 Good afternoon and welcome to this IIEA seminar. I welcome all of our listeners today. It's an interesting and very topical question we're going to talk about today. The gray zone, cooperation and collective defense for the 21st century security environment. So it couldn't be more topical than what we're hearing now. Before I introduce our speakers, I just want to say all this is on the record and you can join the discussions using your Q&A button on your Zoom facility. And if questions arise in your mind during the discussion, please put them up. And if you can give your identification and your affiliation, if you are speaking on behalf of any group. We're delighted today to be joined by David Vaughan-Wheel, Assistant Secretary General of the Emerging Security Challenges at NATO, and Ali Routu, Deputy Chief Executive of the European Defense Agency. These two very busy gentlemen have taken time out to talk to us. It just struck me that I might just remind ourselves, the 21st century security environment is characterized by its complexity, by the Russian's invasion of Ukraine. And it has highlighted in the world and for the world, the significant security risks that Europe faces today. Europe has experienced an increase in the range of security threats, which fall below the threshold of war. These hazards understood as gray zone threats. And I have to say it's a relatively new expression to myself, include information warfare, cyber attacks, military posturing, and the manipulation of energy supplies. We have all faced those threats. The panel today, our two speakers, David and Ali, will discuss the ways in which the blurred links between peace and war generated new threats. And they will also assess the measures that can be taken to counter them. And when the two speakers have finished, we will then allow time for questions or comments. And I will ask the two speakers to each speak for about 10 to 15 minutes. And I now invite David to open the proceedings. Thank you. Thank you very much, Nora. And good afternoon to all of you from the NATO HQ in Brussels. So my function is I'm the Assistant Secretary General for Emerging Security Challenges. And that sounds quite ominous as a title. But if I describe it in short to normal people, what I say is that I deal with all the threats that are the non-traditional military threats. So everything short of bullets, tanks, aircraft, and fights at sea fall within my remit. So that includes cyber. It includes the innovation war. It includes hybrid warfare, disinformation, energy security, but also the new threat of climate change. And the security aspects of that counter terrorism. So it's a rather broad portfolio. And I used to start all my speeches that the chance of a large war in Europe, a large conventional conflict in Europe, has become very small. Unfortunately, since a month ago, I've had to rewrite my speech. And of course, that's not the big issue. The big issue is that we are confronted with a major conventional conflict on European soul by the biggest country in Europe and the second biggest army in the world, trying to attack a peaceful neighbor, a peaceful democratic neighbor completely unprovoked with all means. But even in this large-scale conventional conflict for which NATO of course was erected at the end of the Second World War to defend ourselves against such a conflict, even in that conventional conflict, that we see that the gray zone plays a large role. And not only in the conflict itself, but also in a long run up to the conflict itself. The fact that most Russians now support President Putin's war and believe that there are actual Nazis in Ukraine, that that need to be eradicated, that we really just read that the kidnapped mayor of Malitopov was told by the Russian soldiers that kidnapped him, that they were there to free him from the Nazis and where could they find him. So the misinformation, the propaganda that was used as a buildup to this conflict is one of those gray zone tools. But also we've seen that our gas torches in Europe have been depleted over the summer. And that was a deliberate policy by Gazprom and the Russian government in order to create leverage against Western European countries trying to divide us. We've seen cyber attacks in the run up. We've seen preparations. We've seen hacking of government sites, scaring of the Ukrainian population. And then when the war started, we saw massive attacks on the Ukrainian cyber infrastructure that put down the communications that destabilized their energy grid. And that also has some spillover to our part of the world. One of the hacks and today there will be a statement coming out by the U.S. attributing the Viya set hack to the Russian government. But that hack that was intended to disrupt the infrastructure in Ukraine actually also destabilized 5,000 wind turbines of the German coast for a period of 21 days. So the impact of the gray zone, although it sounds rather harmless, can be huge and is logstock and barrel part of the conflicts that we face today. Whether or not accompanied by conventional conflict. So this is not new for us. However, what is new is the skill we're seeing now and the fact that the whole European security architecture that we become accustomed to within the international rule-based order is now being upset by a UN Security Council member that doesn't attribute to the rules of war anymore that bombs hospitals that attacks infrastructure and is at least in communications being backed by a second UN Security Council member, namely China is a big worry. And that means that in the gray zone, we also have to prepare for a more intense competition than we've seen before. There will be a lower threshold in using all other means than military conflict to achieve goals. And of course, we're doing the same. NATO is not involved in the conflict in Ukraine. But of course, through the delivery of weapons by individual allies by providing humanitarian assistance by imposing heavy sanctions on the Russian economy. Of course, we are using other means than military means in order to achieve our objective in this case, not to become involved in a full-on war with Russia, but at the same time dissuading Russia from this war and trying to assist Ukraine in standing up against Russia. So what are the tools we have for that? And I'll elaborate shortly in the different domains within my division, how we are arming ourselves today. Cyber, of course, being the most prominent. So already in 2014, we have declared cyber an operational domain. Let's do the land domain, the air domain, and the sea domain. We recognize that