When AI Fights, the War Never Ends — Myriam Dunn Cavelty

Artificial intelligence is redrawing the boundaries of cybersecurity — accelerating attacks, complicating attribution, and compressing the time humans have to make decisions that matter. In this episode, Myriam Dunn Cavelty of ETH Zurich examines AI-driven conflict, the politics behind critical infrastructure protection, the limits of European governance, and what it means when cyber war has no clear start and no clear finish.Myriam Dunn CaveltyMyriam Dunn Cavelty is a Senior Scientist at the Centre for Security Studies at Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich. Her research examines the political and societal implications of digital technologies, with a particular focus on cyber security, cyber warfare, critical infrastructure protection, and technology governance. She also serves as co-editor-in-chief of Contemporary Security Policy.PublicationsThe evolution of cyberconflict studiesThe politics of cyber securityCyber security politics: Socio-technological transformations and political fragmentationCybersecurity in SwitzerlandCyber-security and threat politics: US efforts to secure the information ageRecommended article:Cyber War Will Not Take PlaceContent00:00 - Introduction01:55 - What Actually Counts as Critical Infrastructure in the Age of AI?07:58 - ENISA: Europe's Cybersecurity Watchdog — Triumphs, Failures, and Missed Opportunities13:00 - Does the World Need a Global Cybersecurity Regulator?14:43 - Hacked Nations: Geopolitical Coercion, Hybrid Warfare, and Strategic Signalling25:48 - Is Cybersecurity a Political Problem Dressed Up as a Technical One?32:31 - War Without End: Why AI-Driven Conflict Has No Clear Start, No Clear Finish38:27 - Who Did It? The Dangerous Art of Attribution in Cyber Warfare43:58 - The Speed Problem: When AI Makes Decisions Faster Than Humans Can Think48:33 - Arming the Enemy: What Happens When Open-Source AI Falls Into the Wrong Hands?52:00 - Measuring the Unmeasurable: How Do You Rank a Country's Cyber Power?58:27 - The Blind Spots of AI Cybersecurity Research TopicsFollow & Further ResourcesSubstack: https://theirthinker.substack.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/ir-thinker/X: https://x.com/irthinker_Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theirthinker/Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/theirthinker.bsky.socialFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/irthinkerfb Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.