). The policy implications suggest that major powers and international organizations must engage middle-ground countries as strategic cyber actors rather than treating them as peripheral players. Supporting regional digital coalitions and offering flexible, case-sensitive partnerships will be critical to ensuring a stable, multipolar cyber order. As cyberspace governance fragments, understanding the agency of middle-ground states is essential to shaping the future of international cyber politics.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2025-does-preeminence-in-emerging-and-military-technologies-matter-for-international 2025-06-26T12:00:00Z 2025-06-26T12:00:00Z Zakir Rzazade

International relations literature on status and prestige demonstrates that states tend to seek technological capabilities and premier weapon systems to shape and improve their international status and prestige. However, there is a lack of empirical evidence on whether such efforts are worthwhile and serve the purpose of enhancing status and prestige. I attempt to address this question through a conjoint survey experiment conducted with a representative sample of 1,000 American nationals. I use artificial intelligence, uncrewed and autonomous systems, and aircraft carriers as attributes for emerging and military technologies, alongside other factors that are shown to be relevant to a state's status and prestige. Through a conjoint design, I aim to explore whether the level of advancement in AI and possession of such technologies improve status and prestige in international politics. Besides, I also intend to test several other hypotheses regarding the source of technology possession and also, based on attitudinal factors such as familiarity with AI, confidence in defense and military AI, and techno-skepticism. Moreover, my design differentiates status and prestige as distinct concepts, which allows a more nuanced understanding of each phenomenon and its interaction with technology. Findings will contribute to a better understanding of the role played by emerging and military technologies in status- and prestige-seeking efforts, informing the respective literature in IR and security studies.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2025-infrastructural-frontlines-of-dis-information-data-territoriality-in-the-russian 2025-06-26T12:00:00Z 2025-06-26T12:00:00Z Louis Petiniaud

The Russia-Ukraine war has critically underscored the importance of cyberspace in modern conflicts, with cyberattacks, information operations, and infrastructure attacks playing a key role since 2014. Beyond the battlefield, both Ukraine and Russia have pursued ambitious digital sovereignty policies that seek to protect their respective “information spaces.” Rooted in the strategic imperative of controlling information flows to secure their territory, these policies are designed to shape and transform the underlying network architectures of the Internet following strongly territorialized conceptions of data and information sovereignty. Since 2022, these policies have intensified, actively reshaping the geographies of data and information, particularly in and around the occupied territories of Ukraine. This paper investigates how multiple actors are increasingly using digital infrastructures to create and maintain new forms of information control, leading to the emergence of complex data geographies. By employing a mixed-methods approach—including OSINT techniques to track internet data, infrastructure mapping, and fieldwork interviews with key stakeholders—this research highlights how an entanglement of opposite policies contributes to the borderization of data, thus shaping the conditions under which parts of the Internet can or cannot be accessed in occupied territories. By mapping the fragmentation of the digital space alongside contemporary and moving frontlines, this paper underscores how Ukraine’s efforts to maintain connectivity in occupied territories and Russia’s attempts to integrate these areas into its digital governance frameworks impacts the cognitive environment of the population, illustrating the strategic importance of data territorialization in contemporary warfare. Bridging perspectives from political geography, geopolitics, and Science and Technology Studies (STS), this paper argues that the war in Ukraine illustrates a broader trend in which political actors increasingly reshape the fundamental architecture of cyberspace, including its logical infrastructure. It contributes to discussions on geographies of the digital, digital sovereignty, and the role of infrastructures in modern strategic competition.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2025-innovation-and-engineering-at-the-front-the-ukrainian-case-of-unmanned-systems 2025-06-26T12:00:00Z 2025-06-26T12:00:00Z Emilie Berthelsen

This paper aims to answer who has been at the centre of the development of Unmanned Systems in Ukraine following February 2022, and how these actors have become organised into constellations that enhance military adaptability. With private actors being central as funders, producers and suppliers of drones, Ukraine demonstrates the contemporary role of the state and the military in guiding and facilitating defence technological innovation. Using a case study approach, it provides an in-depth look at the Ukrainian efforts and challenges of rapidly scaling and localising the production of drones during the war, paying special attention to the role of engineer-soldier collaboration in facilitating continuous development. The Ukrainian example highlights that much of the innovative power is found in start-ups and industries outside the traditional defence-industrial pipeline, necessitating new solutions to bridge the gap. Realising the value of these actors, however, has relied on novel collaboration patterns. Initially, bottom-up initiatives by NGOs and volunteers dominated. While these demonstrated the operational potential of Unmanned Systems, the ad hoc nature hindered scaling. Gearing the bureaucratic infrastructure, including within the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the defence procurement agency, to sustain innovation required new defence industrial strategies and significant changes to processes and organisation, including the formation of the Unmanned Systems Force and industry-platforms like Brave1. This provides an example of large-scale and sustained military innovation in wartime. Studying these constellations of actors that have jointly contributed to the development and deployment of Unmanned Systems showcases concrete mechanisms for enhancing innovative capacity for defence purposes. Based on this empirically grounded examination, I argue that in an unpredictable strategic environment, boosting military adaptability that leverages the potential for rapid development of software-based systems requires the establishment of conduits to ease access for private companies to military feedback and testing prior to tender-based procurement.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2025-online-military-influencers-in-a-social-media-age 2025-06-26T12:00:00Z 2025-06-26T12:00:00Z Anders Puck Nielsen

The invention of social media is one of the most significant technological developments of the last decades. It has transformed the way our society works by facilitating methods of communication that allow broader participation in public debate. This has given rise to the phenomenon of online influencers who establish themselves as authoritative voices within a specific field outside of existing media structures or traditional societal institutions. This development is also visible in the media ecology covering military operations, and it forces military organizations to change their approach to public relations. Indeed, to some extent, military organizations must embrace social media themselves and mimic the behavior of social media influencers to get their message across in a fierce competition for public attention. The paper explores the phenomenon of ‘military influencers’ through a mapping of the different types of social media accounts that that have gained influence during the war in Ukraine. The starting point is an analysis of the references from the daily reports from the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), which has become one of the most quoted sources in mainstream reporting on the Russo-Ukrainian war. Being referenced by ISW is, therefore, a good indicator that a particular online voice has an impact on public discourse. ISW has referenced many thousands of sources, most of which come from different social media platforms. Digital methods are leveraged in the study to categorize these sources based on military affiliation, level of independence, nationality, social media platform, etc. The paper gives a unique overview of the different types of military influencers using data from an ongoing war. In doing so, the study adds to our understanding of the impact of social media on military organizations and provides insights of value to practitioners engaged in military cyber and media operations.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2025-paradigm-paradox-how-emerging-cybersecurity-communities-moderate-eu-governance 2025-06-26T12:00:00Z 2025-06-26T12:00:00Z Hannah-Sophie Weber