cyber is a domain in which battles might take place. We also declared in 2016 that a cyber attack may be seen as an armed attack. And an armed attack in NATO means that Article 5 can be triggered, which is the Three Musketeers article, one for all and all for one, which means that the collective self-defense would then be triggered. But we also noticed that in cyberspace, it's sometimes not the one detrimental, large-scale attack that happens and that really harms us. It can be campaigns, malicious campaigns that are below that threshold of armed attack that can be just as destabilizing. And the bias that HEC has just mentioned was one of them, but also the HEC on the Microsoft Exchange Server, which we attributed to China, is one of the examples where HECs can have a detrimental effect, wanted or unwanted, to the security of our nations. If hospitals don't have power because they're being hacked, then people die. So what we did last year in our updated cyber defense policy is declare that even a campaign of lower-level, malicious cyber activities by the same actor could, in some circumstances, amount to the same level of an armed attack. And the reason for this is to deter our potential adversaries from conducting this reckless behavior in cyberspace. And also because we've seen that the activities in cyberspace were only increasing. So cyberspace is a difficult one because there's no real distinction between peacetime, crisis, and war. It is a domain that is always on, and therefore, it's a domain where we don't have clear rules on defense and deterrence. What can you do? What can't you do? So something that definitely after this conflict we'll have to look into again what the longer-term implications are of this conflict on our cybersecurity. Resilience will play an important part in that. So part of deterrence is also making sure that you're resilient to attacks. If you have to spend years to get into a network and then you're being kicked out in 10 seconds, then that's a lot of effort for not a lot of fun. So resilience is definitely a part of that. This information is one where we're now seeing the big impact on our societies of propaganda. And that's why Russia today has been banned in most European countries at this moment. And that's a big step to be taken. So we have to rethink the balance on how do we maintain our freedom of speech, which is one of the highest goods in our democracy. And at the same time, decrease the vulnerability of our populations to propaganda and disinformation. And in the modern digital connected world, that is a real challenge. Then let me end within this time. So we leave some time for questions and all of course on energy security. And energy security, we've now seen that the dependence in this case on Russian oil and gas is on the one hand providing 1 billion euros a day to keep the Russian war machine going. And it also makes us very vulnerable to coercion because we cannot stop that flow overnight as it comes now. So independence of actors that are competitors or adversaries is something we need to work on as Europeans. And that goes for energy. But in the longer run, if we transition into more greener energy, we also have to make sure that we don't become dependent on other actors. That provide, for example, the rare earth minerals. Or as we've seen in COVID, that penicillin for 99% is only being made in China. So we are entering a world of geo-strategic competition. We need to take care of ourselves. And the gray zone is definitely the area where most of this competition will be fold out. And we're working on it. But it's a whole of society effort. Thank you very much indeed, David. We'll come back to some of the points you raised. We won't go into questions now. I'm now going to introduce Ali Rutu, who's the Deputy Chief Executive of the European Defence Agency. And previously, he served as Deputy National Armaments Director of the Ministry of Defence of Finland. Mr. Rutu has been awarded the declaration of a Knight of the Order of the White Rose of Finland and a Medal for Military Merits. And when I saw that wonderful title, The Order of the White Rose, I hope that you do get every week a bunch of white roses sent to you as a result of having that knighthood. So I'll give you the floor now, Ali, and then we'll come back to questions. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair, very much. And indeed, for your introduction as well, there were some white roses there on acknowledging. It's a pleasure to be with you and all the distinguished members of the Institute of International and European Affairs today. And thank you for inviting the European Defence Agency to intervene in this panel discussion. It's of greatest relevance, as you said, also today. And a pleasure also to follow after the remarks of David Van Welder, as well, with whom we very much share our understanding of the situation and the picture and many of the measures, of course, that are currently taken forward. Now, this indeed Russian unprovoked military aggression against Ukraine has already proven to be a sea change event for European security. And of course, it has already brought commitments of EU member states towards increased support to Ukraine in the increased defence expenditure. And of course, the change of the EU's defence and security posture towards Russia. And of course, as we all know, the armed aggression against Ukraine is using not only heavy military force but also hybrid tactics, cyber attacks and foreign information, manipulation and interference, economic and energy coercion and so on. And of course, these provocative actions severely and directly threaten European security order and the security of European citizens. Now, last week, the European Council endorsed the strategic compass, which provides strategic guidance for the next decade, defines a coherent set of actions and means for strengthening the EU's security and defence policy. The common strategic vision requires a common understanding of the threats and challenges the EU will face in the future as today's discussion rightly addresses. For this reason, the work on the strategic compass was first kicked off in November 2020 in the EU's first ever comprehensive threat analysis. And in some, this analysis has described European and global security landscape that is volatile, complex and fragmented due to multi-layered threats and hybrid threats indeed grow both in frequency and impact. And state and non-state actors target the EU with hybrid tools, including the misuse of disruptive technologies, cyber attacks, disinformation and other