Increasing Global Chaos Puts Cybersecurity in the Hot Seat

Geopolitical chaos will leave its mark on cybersecurity during the coming year, luminaries of the field predict as they survey the digital consequences of events in the Middle East and Eastern Asia and the ongoing conflict in Eastern Europe.

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As the annual Black Hat Europe cybersecurity conference kicked off briefings in London, a major theme is global instability and its implications for cybersecurity professionals.

Taking to the stage to launch the proceedings, conference founder Jeff Moss recounted flying from his home in Singapore and landing in the United Kingdom to find there’d just been a coup in South Korea. Add that to a bevy of other recent, major geopolitical happenings: the regime of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad falling, Israel bombing sites in Syria, China deploying a naval fleet of unprecedented size around Taiwan, Russia appearing to redouble its Ukraine invasion efforts after Donald Trump’s recapture of the American presidency and the president-elect threatening tariffs that could spark trade wars.

“I don’t like how 2025 is shaping up, it’s not very encouraging,” Moss told the audience, composed of attendees from nearly 100 different countries.

Coming up, expect America’s adversaries to quickly begin testing the new administration. “I’m guessing Iran wants to know what the new rules are, what can they get away with, what’s acceptable,” Moss said. Same again for Russia, China, Iran and North Korea.

The increasing pace of change has implications for the cybersecurity and other technology professionals who comprise a large part of the Black Hat Europe conference’s ranks. “Because we’re in the technology world, and so much of the world relies on it, we’re going to end up being in the middle of it,” Moss said.

They’ll be getting tapped for expert guidance in how their organizations must respond. Do data centers need to be relocated? Which cloud providers should be used? What new regulations are taking effect and what are the corporate implications?

Plan for Chaos

Terms exist for this everything seeming to happen faster and faster, such as the “super cycle” or accelerationism, with the latter especially having various connotations, Moss said. Accelerationism for Silicon Valley often refers to “this utopian idea of an AI tech singularity,” whereas the left often sees it in terms of social revolution, while it carries white supremacy revolution connotations for the right.

Whatever you call it: “The idea is that there’s a concentration, there’s a concerted effort to accelerate the processes, to get where they want to go sooner, and it really feels like things are accelerating right now,” Moss said.

One example Moss cited centers on the Red Cross, which goes to great effort to act and be seen as being a geopolitically neutral organization. As the Red Cross website reads: “We recognize we’re only able to work in conflict zones because we’re trusted to be neutral, impartial and independent.”

With Microsoft now hosting Ukrainian government systems in the cloud, defending them from active attacks by Russia, what does that mean for an organization that strives to remain neutral? The organization is looking for alternatives, Moss said. But how many such vendors might really be classified as neutral, when it comes to how they might support specific organizations or governments tied to different conflicts?

“That sounds a little chaotic, and again, that might impact you,” Moss said.

What can be done? Moss referenced two U.S. military concepts: “organize to operate,” and “you go to war with the army you have, not the army you want.” In other words, attempting to operate before getting organized is a recipe for disaster. Putting plans in place before flashpoints occur is always a sound move. What happens if employees need to be evacuated from a hot zone? Are backup suppliers available for essential technology and infrastructure? Does the organization have the diversity of skills it needs if it must quickly switch products or suppliers?

Questions of Control

Questions of chaos and control also surround the internet itself, as detailed by Fédérick Douzet, a professor of geopolitics at Paris 8 University.

In a Wednesday keynote speech, Douzet detailed research showing some governments are attempting to exert more control over the internet inside their borders. Iran appears to have just two autonomous systems, referring to the core IP networks that provide country-level access to the internet. One serves academia; the other, general internet access.

During Ukraine’s so-called Maidan Revolution in 2014 to throw off Russian influence – after which Russia invaded Ukraine and annexed Crimea – the Kremlin began routing local internet through Moscow-controlled infrastructure. After Russia launched an all-out war of conquest against Ukraine in 2022, this “digital front line” increasingly paralleled the military front line.

Having fewer autonomous systems makes for a less-resilient internet as a whole – since it leaves fewer alternative routes when something goes wrong – but it poses human rights questions, since oppressive regimes can limit internet access as a form of control, she said.

Centralization Creates Risk

Governments aren’t the only entities creating a flatter internet. The same goes for “private giants” building out their own infrastructure, even to the point of sometimes laying their own submarine cables.

Just eight brands generate more traffic than everyone else in the world combined: Alphabet, Meta, Netflix, Microsoft, TikTok, Apple, Amazon and Disney. “It’s the same handful of private giants that dominate both the infrastructure of the internet but also its most popular services and applications – so they’re gaining control on the one hand of the content, but also the means of delivering the content. They’re becoming, in a sense, their own internet backbone.”

More centralized control creates risk. “We’re going to see more incidents that have major consequences because of this huge concentration, or at least that’s a possibility,” she said. What these organizations do may also not be transparent, which has policy implications. So many U.S.-based organizations controlling so much infrastructure also creates limits for Europe over the extent to which it can regulate or review these operations, or police potential monopolies.

Finally, what if some of these giants decide to expand into other lines of business, such as the last-mile of internet access? What might be the net neutrality implications?

Cue numerous questions pertaining to internet security and reliability, potential policies to promote greater decentralization, and how innovative new technology could be used to “help provide a multiplicity of data routes, storage and access to increase the resilience, security and stability of cyberspace,” Douzet said.

“I do have all the questions, I unfortunately don’t have all the answers,” she said. “It’s a largely overlooked policy question that deserves both attention and research.”