While interaction between public and private actors is daily fare in European Union (EU) cybersecurity governance, two contrary paradigms pervade discursive rhetoric. On the one hand, a co-regulatory, inclusive allure of multistakeholderism. On the other hand, state-centric and autarkic ideas of digital sovereignty. Surprisingly little is known about links between – often informal – public-private interaction and high-level rhetoric. Given this: What explains public-private alignment behind contrary paradigms? This paper makes the case that overlooked everyday struggles over authority pre-empt better understanding of ordering processes around digital infrastructure. Integrating practice-theoretical thinking with cybersecurity scholarship, the paper introduces the framework of emerging cybersecurity community (ECC). The ECC framework enables a new understanding of the puzzling disconnect between the aligned everyday practices of interaction, and the contrary governance paradigms – sovereignist and multistakeholderist. The complementary theories congruence analysis helps juxtapose the Brussels effect with norm entrepreneurship theorising. Surfacing explanatory shortcomings of these alternative accounts for either hybrid public or private influence illustrate ECC’s utility for integrating both. The framework systematises cluttered understandings of interests, institutionalisation, and technopolitical interdependencies. Zooming in on the domain of EU cybersecurity governance offers a context-sensitive window for this paper as a point of departure for filling a broader gap in extant literature on public-private interaction across governance domains.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2025-reassessing-european-security-the-drivers-of-nato-s-response-to-hybrid-threats-s 2025-06-26T12:00:00Z 2025-06-26T12:00:00Z Laura Lisboa

Russia’s actions against Ukraine in 2014 led to a reassessment of the European security environment by the West. NATO reinforced its military presence in Eastern Europe and developed measures to counter hybrid threats, which were strengthened after 2022. Although hybrid threats are not new per se, their use over the past decade has posed new strategic challenges to the West. This paper aims to identify the structural and normative drivers behind NATO's approach to hybrid threats through policy analysis and International Relations theory. We first map early European responses to hybrid threats and trace NATO's evolving approach. The term 'hybrid threats' often refers to activities that undermine stability without escalating to direct military conflict. Its widespread use, however, tells us little about the underlying drivers of these responses, which remain underexplored. From a structural standpoint, we assess whether changes in the balance of power and the unexpected use of hybrid threats to achieve political goals made them more central to European security concerns. Drawing on liberal and realist perspectives, we also explore how growing interdependence changes international conflict, increases vulnerability to hybrid threats, and reveals the limits of traditional military responses. From a normative perspective, we analyze how the evolution of domestic and international norms drove responses to hybrid threats. Addressing conventional and hybrid threats in European states requires enhanced multinational coordination and society-wide security efforts. Hybrid threats, in particular, challenge the logic of proportionality in direct responses and deterrence strategies and prompt a reevaluation of norms such as non-interference or the balance between sovereignty and collective security. Finally, we examine how the erosion of democratic norms within European states has made them more susceptible to hybrid threats, and how NATO’s strategies have evolved to prevent adversaries from exploiting internal divisions and undermining democratic processes without triggering direct military confrontation.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2025-regulatory-asymmetries-in-cryptocurrency-governance-implications-for-sanctions-e 2025-06-26T12:00:00Z 2025-06-26T12:00:00Z Orfeas Anastasios Koidi

The rise of cryptocurrencies has introduced new dynamics in the global financial and geopolitical landscape, shaping both economic opportunities and security challenges. Among these challenges, cryptocurrencies have become strategic instruments for circumventing sanctions, exploiting their decentralized nature and regulatory fragmentation. The absence of a cohesive, multilateral regulatory framework has led to significant asymmetries between sanctioning and sanctioned states, creating vulnerabilities that can be leveraged for geopolitical advantage. This paper investigates how regulatory environments in sanctioned states influence the use of cryptocurrencies for sanctions evasion, employing a comparative case study of two sanctioned and two sanctioning jurisdictions. It develops a framework that examines key variables such as the strictness of regulatory requirements, cryptocurrency adoption levels, documented cases of sanctions evasion, regulatory countermeasures, and the overall effectiveness of enforcement. Preliminary findings indicate that sanctioned states strategically exploit regulatory gaps to sustain financial connectivity while sanctioning states struggle with the extraterritorial enforcement of crypto-related sanctions. This research contributes to broader debates on digital sovereignty, global governance, and cyber-enabled financial strategies, highlighting the need for enhanced multilateral coordination in regulating cryptocurrencies. Within the broader context of international security, this study underscores the role of regulation as a tool for power, shaping state capabilities and influence in the evolving digital economy. By highlighting these dynamics, the research seeks to inform policymakers, scholars, and practitioners about the complexities of cryptocurrency regulation and its impact on the effectiveness of international sanctions.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2025-the-erosion-of-traditional-deterrence-space-as-a-case-study-in-military-transfor 2025-06-26T12:00:00Z 2025-06-26T12:00:00Z Raoul Cardellini Leipertz

This paper will examine the evolving interplay between legacy military technologies and emerging innovations, arguing that the transformation of the battlefield has reached a critical tipping point at which traditional doctrines are no longer adequate, and will do so by using space as a case study. As Cold War-era systems—constructed on static deterrence models—confront cutting-edge dual-use innovations such as autonomous satellite constellations, and cyber-enabled space operations, the security environment in space is undergoing a profound reconfiguration. Drawing on empirical analyses of state practises and legal frameworks from authoritative sources including the Woomera Manual, the MILAMOS Project, and the Tallinn Manual on Cyber Operations, this study provides a comprehensive assessment of how these new technologies disrupt conventional military effectiveness and strategic stability. The paper will first delineate the characteristics of legacy versus modern technologies, highlighting how historical systems have shaped deterrence through predictable and well-understood doctrines. In contrast, recent innovations introduce heightened unpredictability, diffuse the locus of control, and expand the pool of actors—encompassing non-state and commercial entities—thereby complicating attribution and response strategies. This analysis will expose critical vulnerabilities in current international legal regimes, which were originally devised for a markedly different technological era. The paper will propose a multi-pronged framework to bridge the gap between traditional and modern military capabilities, focusing on revising operational doctrines to incorporate real-time data analytics and adaptive response measures; and developing updated legal interpretations that reconcile existing treaty obligations with the realities of dual-use technologies.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2025-what-s-got-you-so-worried-the-replicator-initiative-and-us-techno-anxieties-in-a 2025-06-26T12:00:00Z 2025-06-26T12:00:00Z Tom Watts