non-military sources of malign influence and terrorism. And of course, then this situation of direct aggression and war in Ukraine that we are having to witness. To counter these threats on the hybrid side, the EU committed to the development of a hybrid toolbox and response teams bringing together different instruments to detect and respond to a broad range of hybrid threats, including action to address foreign information manipulation and interference. And I must say here that I will focus more on the European Defence Agency's activities on our support to member states, in particular in defence capability development, and then the European External Action Service is very much of course leading the work on the foreign information and those hybrid areas. But we contribute to that work and I will say first a few words still on the European Defence Agency here. Now, the strategic compass that I mentioned will also serve for us in the agency as a main strategic reference. We have now committed at the EU level to stimulate investment and innovation, jointly develop the necessary capabilities and technologies that the European Union member states need. You may be aware that the agency was established already more than 15 years ago, started its function in 2004, and it's there to help the member states to collaborate more to sustain their efforts to improve European defence capabilities and improve, strengthen our common security and defence policy. And a few years back, we enforced mandate was given by the defence ministers in 2017, and we work on main three lines of work. First of all, we prioritise what does Europe need for the future? And it's also very much in discussion now, what kind of European defence and European cooperation for capabilities we need. So we work on that prioritisation. Secondly, it's a forum for cooperation and the management structure for capability development for technology activities. And then thirdly, we facilitate member states and ministries of defence discussions also with the European Union Commission and other institution to make sure that defence interests and the interests of defence are taken into account in EU policy development. So we have here good increasing and active cooperation with the European Commission and the different tools that the EU toolbox has to address these threats. And in an area that we are discussing also today, the grey zone, these tools are of course need to be exploited to the full and we cooperate there actively. Now, on what we do in terms of the capability development and support in the area of hybrid nature, we first of all, we contribute to the implementation of the so-called joint framework to counter hybrid threats. Every year we report on our work to foster the resilience of the EU, member states, also partner countries, in particular to an action in the framework which is on the adaptation of defence capabilities to counter hybrid threats against one or several participating member states. We have organised the table of exercises which have brought us to identify hybrid warfare implications for European military capabilities. Firstly, the key importance of civilian military interoperability connectivity and the need of additional exercises and training for demonstration. Second, the necessity of maintaining credible and comprehensive deterrence in the sense of deterring against the use of hybrid threats. And lastly, the need to develop a common European picture of the hybrid warfare threat with which the strategic compass is indeed now feeding. Now, in this context, the capability development plan that we are working together with member states and EU institutions on gives our priorities on how to address hybrid threats. We have worked on these based on adaptive scenarios and the broad range of requirements ranging from significant conventional military assets over non-kinetic capabilities such as command and control, ISR, cyber, strat-com, and enhanced protection of the infrastructure I've been taking into account. And to be more specific, the EU capability development priorities agreed by the EDA steering board, so the defence ministers that also address hybrid threats are first enabling capabilities for cyber-responsive operation. So it's improving cyber defence skills for military personnel, situational awareness, new technologies, coordination with other EU actors and training and education. In the area of ground combat capabilities, we have a focus on enhanced protection of forces with the aim to develop counter IED capabilities in the context of hybrid threats. And then in the naval area also, we have the underwater control contributing to resilience at sea with a focus on harbor protection. In the air domain, we focus on emphasis on countering unmanned aerial systems and this anti-access area denial capability. And then we look at the number of innovative technologies for example, for the protection against the CBR and threats. So chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear threats. So, and then we have worked in more detail on different, let's say avenues of approach of how we can increase collaboration there. I have a number of examples on these areas but in the interest of time and discussion, I will just go maybe to conclude by again emphasizing the importance of investing in innovative technologies and in research area. There is an under investment at the European level in research and technology in our area for some years now. And we know that the protection against the possible use of emerging disruptive technologies in a hybrid context, for example, through artificial intelligence, dependencies on position navigation, timing technologies. This should be explored from a capability development perspective. And for instance early detection and protective technologies to counter CBR and threats should be further developed and improve. And indeed also in the strategic compass, there is a commitment to the creation of a defense innovation hub in the European Defense Agency which we are developing together with member states right now. And to conclude, important again that we coordinate with all the actors involved in the domain, including in a good staff to start dialogue with NATO that we are also having and we work organizing work, I'm sure with higher intensity from here on looking at the current situation. So indeed our cooperation has a very important signal value and it provides concrete support and capabilities in the situation. So we look forward to continuing on that and great for any questions and discussion after this. Thank you very much.