 Good afternoon, everybody. I'm very pleased to welcome you today to this webinar on the Ukraine War and critical energy infrastructure, the growing hybrid threats to Europe. I'm particularly pleased to welcome Professor Sarah Lohman, who is acting professor in the Henry M Jackson School for International Studies at the University of Washington. And she's been generous enough to give up her time from her schedule to speak to us and particularly as she is coming from Seattle, where it's a lot earlier than it is in our comfort zone here in Dublin. And Dr. Professor Lohman will speak to us for about 25, 30 minutes and then we will go to the question and answer with our audience. Just the usual notes which I think most people are aware of at the moment, you'll be able to join the Q&A function on Zoom, which you will, you should see on your screen. And please feel free to send your questions in throughout the session as they accord to you. And we will put them to Dr. Lohman as soon as she has finished her presentation. And a reminder that today's Q&A and presentation are both on the record. In this situation and in the lead up to the invasion of Ukraine over a year ago, the critical energy infrastructure of Ukraine and its allies has been targeted, both through cyber and kinetic means. Emerging and destructive technology such as drones and hypersonic missiles have been used on the battlefield and cyber attacks and disinformation campaigns against partner states are on the rise. In remarks, Dr. Lohman will discuss the emerging methods and media being used against Ukraine and its European allies, and what remains to be done to keep critical infrastructure and public safe in this hybrid warfare environment. And we in Ireland have not escaped and our HSE was subject to the target of cyber attack which has been traced back to Russia. I will formally introduce Professor Lohman. She is the acting assistant professor and Henry and Jackson School for International Studies and her two new books, what were Ukraine taught NATO about hybrid warfare produced in November 2022 and countering terrorism on the battlefield were published by the US Army War College Press during her visiting professorship there at the end of 2022. Her current teaching and research focus on cyber and energy security and NATO policy. She served as the senior cyber fellow with the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies at John Hopkins University, where she managed projects which aim to increase agreement between Germany and the United States in improving cyber security and cyber norms. Professor Lohman has also worked in Germany and Munich where she served as a university instructor at the University of the German Army the Bundeswehr. And she there she taught cyber security policy and international human rights and political science and got her doctorate there. And prior to her tenure she was press spokesman for the US Department of State for human rights, as well as for the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs. And before her government service, she was a journalist and for bright scholar. She has published in many books, and has written over a thousand articles and international press outlets on digital transformation redesigning organization and concepts for connected society. With that introduction, Professor Lohman, you are most welcome again, and the floor is yours. Well, thank you very much, Ambassador and is a great honor to be here today. I want to especially thank the Institute of International and European Affairs for inviting me and to congratulate you on your recent publications and testimony on national security threats very relevant to today's talk. And thank you especially to Ambassador Cross for moderating today, also to the Infantry for organizing. I want to break down my talk today into several different pieces. So I'm going to be talking about hybrid warfare from multiple angles. I'm going to start by defining it and how it's being used in the current Ukraine conflict with its three main landmarks. And then I'm going to briefly talk about China's role and how drones are really impacting the battlefields as an emerging technology. I will briefly go over the patterns we've seen in year one and now at the beginning of year two of this conflict. I will look at the current threats to energy critical infrastructure and other systems. And then look at solutions addressing energy independence, cyber hardening, as well as the undersea cable discussion. So briefly, where, where am I getting my information so I have just returned, as was mentioned from the Army War College, doing a secondment there for almost two years, which sent me to Europe during this time. This was on secondment as part of the Army so there you see me on the right hand side, jumping off the jumping off the side of the Alps with with the military unit there. So this was interesting for a former diplomat to see this part of the world from military base view but I was going and looking at energy critical infrastructure across Europe. And looking at the ways that we are cyber hardening. And this was even long before the invasion so going through different NATO member states looking at how different European countries were ensuring that their energy critical infrastructure was secure. As part of this we were myself in the co-lead picture there at NATO headquarters we were reporting back to NATO as part of our NATO science and technology organization project. This project was looking specifically at ensuring energy independence, and my role was looking at the cyber angle, ensuring that our energy critical infrastructure is cyber secured. As such I was providing recommendations as a cyber subject matter expert, both at those military bases but as well to NATO headquarters. So that's just a little bit about where where I've received my research. So when we talk about hybrid warfare what are we really talking about as so the NATO definition looks at hybrid threats that combine both military and non military means. These are both covert and overt means. These include disinformation includes in cyber attacks, economic pressure and deployment of irregular arms groups as well as regular forces. So the impact that we've seen from this hybrid warfare has led to an energy crisis