Focusing on the case of the Replicator Initiative, first announced in September 2023, this paper (re)examines the drivers behind the Pentagon’s push to accelerate the development and deployment of AI systems in support of its focus on great power competition with the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Despite experimenting with AI associated technologies since the 1950s, it has only been since the institutionalization of great power competition as the focus of American defense planning during the first Trump administration that “attributable” autonomous systems have been prioritized in the Pentagon’s military innovation efforts. This paper generates new insights into this apparent puzzle by drawing from the International Relations (IR) literatures on military innovation, emotions, and ontological security. This provides a framework for developing the study of techno-anxiety as a constitutive feature of American foreign and security policy - one that is mirrored by, but analytically distinct from, the techno-opportunism highlighted in many existing accounts. Through this intervention, this study traces how American military anxieties about AI extend beyond fears of "killer robots" to encompass a broader set of geopolitical and affective concerns about the future—specifically, apprehensions about the unknowable effects of technological development on the combat effectiveness of the American military, the durability of the rules-based international order, and existing understandings of American national identity. These findings suggest that the Replicator Initiative is not merely intended to deter a potential PRC military attack on Taiwan by 2027. It is also rooted in a deep unease about what the rapid pace of technological change could mean for America’s place in the world and perception of self.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2024-artificial-intelligence-and-non-linearity-an-analysis-of-the-limitations-of-stat 2024-06-27T12:00:00Z 2024-06-27T12:00:00Z Alessandra Russo

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is poised to have a deep transformative effect on the character of war. While discussions on military AI predominantly centered on the implications of Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems (LAWS), empirical evidence highlights that AI applications extend beyond the notion of “killer robots”, especially in the form of decision-support and Lethal Targeting Assistance software. This is shown in these systems’ increasing presence in contemporary conflicts, as exemplified by the Russo-Ukrainian war and the conflict between Israel and Hamas. However, the existing body of literature in Security Studies investigating military AI usually falls short of comprehensively understanding the functioning, advantages, and limitations of statistical learning-based algorithms underpinning current AI systems. This hinders the effective study of military AI and often leads to tendencies of technological determinism and overestimation of AI’s actual role and capabilities in warfare. This research seeks to address this pitfall by integrating Strategic Studies literature with knowledge from the field of Machine Learning to understand whether current AI systems are capable of facing war on their own devices. This research aims to demonstrate the limitations of statistical learning-based AI in warfare by drawing on Security Studies literature to identify the set of capabilities required to effectively address the inherently nonlinear and chaotic nature of warfare. Subsequently, these capabilities will be tested against the heuristics and main tenets of Machine Learning. By doing so, this research provides technically informed insight into the suitability of AI in warfare, shedding light on its actual limitations and potential. The central argument posits that current AI systems are not ready to be deployed autonomously and without human judgment, as they rely on an inductive type of reasoning based on dataset analysis that is ill-suited to face the complex and unpredictable nature of warfare.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2024-business-power-and-the-quiet-politics-of-military-innovation-in-cyberspace 2024-06-27T12:00:00Z 2024-06-27T12:00:00Z Moritz Weiss

This paper seeks to investigate whether and how cybersecurity firms have possibly gained business power over democratic governments in the digital age? First, we propose an interaction-oriented view to approach the public-private coordination of how to secure cyberspace. Public and private actors need to agree on policies; and the one with lower costs of non-agreement arguably achieves the more desired outcomes. Second, we suggest a baseline model that combines two conditions shaping these costs of non-agreement and thus business power: (I) Do cybersecurity firms have either a specific expertise or a large amount of general resources at their disposal? (II) Is power bargaining either exercised through more formalized coordination (e.g. civilian markets) or rather through informal arrangements (e.g. military markets)? Third, we engage in an empirical stock-taking exercise of mapping the private suppliers of USCYBERCOM since 2018. We gathered more than 250 contracts from https://www.usaspending.gov/ to reveal USCYBERCOM’s most important contractors; to identify the most relevant services and to assess the extent of competition on these markets. Moreover, we explored the suppliers’ geographical location as well as their attributes and the primary markets that they were involved in. By drawing on this extensive empirical evidence, we suggest that the substantial share of non-competitive tendering increasingly normalizes quiet politics; and, therefore, provides manifold opportunities for the possibly ‘unwarranted influence’ of business power on how to secure cyberspace. In sum, this paper seeks to contribute to both the better understanding of funding innovative military technologies and the more generalizable politics of public-private coordination in international security in the digital age.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2024-changing-expertise-knowledge-production-through-artificial-intelligence-in-the-m 2024-06-27T12:00:00Z 2024-06-27T12:00:00Z Alies Jansen

The use of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to help policy makers and military officers navigate the battlefield in Gaza and Ukraine has often made headlines in the past months. Rather than fully autonomous applications of AI, the technologies are reported to be used to quickly perceive, evaluate, and act upon battlefield information. Among scholars of security and strategic studies, the use of AI in the military domain has raised many questions on the ethical, legal, political, tactical and strategic implications of this development. Pivotal to this debate is the question if and to what extent decision-making can be outsourced to machines and which tasks require human expertise. However, what human expertise is and how this notion of expertise changed over time since the early uses of computer models for military purposes is not well studied. This paper therefore investigates how the relation between humans and machines in the production of expert knowledge has transformed. More specifically, it will adopt a historical approach to analyse how early computational programs, developed for a military purpose, balanced mechanically processed data with human judgment to create expert knowledge.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2024-developing-digital-peripheries-for-strategic-advantage-competitive-cyber-capacit 2024-06-27T12:00:00Z 2024-06-27T12:00:00Z Julia Carver

