Page 97 - Cyber Terrorism and Extremism as Threat to Critical Infrastructure Protection

METODI HADJI-JANEV: HYPER THREATS TO CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURES IN THE REGION OF SOUTH-EASTERN EUROPE:
A WAKE-UP CALL FOR SOUTH-EASTERN EUROPEAN LEADERSHIP

Technological development and the rise of information and communication technologies in
the region of SEE brought many positive, but also some negative, effects. Cyberspace now
has political, economic, security (defence), and emotional-psychological effects on SEE soci-
eties. It reflects not only the modernity, but also the increased vulnerability of SEE societies.
Protecting CI and CII in this digital and interconnected world has become a serious challenge.
Cyberspace and the internet of things (IoT) have brought a whole new set of vulnerabilities
that security experts need to consider in their risk assessment matrixes (Marisetty, 2019). In
the age of ICT expansion and connectivity, the Cold World predictability of security threats
is long gone, and the potential of cascade effects urges security experts to advise measures
and policies that challenge the core of democracy (Nye, 2018). This new reality has enabled
non-state actors, groups, and individuals, to exploit modern technologies and to pose strate-
gic challenges by threatening national or regional critical infrastructures. The ability to hide,
explore vulnerabilities, communicate, mobilize and transfer resources, influence and recruit
support and executers, fund their activities remotely and project ideology and influence, pre-
viously available only to states, is now available to individuals and groups with radical, reli-
gious, violent and political objectives. Thanks to technology, terrorist organizations are able to
challenge the SEE countries’ security, among other ways thorough CI and CII (Badie, 2012).

The emergence of the new actors’ (other than the EU and NATO) involvement in the region
has, nevertheless, given a whole new dimension to the security of SEE. The interplay between
Russia, China and to a certain degree Saudi Arabia and the UAE has (re) introduced geo-
politics into the security calculus (Feyerabend, 2018). As a result, the security environment
is highly complex and unpredictable. Exploiting non-traditional military threats that blend
through the different sectors of society introduced “hybridity” into the security assessments
of the SEE countries. Yet the interconnectivity and interdependence of technology, with civil
services and private and public sector service providers for everyday life (transport, commu-
nication, energy, health, money, safety, etc.), along with different processes and events (such
as migration or pandemic diseases such as the coronavirus) are the perfect set-up for creating
unpredictable cascade effects.

Today, the actors that can cause security threats to SEE countries vary. Individuals and groups
with different agendas ranging from personal frustration or greed (criminals) or a quest for
a better life (migrants) to individuals and groups with a political goal (terrorists) are causing
asymmetric threats to SEE CII (Yonah, 2018). State actors who want to project their influence
through state proxies, civilian and military infrastructures, and personnel by fabricating news
and creating “fake news” phenomena to undermine democratic and Euro-Atlantic integration
processes, or by corrupting economic sectors for economic gain, pose hybrid threats to SEE
CII and CIP (F2N2, 2019).

At the same time as these processes are ongoing in the global security arena, the quest for
proficiency in all sectors of society urges the development and implementation of artificial
intelligence applications (Bostrom, 2017). The processes of turning these AI applications into
AI systems are heavily shaping the geostrategic context. Hence, the geopolitical interplay
shaped, among other things, by the AI race is giving new momentum to security around the
world by turning the asymmetric, cyber and hybrid-based threats into a “hyper threat” to SEE
CI and CII (Siddiqui, 2018). Before we explain how and why hyper threats need to be consid-
ered in SEE CIP and CIIP, it is important to understand what the “hyper threats” are.

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