across Europe, as most are well aware it's led to food shortages due to some of the challenges with getting grain out from from Ukraine it's led to supply chain issues. The aspect I focused on with the hybrid warfare was how it's targeting energy critical infrastructure. So, both the kinetic attacks but as well the cyber operations that would be targeted at energy critical infrastructure. And what we found was that sometimes even the information operations and the economic coercion was that was used had just as much of a percentage of impact as some of the other forms of attack. So just to complete the picture as mentioned in the definition, both regular and irregular forces. And this has been the case in Ukraine since 2014 with regular presence of separatist militias there in Ukraine. I'm always well aware of the Wagner groups presence there, especially as we've been looking at in the last months, and everything happening in this tragic invasion. The three main patterns the three main landmarks I found in my research, looked at, and responded to the emerging technology environment, cyber attacks in tandem with the kinetic attacks, as well as the impact of disinformation and malign influence as well as the partnership with China. In terms of the emerging technology environment what we found was that looking at different European countries and how the technology was emerging how smart grids and renewables were feeding into traditional grids, but we're not cyber secured We also know that IT and operational technology, the union of those two creates additional vulnerabilities when not cyber hardened, much of the newer technology, not having adequate cyber early warning systems not having adequate cyber security, built into which is absolutely necessary as we look at expanding renewables across Europe. So everything from wind farms to solar, and to some of the, the newer internet of things that the smart grids are connected to all of this very crucial to cyber security being used. I also looked in my research at the use of drones, as well as what is being used to counter them on the battlefields, and looked at how Ukraine and NATO partners have been repeatedly tested and attacked, even in two years up before the invasion. So what started as initial hacking attempts ended up actually causing a loss of energy so many were aware of the hacking of satellites which then caused wind farm to be affected, then targeted attacks of wind turbines, causing energy, also of gas pumps of pipelines of coal and thermal plants as target all through the cyber sphere. This is not something that just happened overnight. There was a testing period so starting in 2015 2016 Moscow was already performing tests run test runs in the United States and Germany. Not to mention Ukraine itself when Ukraine was left without heat in the middle of winter. So intruding on the grids intruding on oil and gas infrastructure, and intruding on different types of critical infrastructure including nuclear and a number of utilities. In some cases, with future destructive exploits yet to happen so some of them were malicious espionage. Some of them were actually hacks that caused loss of power in the case of Germany specifically. In the case of us in one, one period of time, half a different half a dozen different utilities affected so this was very practiced. It was something that over a period of a number of years had been tested and was then launched in full form then in the early months of the war. In the first year of the war we did see cyber attacks in tandem with kinetic so often within a 12 to 24 hour period, and you would see kinetic attacks and cyber attacks on energy critical infrastructure. And the chemical attacks timed with those cyber attacks specifically on Ukraine as well as its partners, also timed around specific negotiations, if they didn't get what they wanted, and if there was a support for Ukraine. That was often the consequence. As I mentioned before disinformation operations and malign influence often had a percentage impact, for example, focused on Poland focused on Lithuania on the public's there. Leading in some cases to concrete loss of energy so a disinformation campaign about a leaking nuclear plant that wasn't actually leaking causing coal workers not to show up for work because their, their families were concerned about their welfare. And causing that coal plant to shut down so loss of energy in Poland, where it really lives from that coal industry. We also saw China helping to soften the impact of sanctions. And I want to get into a little bit about how China has aided Russia in this particular war specifically by sending them drones by sending them tracking technology. Parts of Chinese drones that had been used by Ukrainians earlier in the war, and by controlling the supply chain across Europe. All right, so when we talk about autonomous weapons, we often are thinking about drones specifically drones or semi autonomous systems that are going to have more impact on operations across Europe. That's a prediction by the NATO science and technology organization, but we have to look no further than the current conflict to really understand how it's having a huge impact. So, the drones are really changing the battlefields we're aware that Chinese exporters have sold 12 million dollars worth of drones to Russia since the invasion. That's 70 different Chinese exporters. In addition, they were very successful in helping Russia to track drones being used by Ukrainians as well as their operators very tragically. And so this is another way that they've been providing this lethal help. We're aware that both the US and the United Kingdom have been providing Ukraine with both short and long range drones to help them be their eyes and ears, so to speak. But there have been attack drones as well. So this is something that's happening on both sides, but also should be considered as part of the long term equation as we're looking at emerging technology and what is impacting the battlefields. I want to talk briefly about patterns that we have seen there in Ukraine in the first year and then in the second year. So in terms of Russian leadership patterns initially you did seem very much a focus on kinetic on the bombings. So, as I mentioned, timed with cyber but leading