Recent interference in undersea cables in Germany, Sweden, Finland and Lithuania an example of growing cyber and hybrid interference by Russia, says NATO expert.
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00:00As the war in Ukraine rages on, and Donald Trump prepares to take over the White House
00:12again, the threat to the rest of Europe from Russia is growing. For the Europe Conversation,
00:17I catch up with NATO expert on innovation, cyber and hybrid threats, James Apathurai,
00:22who says we're in uncharted territory.
00:25James, look, across Europe, we're seeing or hearing reports about much more increased
00:32sabotage, Russian sabotage against European countries. Can you tell us a little bit about
00:37what you're seeing and whether it's been on the increase?
00:41So absolutely. First thing to say is the sabotage comes on top of everything else that we've
00:47seen. So cyber attacks, disinformation, political interference, forced migration, GPS jamming.
00:53So that's the baseline and all of it higher than it used to be. What's new is an increased
01:00Russian appetite for and campaign of sabotage. That means arson, derailing trains, attacks
01:08on politicians' properties, attempts to assassinate, for example, the head of Rheinmetall, so industry
01:14leaders. So we see more of it and we see a much higher appetite for deaths and massive
01:20damage in our countries.
01:22And how are we detecting these? Because even you mentioned there the potential assassination
01:26of the German weapons manufacturer. How did these get found out and how did then they
01:34get interrupted?
01:36So basically, it's intelligence services that are doing their work. But it's a really good
01:42question because what we don't want to do is play whack-a-mole in one country. Oh, look,
01:48I see something over here. I react to that. Oh, look, I see something over there. I react
01:52to that. So what we're doing is putting together patterns and trends. So if there's one derailment
01:58of a train in one country that is used to take supplies to Ukraine, that's an incident.
02:05If we see seven in seven countries, that's a pattern and we know who's behind it. So
02:10on the one hand, we're stepping up our intelligence activities. On the other hand, we're aggregating
02:15information and putting together the patterns and trends. And then we choose what to make
02:21public and what not to make public.
02:22And how do we know this is definitely coming from Russia? Is it coming just from Russia?
02:26Is it China as well? But also, how do we know the source?
02:29So we're very, very focused on ensuring that the information that we have is accurate.
02:35So when it comes to one incident, for example, the Ryan Mattel incident, the intelligence
02:42services are confident enough that our politicians can go out in public and say it. But as I
02:47said, we need the patterns and we need the trends because what we call hybrid or grey
02:52zone attacks are predicated on ambiguity. What the Russians or others are trying to
02:57do is make it not so clear it's them. So it's hard to attribute, therefore it's hard to
03:03act. So we need to intensify and we are intensifying our intelligence and other efforts to be able
03:11to detect it and be more confident.
03:13So just give an example of how the Russians are acting to turn the populations of member
03:19states away from support from Ukraine. You're talking about a big attack, an energy source
03:24where civilians will get scared and say, well, look, if we just back off from our support
03:30from Ukraine, Russia won't target us. Is that what you're saying? Or just give us an example
03:33of how this works and what the Russians want the impact to be.
03:37So what's important to know about the way Russians have always acted in the last century,
03:43Soviet times and now, is that they use all tools to achieve a cognitive effect. It's
03:51to change your mind. That's the way they look at things. And therefore all tools can be
03:57used, including a nuclear threat very early. And we've heard this now dozens and dozens
04:01of times from the Russians. So they will have a disinformation campaign to say, because
04:07of your support for this war, energy prices are up. Because of your support for this war,
04:14food prices are up. And then they introduce the sabotage. Because of your support for
04:20this war, well, you're not safe. Things can happen here. And if you're an industry leader,
04:27you might not be safe. And I've gotten calls from the top level officials from other companies
04:33saying, am I also at risk? So it has an effect. And we need to ensure that, of course, our
04:40populations are safe. We're doing that. But second, to respond to the attempt to create
04:45this disquiet. And you mentioned there, whack-a-mole, because
04:48that appears to be a little bit of what's happening, because the threats or the attacks
04:55are more frequent. Yes, I think we were in a position of whack-a-mole.
05:01I think we're better now at both building resilience in our cyber infrastructure, critical
05:06infrastructure, and in sort of managing potential escalation and in putting together all the
05:13pieces into a coherent puzzle. Are we doing as well as we should? No, because, as I say,
05:19the Russian risk appetite is going up. The activities that they're carrying out are getting
05:24a little bit more dangerous and certainly more frequent. So I can assure you our political
05:30leaders are aware of it, focused on it, and we are looking at steps to take to establish
05:35better deterrence and manage escalation. What kind of deterrence?