Amidst escalating geopolitical competition and fears of weaponized interdependence, cyber capacity building assistance has climbed the foreign policy agendas of both weak and powerful actors. Yet, conventional wisdom about cyber capacity building (CCB) assistance implies a strategic conundrum: on the one hand, CCB assistance is held to be crucial for improving the recipient’s autonomy and security in cyberspace. On the other hand, three major providers of such assistance—the United States, the EU, and China—have been accused of benefiting from the same network vulnerabilities that these programmes aim to redress. Therefore, this paper asks, how do powerful donors perceive CCB assistance provisions to developing states as shaping their strategic advantage? Further, what factors have shaped variation in donors’ provision of CCB assistance to developing states? I argue that CCB assistance is a new and increasingly popular form of strategic alignment which has been used to reconfigure or maintain networked asymmetries in the donor’s favour. To probe the plausibility of this argument, I undertake a qualitative analysis of primary source documents and elite interviews to assess American, EU, and Chinese provision of CCB assistance to African states. My analysis supports this argument, and further shows these donors have adopted different strategies of assistance to encourage favourable structural alignments with the recipient. Three mediating factors help to explain their different strategies of assistance: the donor’s relative access to and control over the intermediary provider, their normative approach to development, and the locus of geopolitical competition. Ultimately, this paper reveals how CCB assistance can be instrumentalized to shape the hard and soft infrastructural conditions for strategic advantage.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2024-exploring-the-cybersecurity-policy-design-space-in-the-eu-a-mixed-methods-approa 2024-06-27T12:00:00Z 2024-06-27T12:00:00Z Mattia Sguazzini

Social scientists are increasingly focusing on the factors that explain the development, organisation, and enforcement of cybersecurity capabilities. However, a systematic analysis of these capabilities in terms of the policy instruments used has not been attempted so far. Which policy instruments can actors use? How do they vary between the institutions? How can the variation in the availability and use of capabilities be explained? This paper aims to answer these research questions using text-as-data techniques to analyse policy documents of EU Member States and European institutions. Reviewing the literature concerning the different phases of cybersecurity policy design, I develop a set of hypotheses within a general theoretical framework. I use mixed methods to cross-validate hypotheses and refine the theoretical framework. The data used are policy documents from 1990 to 2023, sourced from the online libraries of the UN, NATO, EU, and Member States, focusing on the cybersecurity policy sub-areas of Defence, Crime, Diplomacy, and Resilience. The identification of the policy instruments and the actors involved is conducted using Named Entity Recognition (NER) in the documents. Furthermore, I combine NER with a machine-learning method for estimating bureaucratic constraint variation to consider potential effects on implementation. Upon obtaining numerical values that represent the variety and frequency of policy instruments, I assess the consistency of the models corresponding to hypotheses through regression analysis. The findings offer a comparative analysis of state policy instruments within the EU’s supranational framework. The paper’s contributions are threefold: it provides a method for analysing the policies of individual states, considering the influence of supra-national frameworks, replicable in other policy areas; this methodological contribution follows the development of a theoretical framework that combines the literature of IR, policy analysis, IPE, and organisational studies in the field of cybersecurity; and it provides a systematisation of European cybersecurity policy documents.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2024-getting-the-revolution-in-intelligence-affairs-right-technological-innovation-or 2024-06-27T12:00:00Z 2024-06-27T12:00:00Z Niccolò Petrelli

Many today believe that developments in Artificial Intelligence (AI), sensors, and automation presage the coming of a ‘Revolution in Intelligence Affairs’ with far-reaching consequences on the performance of intelligence systems. RIA proponents advocate vast-scale acquisition of AI, state-of-the-art sensors, and automation technologies; support swift organizational and operational changes fostering integration between the various stages of the intelligence cycle; recommend development of operational concepts for human-machine teaming. In such a view, intelligence organizations embracing the RIA will be capable of collecting, analyzing, and disseminating information at such scope, speed, and scale as to enable decision-makers to leverage ‘decision advantage’ on an almost continuous basis in the conduct of statecraft. How would such a transformation affect intelligence performance? We do not know, as scholars and experts advancing the RIA construct have assumed rather than demonstrated increases in effectiveness and scholarship has paid only scant attention to the impact of ‘technological revolutions’ on the functioning of intelligence systems. This paper argues that the RIA will yield results incrementally and unevenly, providing an answer in four steps. It first defines the RIA construct and identifies the causal mechanisms underpinning it by reviewing scholarship on the integration of advanced ICT into intelligence systems. Secondly, it develops a theory of intelligence power, by inductively deriving measures of effectiveness for the key intelligence functions from historical studies and grey literature. Third, it conducts an in-depth within case empirical analysis of the implementation of the RIA employing the Israeli intelligence between the late-1990s and 2014 as a case study. Fourth and last, it uses the intelligence power theory to test the actual performance of the RIA construct taking advantage of the extraordinary insights provided by the 2017 special report of the Israeli State Comptroller on the conduct of the 2014 war, which is based on official intelligence records.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2024-hybrid-axis-of-evil-policing-of-organised-crime-and-state-threats-in-global-port 2024-06-27T12:00:00Z 2024-06-27T12:00:00Z Yarin Eski

Since, the Russia-Ukraine conflict, particular concerns exist about disruptinon of energy supplies and transportation systems, including global ports, such as the Port of Rotterdam (Ornstein, 2022). While threats to critical infrastructures are not new (e.g. attacked ports during WWII), the contemporary situation is different: (digital) technology plays a key role in hybrid warfare, making the potential fallout for ports even bigger. The Netherlands has key global ports, including the Port of Rotterdam and Northe Sea Canal Area. These ports handle shipping and are important for energy distribution (NCTV, 2017). An attack on these ports could lead to a ‘serious social disruption’ for the Netherlands (NCTV, 2017, p. 1), and Europe more broadly. Especially the Port of Rotterdam has concerns due to more sanctions against Russia (Port of Rotterdam, 2022), and subsequently asks for a ‘digital anti-aircraft defence’ to fend off possible Russian cyberattacks in the port of Rotterdam (Ornstein, 2022). However, it remains unclear whether (cyber)attacks on ports can be attributed to other state actors, as well as that it remains unclear what really counts as an act of hybrid war and what role European maritime ports play in hybrid warfare. Hence, port policing should focus on a hybrid warfare scenario, next to the well-embedded tackling of organised crime; but is it status quo? This paper aims to dig into this question, using ethnographic date gathered between April 2022 and March 2023 in the Dutch ports of Rotterdam and the North Sea Canal Area/Port of Amsterdam. Moreover, this paper shall focus on the hybridized policing of organized crime and state/hybrid threats in the global port environments. There will be a focus as well on what hybridized policing as a topic implies for the interdisciplinary cross-pollination of criminology and security studies.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2024-proliferation-not-democratization-open-source-intelligence-and-the-war-in-ukrain 2024-06-27T12:00:00Z 2024-06-27T12:00:00Z Damien Van Puyvelde