with that kinetic force the explosions this is something that the Russian leadership wanted to focus on. At the same time, using that espionage long game with long term consequences so in many cases the intrusions on European countries critical infrastructure and their remote control systems have not fully caused damage yet but we're aware that it could in the future. We were pleasantly surprised by Ukraine's growing cyber maturity they took 2000 that the initial energy grid attack from a number of years ago and really use that to focus their cyber maturity. They had an extensive cyber education then offered in universities across the country. So a new cadre of young leaders and cyber security. They also saw that they shifted after experiencing what they experienced with Crimea in 2014 and then the hacking of their grid following they decided in many cases to allow their industrial control systems to operate on manual. So where as in Western Europe, much of our systems are operated virtually and the Internet of Things greatly plays a role. They recognize that this expands the attack service through the cyber sphere and that this was a great challenge and so Russia was not able to provide the damage that had been expected in this way from a number of their critical infrastructure systems, due to the fact that they had resorted back to manual. In addition, they did receive support from allies that helped with rapid response forces when large cyber attacks were known. They also received support from the hacking community you you saw that early on in the war that there was a call from leadership for help on that end and and they showed up in mouse. What impact is this having across Europe. As we looked at the different critical infrastructure we found that there really was insufficient cyber early warning systems for many European countries. I did not outline this country by country in my book but this is a great concern because of course the EU had passed a level of standards and several countries were keeping to those standards but it was not equal across the European Union. So, there had been increased cyber threats to energy critical infrastructure because of that lack of up to date technology. And in turn, has caused vulnerabilities along the energy supply chain. And then finally, that impact of vulnerabilities has a direct impact on military effectiveness across Europe so with the potential for different information sensors to be hacked on energy critical infrastructure. This continuing to be a challenge to this day. So that cyber hardening very, very necessary. What ended up happening now and as we go into year two is that we saw a market turning point in cyber attacks related to the conflict in Ukraine. With this very clear transition from a cyber war that was focused on Ukraine to high intensity hybrid cyber war across Europe. So you were starting to see the cyber war targeting Poland and the Baltics and Nordic countries, in particular, with an increasing focus on critical national infrastructure. This includes aviation, this includes energy, healthcare, banking, as well as public services. So, you saw targeted destruction campaigns. So again going from year one, where year one was focused on espionage was focused on a timing with kinetic attacks to year two with this targeted destruction campaign. Grow Russian hacktivists coming in onto the scene, also using denial of service attacks to make servers temporarily unavailable and inaccessible and to disrupt services across all of those sectors. So this was part of Russia's larger strategy to engage in information warfare as a way to really wear down the public. And also they targeted private organizations as well. So what is this new attack geography look like. At the beginning of the conflict, the majority of incidents were focused on Ukraine. Then you saw this transitioning to EU countries. And those EU countries seeing a sharp increase in conflict related incidents in the last half year. So fails did a fantastic report on this. I want to give credit where credit is do breaking down by country where we've seen this increase across EU countries, specifically in year two. So in the first quarter of 2023, the overwhelming majority of incidents that's 80% of incidents have been inside the European Union. These hacktivists specifically targeting Baltic countries. Estonia Latvia and Lithuania and in this breakdown by fails 157 of their incidents in the Nordic countries close second with 95 incidents in Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland, and then Germany coming after that. So, a lot of the incidents obviously being unreported those are just the publicly reported figures. 61% of those being traced back to pro Russian hacktivist groups, in particular groups like anonymous Russia, kill net and Russian hackers teams. Now these are groups that want to take basically credit for what they're doing for their work. So we've seen an incredible increase in this retribution across European Union countries. All right, that takes us up to the current time. Now this map on the right was a map I created as part of the book. Together with several of my students, one of them a Colonel, another student from one of my classes. And we mapped out each of these European countries where we perceived threats and again, according to some open source information we created these back in 2021. So that's where we were predicting threats within six months that's what you see in red and orange within a year and within yellow two plus years these were finished in June of 2021. So there you see off the northern coast of Germany in red the North Sea wind farms well that is the first thing that Russia targeted in the south you see an unstable grid. So challenges from the Internet of things unstable in terms of it's a very aging grid but links with through the cyber sphere and so a broader attack surface, as well as changing technology in terms of storage being a challenge as well. So, we're going from the threats that we saw that we had predicted that unfortunately actually came true. And this was highlighted in a number of the country maps you see throughout the book of wind farms and a lot of the newer technology being targeted. And you see that moving across the North now and as you are