05:40Well, you might remember, for example, President Biden spoke to President Putin a few years
05:44ago and he said, this critical infrastructure is off limits. If you cross this line, there
05:50will be real consequences. The Russians backed away. So you can establish areas where this
05:58is too far and then make it clear that there will be a response, make it clear what the
06:02response might be. And the Russians do back away when they meet steel.
06:08Because you mentioned their critical infrastructure and this threat by President Biden, because
06:12we know 99% of the world's data is transmitted through the subsea cables. What is the threat
06:19to those?
06:20So you're quite right to say 90% of the world's data, but to put it into a more concrete term
06:24that people I think might feel a little bit more, every day, $10 trillion worth of economic
06:30activity goes through those cables and across the Atlantic. So from Ireland, principally
06:36in the UK, over in France a little bit over to the US and back, it's $4 trillion a day.
06:42So the impact of those cables being cut is not nothing, particularly for economic activity.
06:50The Russians are continuing to carry out a program they have had for decades. It's
06:56called the Russian Undersea Research Program, which is a euphemism for a paramilitary structure,
07:03very well-funded, that is mapping out all of our cables and our energy pipelines. And
07:09it has so-called research ships. They have little submarines underneath. They have unmanned
07:15or uncrewed, remotely operated vehicles. They have divers and explosives. So we all
07:22know this. Anyone can Google it and you can see it. So they're, I think, the most active
07:29threat to our infrastructure. You might have seen that a Chinese ship cut the Baltic connector
07:34cable. The Chinese have come forward to admit that. In the context of the No Limits Russia-China
07:42partnership, we always have to look at these with, I think, a little bit of concern, incidents
07:47like this. But I think the Russians are most clearly the threat.
07:52Just disinformation, because obviously that's your area of expertise as well. We've seen
07:56since Elon Musk took over Twitter that there's been a much stronger rise in hate crime. And
08:02itself, Twitter is no longer as regulated as it was for things like hate crime, anti-Semitism,
08:09Islamophobia and so on. Is it a concern now that he is so close to the new White House?
08:16I think all NATO governments have expressed really profound concern about disinformation.
08:21And what we've seen in the US election and in all of our elections now is a lot of disinformation,
08:28including using social media platforms. It's not just across the Atlantic, it's around
08:33the world. And all our populations are very vulnerable to it. So we are looking at disinformation,
08:42including on social media platforms, as part of this whole deck of cards that adversaries
08:48and strategic competitors are using against us. So, of course, it's up to national governments,
08:55up to the EU to decide how they regulate these.
08:58Because we're hearing that J.D. Vance is saying that, you know, Europe or the US will
09:03remove support for Ukraine through NATO if the EU continues to regulate Twitter or X.
09:10Yes, well, I mean, I saw that and, you know, they haven't taken office yet. So I think
09:16they were a little bit in campaign mode still. But what I would say is this. Support for
09:23Ukraine is almost existential for European security. It is absolutely crucial for Euro-Atlantic
09:32security. And NATO, of course, is the essential pillar for defending the Euro-Atlantic area.
09:38So we're quite confident, based on everything we've heard, that the US support for NATO
09:44will continue.
09:45Just finally, on generative AI, because that's an area of your expertise as well. And I wanted
09:49to ask you that in relation to disinformation, because that is transforming disinformation.
09:55It is. And I could go on at length about this, but I'll say maybe three things. One is generative
10:01AI itself is very quickly creating deepfakes that even the companies that make it can't
10:07detect. Second, it is posing a big risk to large parts of the world that we're not watching
10:16English or French or German language, Chinese language, video and audio, and haven't actually
10:25over time built up the same understanding of the potential for disinformation and deepfakes
10:32that other societies that basically use widely used languages have. So a lot of communities
10:38around the world are suddenly being exposed to perfect fakes in their dialect, and they
10:44are not used to it. So they're very, very exposed to disinformation. I think the third
10:49thing which interests me a lot is we called in a number of tech firms, and we asked them
10:54what the future looked like. What they said was that within four years, 90% of what's
11:01on the internet will be fake, will be false. 70% of what's being produced for the internet
11:06now is being produced by AI. So all of this is now going to be what we see, and it's going
11:16to be very difficult to tell what's true and what's not true. And then the final point
11:20is if you look at what happened, for example, after the storms in the US, a number of false
11:27images were created, and politicians posted them. But when they were told that they were
11:33fake, they said, I don't care. It doesn't matter. It's making a point that I want to
11:38make. So to a certain extent, we've already reached a point where we're post-truth because
11:43of AI, because they know it's fake, but they don't care. So we have interesting waters
11:49ahead of us.
11:50We do indeed. Well, James Apathroyd, thank you very much for joining us on The York Conversation.