Russia’s war in Ukraine has brought unprecedented attention to open-source intelligence (OSINT) researchers who collect and analyse publicly available information on conflict zones and security threats. Some observers believe easy access to online information has “democratised” intelligence. The investigative group Bellingcat even claims to be an “intelligence agency for the people”. While the digital revolution has turned many smartphone-equipped individuals into sensors, it did not turn everyone into a professional intelligence collector and analyst. The ubiquity of digital tools enables small groups of skilled and well-resourced individuals to leverage open-source data and information (OSINF) and produce outputs that are comparable to finished government intelligence. Barriers to entry in the field of professional intelligence remain high. The rise of OSINT is not about democratization but proliferation of intelligence capabilities.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2024-technological-innovation-and-national-security-variations-in-public-private-rela 2024-06-27T12:00:00Z 2024-06-27T12:00:00Z Yagnyashri Kodaru Lorenz Sommer

In liberal market economies like the US and UK, private actors have come to play an indispensable role in the emergence of robust defense industries and the provision of security. States particularly rely on the private sector in areas of high technological innovation, such as arms production and cybersecurity. While technological innovation and the resulting public reliance on private expertise has been a common denominator, the emergence of public-private relations has been inconsistent across security sectors. Despite ideological parallels between the US and the UK, public-private relationships differ in the degree of consolidation or autonomy, and standardization of practices, between the state and private actors. In this study, we map these variations in the consolidation of relationships between public and private actors, attributing it to differences in institutional legacies and security pressures. Through case studies on the US and the UK, we trace the evolution of public-private dynamics in two security sectors, defense industry and cybersecurity, since end of the Cold War. We find that more entrenched institutional legacies in the military industry have led to a closer, less market-oriented position of private actors and greater dependence on the state through contractual relationships. Conversely, less entrenched institutional legacies in the nascent cybersecurity sector have contributed to a more market-oriented, stronger position of private actors vis a vis the state, as evidenced by ongoing challenges in regulating the private tech industry. Furthermore, we find that the changing nature of security pressures in the cyberspace could push states towards a (re-)integration of this sector into more consolidated defense military pipelines. This paper contributes to the growing literature on public-private-partnerships in security governance and offers insight into the nexus of state security and technological innovation in two historically different, yet connected security policy fields.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2024-the-eternal-promise-of-missile-defense 2024-06-27T12:00:00Z 2024-06-27T12:00:00Z Sanne Verschuren

Why do states continue to invest in military technologies that are ineffective or simply do not work? Despite nearly 70 years of research and development in the United States, missile defense continues to face high, if not insurmountable, technological challenges, is financially burdensome, and has resulted in negative outcomes for strategic stability. Hence, this paper asks: What explains the continued and widespread support for missile defense among Americans policymakers? Contrary to common arguments about American cultural features, public appeal, and organizational politics, I contend that the persistence of missile defense can be explained by two conditions: technological malleability and a framework of ignorance. In a context of deep uncertainty and high complexity, technology is malleable, meaning that policymakers can envision it to serve many different purposes and thus have some benefit for everyone. At the same time, discussions about technology take place under a framework of ignorance, which enables policymakers to overlook, downplay, and deny the costs associated with missile defense. This creates the illusion that investment in the technology is relatively cost-free. Using original interview and archival evidence, I contrast two crucial cases: the entrenchment of national missile defense during the Obama Administration (2008-2016) with the decision to limit the development and deployment of missile defense under the ABM Treaty during the Nixon Administration (1969-1972). Not only does this paper introduce two novel concepts—technological malleability and ignorance—into the study of international relations, but it has also important implications for other emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence and cyber technology, that are bound to shape warfare in critical ways.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2024-virtually-inconceivable-foregrounding-the-ontological-dimension-to-cyber-strateg 2024-06-27T12:00:00Z 2024-06-27T12:00:00Z Julia Carver

How can an ontological framework help us to better understand strategic behaviour in cyberspace? Characterized by low entry barriers, fluid borders, and networked hierarchies, cyberspace presents opportunities for us to problematize classical assumptions about power projection and their implications for how we conceive of strategic behaviour in the digital age. However, present literature has largely overlooked the ontological dimension to cyberspace, focusing instead upon the production and consequences of cyber effects. This oversight is particularly stark in debates about how global actors have engaged in ‘cyber-geopolitics’, which seem to rely on–and simultaneously eschew–territorial sovereignty to explain strategic behaviour. This paper argues that the field’s failure to take ontology seriously has resulted in inadequate assumptions and explanations about contemporary strategic behaviour. To advance this claim, I make two analytical moves. First, I interrogate scholarly assumptions about what makes certain cyber capabilities ‘matter’ for producing effects in the first place. Building on these findings, I then demonstrate the utility of ontological security theory for explaining how and why policymakers have pursued geopolitical objectives in cyberspace through particular discourses and practices. The European Union’s cyber-foreign policy development from 2013-2022, which has thus far escaped pure realist and materialist-oriented expectations, is leveraged as an illustrative case. Overall, the paper reveals the co-constitutive relationship between cyberspace as an environment and foreign policy actors’ self-construction within it through discourses and practices, contributing to an emerging research agenda on this subject (e.g. Lupovici, 2022).