aware, moving to the Northwest with cyber attacks targeted to the UK to Ireland. So, one of the challenges being this this fleet of spy ships operating in the Nordic waters. So with Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland initially reporting on this with these boats gathering intelligence they reported over the last decade so using that underwater surveillance equipment to map the key sites and the specifically these Russian vessels in military training areas. But interestingly also close to energy critical infrastructure. So, close to those gas fields, going by small airports going by important hubs for the Norwegian armed forces for example. And also areas where NATO was conducting military exercises at sea. So, here in the the left hand side, you see the picture of the the guard there on the Admiral Vlad Mersky. This was supposedly a boat that was conducting underwater research expedition, however, and this is usually not what the academics look at when they're on such expeditions. So, this caused a lot of questions. You know why do we have soldiers on on academic research expeditions. In addition, we saw very close observation of wind farms. Also in the naval training area of Swedish armed forces. And as you looked at what was going on with the wind farms, specifically once again, looking at those remote control systems. So the industrial control systems are linked back to the wind farms providing the energy. If there are ways to hack those if there are ways to disrupt that form of energy. And so these investigations by Dutch intelligence officials by the Norwegians by the fins by the Swedes. Reporting back they're seeing these challenges with the command and control structure of the windmill farms in terms of the Russian ships loitering around those areas of the windmill parks. What does this have to do with UK and what does this have to do with Ireland. And so we're seeing similar things loitering around the undersea cables. And that warning again coming from NATO from NATO's intelligence chief that that Russia is targeting the undersea infrastructure. So, again, in response to some of these nations providing support to Ukraine and a large number as you know of those subsea communications cables running under Irish controlled waters. Why does that concern the rest of Europe really because of that large amount of European data Ireland alone hosting at least 30% of all that European data. So anything happening to those undersea cables can actually be a challenge for the rest of Europe. Do I have time briefly to talk about solutions or am I already ambassador. Okay, I'll get into it and go ahead. Yeah, you go ahead, Sarah. Yeah. So, so we came up with a few solutions to address these challenges. And so you'll you'll see in the book that several of the solutions provided weren't specifically addressing the shortfalls in terms of energy. One of the challenges being that as you look at different European countries, if, for example, a host energy grid was hacked, that would also affect military bases in those European countries. And that dependent dependence on post critical infrastructure with those supplies being compromised that of course affecting everything from telecommunications to aviation to logistics to transportation. One of the things we looked at was small modular reactors and these of course being transportable and also allowing to be able to provide for a great amount of energy. One of the challenges of course is where do you put them. You can't put them near the battlefield, obviously. And so on the security side. The data was definitely not at the place yet where they were comfortable with these traveling around the European Union, or any of the European countries, but a position for the future it's very well developed. This is something that where the technology is there, and won't take as long as some of the renewables to develop so it's a solution that's there if we can figure out the safety issue. The other thing that we looked at intensively was to what extent micro gridding and islanding would help with energy independence. So a micro gridding being a small grid like a neighborhood size and military base size. This is already being done in some countries and states, especially where they have lots of sunshine, and then islanding being the process by which you separate from the main grid. And you are able to have your own energy source. Now the challenge with that is that looking at grids across a number of the NATO member states cybersecurity was often not built into the front end. Because again, if you island, but you don't have the cybersecurity then the adversary can attack that smaller grid as well so that being still being a challenge. However, this can be a solution if as a few isolated bases did you are able to build cybersecurity in on the front end. In most of the European micro grids that we looked at this wasn't the case. One of the, the most easy to implement solutions would be allowing for a new generation of cyber early warning system. And why do I say that it's because you can implement this on the front end to your energy critical infrastructure. And unlike the anomaly detection systems that are basically the standard today which look back at the types of attacks that have happened in the past and prepare for them in the future. The cyber early warning systems and this new generation uses virtualization artificial intelligence and machine learning to look forward to learn from itself. The attacks are developing and becoming new every day, and to ward off those attacks from energy critical infrastructure. And then finally going back to the challenge that we're seeing in the Nordics. The under cease cell rapid response force has already been created for the Nordic specifically. The Nordic has invited Ireland to be a part of that. This would protect the energy critical infrastructure, and you know, any of those off coast, underwater sea capers as well. This is a force working together both on navy and aviation and to physically protect those structures and also to monitor them. So this being something that's already in place that would just need expanded cooperation. Those are a few of the solutions we looked at I was so pleased to be here today and I really look forward to your questions.