The recording of our recent presentation at the Sub-Committe on Security and Defense of the European Parliament is now available to view. In the presentation we discuss how the security of the European subsea data cable infrastructure — critical for the European digital economy. The recording is available here.
From the 25 to 26th of April, Tobias Liebetrau and I will be visiting Brussels to present the key recommendations of our recently completed study on the security of subsea data cable infrastructures in Europe. We will be giving a presentation to the Security and Defense Committee of the European Parliament that commissioned the study.
We will also meet with the team from DG Mare and the External Action service that is drafting the update of the EU Maritime Security Strategy. We will present the results of the study on cables and also the key take away points of another forthcoming study on the EU’s maritime security policy (with Tim Edmunds).
The Indian National Maritime Foundation and the EU project ESIWA (Enhancing Security Cooperation In and With Asia) held an online EU-India seminar on maritime security and UNCLOS on April 11th. The key question addressed was how India and the EU can cooperate better to provide maritime security in the Indo-Pacific. I had the pleasure to chair the second session of the event.
What is the relation of fish and security? On the 6th of April I had the pleasure to contribute as a discussant to a webinar that explored that important question. The event was organized by the Institute for Oceans and Fisheries of the University of British Columbia.
From 28th to the 2nd of April I will be attending the annual conference of the International Studies Association, which is the major conference in the field of International Relations. This year the conference will be held in a hybrid format with a physical component in Nashville, U.S. and I will be attending in person.
I am involved in a range of panels as chair, presenter and discussant:
On the 21st of March I had the pleasure to give a talk at the Global Governance Centre of the Graduate Institute in Geneva. In the talk I was revisiting the framework of epistemic infrastructures and asked what it tells us about the evolution of maritime domain awareness and how it renders the oceans knowable as a security space.
Illicit fisheries is one of the key issues on the maritime security agenda. As part of the Norwegian Blue Crime Dialogue Series I gave a presentation on the 11.3. in which I discussed the different dimensions of the problem and how it interlinks different ocean agendas. Drawing on our research on blue crimes, I firstly argued that illicit fishery is often a facilitating crime, that does not only pose harm to the environment but can create larger situations of insecurity and maritime security hotspots. Illicit fishery has also an important state dimensions, in that some countries might use their fishery fleets for political objectives or tolerate illicit fishing. Secondly, I alerted the audience to the opportunities that the fight against illicit fishery presented for reconnecting key ocean paradigms and agendas.
What are the benefits and effects of maritime security strategies? Should South Africa develop one? These were the two key questions that were addressed in a webinar organized by the Sigla (University of Stellenbosch) and the Institute for Security Studies (Pretoria). Titled the “Perspectives on an Integrated Maritime Security Strategy for South Africa” the event featured Professor Francois Vrey (Sigla), Rear Admiral D. Mkhonto (South African Navy), Timothy Walker (ISS), Dr. Lisa Otto (U Johannesburg), Dr. Ali Kamal-Deen (CEMLAWS) and Dave O’Connell (UNODC).
In my own presentation I was introducing some of our results on maritime security strategies from the TOCAS and the AMARIS projects:
Continue readingOn the 4.3. I had the pleasure to speak at the Pathfinder Indian Ocean Security Conference. The conference is part of the long term endeavor of the Pathfinder Foundation for a high quality discussion on the future of the security architecture of the Indian Ocean. The conference focused on confidence building measures, options for improving the current institutions and Maritime Domain Awareness with speakers from the region, China, the U.S., Russia, and Europe.
I addressed the audience as part of the panel on Maritime Domain Awareness (MDA). In my short intervention I flagged the importance of having good knowledge of the sea by sharing information on an everyday basis. I argued that MDA is important for three reasons. 1) it provides a measure for trust and confidence building; 2) it enables and coordinates rapid transnational operational responses to maritime incidents which not only includes crimes, such as piracy, but also environmental incidents, such as oil spills; 3) it allows for a common understanding of what the key security problems at sea actually are.
In the light of the ongoing turn to geopolitical thinking and naval competition, in particular the third rationale for MDA seems to be important. MDA might be here a key instrument to manage the emerging militarization dilemma in the region. As we show in a forthcoming article, co-authored with Jan Stockbruegger, the Indian Ocean is increasingly confronted with such a dilemma, where on the one side more naval force is needed to deal with maritime crimes, while on the other growth of naval employment within geo-political strategies re-enforces tensions.
I also recommended that more attention is payed to what kind of information is actually shared through MDA. Here we need to go beyond AIS data, and consider satellite imagery or remote sensing data. Also algorithms that are effective in identifying suspicious maritime behavior should be shared, and categorizations of issues, threats, and suspicious behavior should be harmonized.
What are the threats, risks and challenges linked to subsea data infrastructure in the Atlantic region? This is the key question that I explore at a presentation in an Atlantic Centre Seminar titled “Shifts in world geopolitics: cooperation and competition in the Atlantic” on 25.2.
I argue that subsea infrastructure is too often a neglected object on both the maritime security and cyber security agendas, although it is vital for the digital economy. I discuss some of the threats to the infrastructure as well as ideas of how the cables might be better protected. The presentation draws on the research on subsea data cables that I am currently carrying out with Tobias Liebetrau, and that is also one workstream in the Ocean Infrastructures project. The recording of the event is available here, with my talk starting at