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2024-winning-the-battle-of-adaptation 2024-06-27T12:00:00Z 2024-06-27T12:00:00Z Kristen Harkness Marc DeVore

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022 inaugurated a high-intensity prolonged conventional war that has since become stalemated. Recent Russian and Ukrainian offensives have failed to achieve meaningful territorial advances. The fate of the war increasingly hinges on each sides’ ability to adapt and innovate—particularly for Ukraine where the early loss of territory and dependence on western aid create vulnerabilities for strategic loss in a context of military draw. This project is collecting extensive new data on how Ukrainian military adaptation collected from research trips to Ukraine, compilation of open sources, and interviews with Ukrainian experts and decision-makers. Early analysis suggests that Ukraine’s approach to adaptation largely depends on the decentralized efforts of individual military units collaborating with a dense network of civil society organizations. For example, Ukraine’s success innovating drones that inflict disproportionate damage on Russian forces is a case in point. Drones collective and amateur workshops have led the way modifying commercial drones for military operations. Civil society organizations then spearheaded the training of 35,000 Ukrainian drone pilots. Close informal relations between individual military units and these outside actors have fostered rapid feedback loops between soldiers at the front and technicians in the rear. However, there are drawbacks to Ukraine’s decentralized approach including that policymakers lack adequate mechanisms for identifying and funneling resources to the most successful developments. Limited resources are also dispersed across multiple organizations that duplicate one another’s efforts.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2023-a-lesser-evil-why-democracies-struggle-to-respond-to-cyber-enabled-election-inte 2023-06-22T12:00:00Z 2023-06-22T12:00:00Z Arthur Laudrain

Recent episodes of foreign meddling in elections in the U.S., France, and the U.K. have led observers asking whether democracies could uphold their electoral sovereignty in the 21st Century. Free and fair elections are the cornerstone of democratic regimes, and such encroachment on a people' sovereignty and self-determination would be expected to trigger a strong response from the affected states. Yet, what we have witnessed ranges from unspecified threats and diplomatic sanctions to total inaction. How can we explain this response? In other words, why democracies fail to counterbalance against the threat of foreign interference into their electoral processes? In a previous paper, I argued that neoclassical realism's position in the agency-structure debate makes it particularly apt at tackling cyber-enabled foreign election interference (CYFI) research problems. In this new paper, I test this theory with primary empirical evidence. Focusing on election interference episodes of 2016-2017, I conducted dozens of elite semi-structured interviews with direct participants in the foreign policy and national security policy-making process of their respective governments. I adopt a methodological synergy design. On the one hand, I probe the internal validity of the theory with a causal narrative. I combine it with an internal comparison as the primary method to generate evidence from causal process observations. On the other hand, I probe external validity with cross-case analysis in the form of a multistage Millian method, generating evidence akin to dataset observations. I find that foreign policy response to CYFI is a consequence of a balancing by decision-makers between the structural stimuli of components of power and a combination of intervening variables relating to threat perception and public opinion constraints. I then discuss the important policy implications of these findings, highlighting the need for a whole-of-society approach to tackling foreign interference.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2023-cognitive-warfare-as-part-of-society-a-never-ending-battle-for-minds 2023-06-22T12:00:00Z 2023-06-22T12:00:00Z Robin Burda

Russia has been attempting to influence politics and society in various European and NATO countries in recent years, aiming at the minds of the citizens. Decades ago, Jacques Ellul (1973) described propaganda as a social phenomenon that grows within society and is intrinsically intertwined with it. In recent years, a new concept has been emerging and is even being described as the sixth operational domain – Cognitive Warfare (Cluzel 2021). The implications on the information domain were not yet explored in depth. Without a look back into the historical experience, it is impossible to assess what should be done in the long term by organizations such as the EU or NATO in the information environment. As Cognitive Warfare can be considered a relatively new phenomenon, albeit not dissimilar to Ellul's (1973) view of propaganda, the experience of nations involved in protracted conflicts of the 21st century, including Russia's hybrid warfare campaigns, is invaluable. Therefore, an inductive approach is utilized to draw inferences from available data from such countries. One of the nations used for the analysis is the Czech Republic, a country with a quite significant pro-Russian segment of society, which Russia has exploited for many years. The other is Ukraine, which is now in a full-out war but has been a victim of Russian hybrid warfare since at least the 2010s. The paper aims to assess the importance of continuous effort of organizations such as NATO or the EU in the cognitive, human-oriented domain. I expect the Czech and Ukraine's experiences to show that being on the defence in the cognitive domain might prove to be a mistake with a significant impact on the future of democracy for any country.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2023-engine-or-brake-the-franco-german-couple-and-the-future-of-the-european-defence 2023-06-22T12:00:00Z 2023-06-22T12:00:00Z Antonio Calcara

The future of Europe's defense industry hinges on greater cooperation between France and Germany. France and Germany agree on the need to integrate the European defense market to effectively compete with the US and other external powers. However, they have different preferences on how to organize the European defense market. Why? We argue that the distinction between the two faces of market size - the first exclusively related to defense, the second including the broader commercial-industrial base - is key to understanding convergence and divergence in Franco-German approaches to defense-industrial cooperation. France and Germany share a general interest in European defense market integration. However, because each country has a relative advantage in one of the faces of market size, we expect them to feature different - even opposing - views towards defense industrial cooperation. Germany is less competitive than France in the first face of the market size (defense) but more competitive in the second (commercial). It will therefore seek to inject efficiency into EU-level initiatives aimed to integrate the European defense market because it calculates that it can benefit more than France over the long-term, thanks to its commercial-industrial edge. At the same time, Germany would protect its less competitive defense industry from France by championing autonomy in the context of ad-hoc arms programs. In turn, France would prefer to leverage its first-face advantage by injecting efficiency into arms programs to take the lion’s share of the project. Conversely, we expect France to protect its autonomy in the context of EU initiatives that could bring about defense integration and benefit the more competitive German commercial-industrial base. To test our argument, we examine French and German preferences towards two important EU initiatives in recent years: the European Defense Fund and the Future Combat Air System.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2023-from-the-bottom-up-ai-and-military-officers-in-defence-alliances 2023-06-22T12:00:00Z 2023-06-22T12:00:00Z Vicky Karyoti

For the past decade, scholars, practitioners, and policy makers have been focusing on the possible uses of AI and the automation of weapon systems. Largely drawing attention to applications of lethal AI, public discourse and scholarly work is endeavouring to answer questions of legality, ethicality, strategy, and politics. Military officers, especially in positions which are closely tied to the application of technological systems are viewing the possibility of increased automation with concern and suspicion. Increased automation means lowered human control, more uncertainty and unpredictability, possible disrupted chains of command, and unnecessary risk. These concerns focus on the possible commission of war crimes by lethal AI systems which cannot distinguish between combatants and civilians, the fear of escalation, and the real threat of technologically based vulnerabilities. There is a distinct gap in examining what higher automation might mean for one's own forces (for example, automated systems going awry against their own structure) and most importantly, what it might mean in an alliance context. The way military officers feel about using/cooperating with autonomous technologies can impact decision making on a strategic/political level. The research project connects military innovation studies – which looks into change in military organizations vis-à-vis new technologies, warfighting concepts, and organizational configurations – and alliance theory in order to investigate how policy choices by civilian leadership are informed by military officers and their viewpoints on AI technologies in their duties, and essentially what that means for the future of defence cooperation within alliances like NATO.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2023-industries-of-sovereignty-strategic-autonomy-defence-industrial-interests-and-th 2023-06-22T12:00:00Z 2023-06-22T12:00:00Z Salih Isik Bora Ediz Topcuoglu

Throughout the Macron presidency, the French government persistently used the ‘European sovereignty’ discourse to advocate for a ‘Europe of defence’. ‘Strategic autonomy’ is a core component of this broader discourse and refers to the EU’s capacity to provide for its own security needs. For the purposes of this article, we define ‘strategic autonomy’ as a point where the integration of core state powers in defence policy is advanced enough that EU member states can jointly conduct large scale military operations. This paper argues that the French government became a proponent of ‘European sovereignty’ not because of a genuine desire for strategic autonomy but because of defence industrial policy objectives. After he became president, Emmanuel Macron sought to create a continent wide protected defence market where non-EU companies are excluded to the benefit of France’s own defence industry. The ‘European sovereignty’ discourse was used to rationalize defence industrial protectionism and government intervention to favor EU-based producers, amongst which the largest are French defence firms. On the flip side, the French government’s interest in institutionalized cooperation with EU partners is far more limited than the ubiquity of the ‘European sovereignty’ discourse may suggest. In fact, the French government continues to avoid binding commitments at the EU level and seeks to preserve its ability to act unilaterally when it comes to *operational* -as opposed to *industrial*- aspects of defence policy. We use process tracing methodology in order to examine the formulation of French defence policy discourse and preferences in the 2017-2022 time period. Our argument on defence industrial interests is systematically tested against a competing explanation, namely that the French government pursues a long term plan to achieve European strategic autonomy. We make an extensive use of primary sources including official documents, speeches and more than 20 interviews with policymakers.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2023-nato-and-multi-domain-operations-between-deterrence-and-conflict 2023-06-22T12:00:00Z 2023-06-22T12:00:00Z Mauro Gilli Andrea Gilli Nina Silove

Authors: Andrea Gilli, Mauro Gilli, Nina Silove In recent years, the United States and its Allies have adopted the concept of Multi-Domain Operations to handle the return of Great Powers’ rivalry, the diffusion of anti-access/area-denial capabilities, as well as the opportunities and vulnerabilities generated by emerging technologies – including cyberattacks and manipulation of the information space. MDOs represent an attempt to achieve military superiority in a more complex and contested world against near-peer competitors, neutralizing coercion, managing escalation as well as penetrating segregated environments by seamlessly exploiting capabilities belonging to different domains. The planning and conduct of MDOs requires, however, an extensive transformation: existing force structures will have to be re-calibrated for maneuvering across strategic distances; current formations will have to develop the capacity, capability and endurance to operate across multiple contested domains against capable adversaries; armed forces will have to achieve cross-domain synergies to launch multiple forms of attack through the rapid, continuous, coordinated and disciplined integration of capabilities from all domains. Such transformations entails severe challenges, primarily in terms of command and control, capabilities development and strategic planning, as well as digitalization, standardization and human capital. At the NATO level, such challenges are further exacerbated due to traditional dilemmas of coalition warfare and alliance management, including intelligence and capability sharing, harmonization and doctrinal alignment. The article looks at these challenges, highlighting the obstacles NATO Allies need to overcome for deterrence as well as winning future conflicts.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2023-numbers-prediction-and-cyberwar-why-integrating-the-cyber-domain-in-kinetic-warg 2023-06-22T12:00:00Z 2023-06-22T12:00:00Z Peadar Callaghan

How do we prepare for a developing reality that has little to no historic precedent? How do we adequately prepare for cyber-enabled conflict where the 'fog of war' is exacerbated in the virtual domain, resulting in greater uncertainty? Wargames have been used throughout history to train for realities that have yet to happen; be they theoretical conventional battles or full scale nuclear conflict. For this reason the introduction of the cyber domain into kinetic or joint wargames has become an area of interest for both planners and game designers. The integration of the two forms of warfare gaming (cyber and kinetic) into a coherent system has proven elusive and problematic. The Quantified Judgment Model (QJM) of Dupuy (1979) has gone on to inform and impact wargame design such as the Tactical Numerical Deterministic Model (TNDM) (Lawrence 2017). The QJM uses seven characteristics to generate the Operational Lethality Indices (OLI) of conventional weapons. By applying these indices to cyberweapons it becomes clear that they are fundamentally different from kinetic wargames weapons. This paper argues that cyber weapons cannot simply be plugged into large scale kinetic wargames. It offers an overview of the methods that can be used to add the cyber domain to such games. These range from the use of umpires as proposed by Curry and Drage (2018), to the use of cyber ranges to gather realistic attack and defence data. This paper also critiques the various approaches and outlines suggested directions for future studies in order to make these games as realistic as possible.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2023-overcoming-obstacles-reflections-on-creating-a-cross-national-experimental-cyber 2023-06-22T12:00:00Z 2023-06-22T12:00:00Z Ayhan Gucuyener

Because of the pervasiveness of digital technologies, academic interest in cybersecurity studies from all disciplines has surged. Cyber threats have become a compelling problem for international security and the object of a growing interest in International Relations (IR). IR scholars have sought to catch up with the empirical evolutions of conflict in cyberspace; to unpuzzle motivations behind state interactions in this domain. However, rigorous scholarship, in particular theorisation and conceptualisation (Smeets 2022, Egloff 2022) remains at an early stage. Still today, the field needs progress in methodological tools (Stevens 2018). While the literature has been primarily focused on meta-theoretical work, one of the methodological advances in cybersecurity studies has been the application of Foreign Policy Decision Making (FPDM) methods that include scenario playing and simulating. As McDermott (2019) and Gomez (2021) pioneered the “cognitive turn” in cybersecurity studies, this approach allows looking beyond the black-box of the state, by shifting to an agent-oriented system. All the while, scenario-based experiments can provide cybersecurity scholars with a fertile ground to observe decision-making dynamics (Gomez and Whyte 2022). However these tools are not the panacea, and there are significant obstacles in developing an experimental design, primarily when research is conducted in a comparative approach. On this basis, the purpose of this paper is to discuss the methodological framework in an ongoing comparative study that looks at decision-making dynamics of cybersecurity professionals, using a scenario-based experimental design. The study will also discuss difficulties in developing cyber threat scenarios, in a domain that differs significantly from that of the kinetic domain. This paper will also address potential deadlocks in conducting cross-national cybersecurity research, such as difficulties in matching samples, the fragility of trust between agents, and other barriers to information sharing.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2023-the-normative-power-of-the-factual-how-state-practice-shapes-understandings-abou 2023-06-22T12:00:00Z 2023-06-22T12:00:00Z Christina Rupp

An increasing number of states use direct public political attribution to call out inappropriate behaviour in cyberspace attributable to another state. Shared understandings about conducting and communicating political attribution practices are essential to avoid misunderstandings and mitigate the risk of potential escalation between states. However, attribution remains only marginally addressed in the context of diplomatically negotiated cyber norms so far. This makes this policy instrument well suited to explore the formation of normative ideas through state practice as it leaves ample room for practical interpretation by states. Based on a selection of five case studies, this paper identifies which cyber operations the selected states have publicly attributed, how the attribution was communicated and justified, to what extent other states were involved in the process, and how other states perceived the attribution. This analysis of established and emerging state practice will permit new insights into how States currently perceive the respective normative framework, that is, formalised cyber norms, and conclusions as to what extent the observed State practice gives rise to new shared understandings about appropriate state behaviour - practised cyber norms - when it comes to direct public political attribution of cyber operations.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2023-the-shock-of-the-old-in-the-russo-ukraine-war-misunderstanding-continuity-change 2023-06-22T12:00:00Z 2023-06-22T12:00:00Z Brendan Flynn

Does the Ukraine war mark the arrival of novel, disruptive technologies (HIMARS/precision artillery fires, online crowdsourcing of weapons, drone swarms, citizen OSINT, cyber-militias, etc.) which augur an era of democratisation of ‘open source warfare’ (Cronin, 2019, Boyle, 2020, Palavenis, 2022) that challenges the centrality of states in the international system as once monopoly providers of coercive technologies? Alternatively does the war reveal remarkable continuities as regards specific old and legacy military technologies in determining battlefield outcomes? This paper adapts and applies David Edgerton’s *Shock of the Old* (2006) perspective together with the wider literature on technology and war to probe question of technological determinism in shaping war outcomes (Walton, 2019; Roland, 2016; Raudzens, 1990). Three arguments are advanced here. Firstly, despite all the hype about ‘charismatic’ weapon systems (HIMARS, Leopards) the war so far is notable for the much wider and effective use of legacy systems, many of Soviet or late Cold War NATO origin, and some of indigenous Ukrainian design. Secondly, it is argued we should make a distinction between observable outcomes that technology facilitates at the strategic, operational or tactical level of war, contrasted with the subjective political and wider social perceptions lavished on a few advanced ‘hyped’ weapon technologies. The former is often complex and difficult to document, while the latter is often more politically significant than it is militarily important. Finally, states and their militaries remain central in the production, sharing and refining of war technologies even if private non-state actors gain much of the limelight.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2023-the-us-hegemony-dilemma-and-european-missile-production 2023-06-22T12:00:00Z 2023-06-22T12:00:00Z Lucas Hellemeier

Thanks to its unparalleled defense budget, the United States possesses a comparative advantage in arms production. This confronts US allies with the US hegemony dilemma, a trade-off between efficiency and autonomy. Allies can procure comparably cheap high-end weaponry from US sources instead of securing more costly autonomy in arms supply. Overall, US defense industrial market power forces its allies to specialize in arms production, thus, to decide what kinds of weapon systems to produce on their own. Given this need to specialize caused by US hegemony in the defense industrial order, what explains US allies' defense industrial specialization? I confine my analysis to Europe since it represents an especially interesting case with its unparalleled regional economic and political integration and its relationship to the US shaped by geostrategic cooperation on the one hand, and industrial competition on the other hand. Furthermore, I focus on the missile sector, a rather understudied arms production sector compared to fighter aircraft and drones. I argue that since the US is the structural constraint that sets the conditions under which European defense industries operate Europeans seek to strike a balance between efficiency, i.e., buying American, autonomy, i.e., producing nationally, and cooperation. I leverage market size, understood as the national market but also the market countries expect to sell to, as the central variable explaining European missile production decisions. These production and export decisions have important political implications because they shape countries' foreign policies decisively. According to conventional wisdom, a country's grand strategy shapes its defense industrial policy. I argue that this causal relationship is more complicated and that a country's defense industrial policy has a profound effect on its grand strategy.

https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2022-business-as-usual-or-new-forms-of-collaboration-non-state-actors-in-un-cybercrim 2022-06-30T12:00:00Z 2022-06-30T12:00:00Z Lena Herbst

This paper examines varying inclusion of non-state actors in UN cybercrime governance. While the criminal use of cyberspace is a prime example for a non-traditional security threat with political, economic as well as societal consequences, there is limited research on how traditional multilateral organizations react to the growing importance of non-state actors in this field. Recent developments in some UN forums have called for more inclusion of non-state actors as important, although contested, parts of cybersecurity governance. While the transboundary and rapidly evolving nature of cybercrimes necessitates collaboration to share resources and responsibility, recent debates in different UN cybersecurity fora reflect states' reluctance toward multistakeholder involvement due to long-term geopolitical divisions. Going beyond these debates, this paper aims to better understand current variance of non-state actors' inclusion in UN cybersecurity fora. The paper is structured as follows: we first introduce the role of non-state actors in crime governance more broadly. We then put forward arguments for variance in the inclusion of non-state actors to UN cybersecurity institutions, relying on arguments linked to institutionalism, resource-exchange theory and those that emphasize the legitimacy of decision-making. In a further step, we present current debates on cybercrime as subfield of cybersecurity governance in the UN and the role non-state actors play in these. We then compare non-state actor engagement across different UN bodies and fora and evaluate arguments for their inclusion. The paper is a first step in examining the diversity of non-state actor engagement, showing a large diversity in cooperation that deserves closer attention. It combines existing empirical research on cybercrime governance with new insights from an ongoing PhD project on the UN and cybersecurity.