Patrick Bury: 'It’s going to cost a lot of money to repair the systems.'

The British government launched its Be Ready campaign, the public awareness campaign encouraging people to stock up in case of disruption to essential services by severe weather or cyber attacks. For more on this story, we can bring in Patrick Bury, Senior Associate Professor in Warfare and Counterterrorism at the University of Bath. Patrick is also a former British Army Captain and NATO Analyst. Patrick, thank you very much for joining us on the program today. What are people being told to do as part of this Be Ready campaign? Essentially, the key takeaways are to have enough food for three days, to have water for a similar amount of time, to have torches, medicines if you need them, radio and power charges for phones and cash and critical documents that you may need. So it's actually just bringing the UK into line with what has been adopted as best practice in France, the Netherlands, Norway, Ireland as well, and numerous other countries like Switzerland have had these kind of guidance for citizens for decades. So it's just bringing the UK into line with the countries, really. Patrick, today we had schools in Northern Ireland and Ireland receive. Bomb alert threats, they have been dismissed as a hoax. 300 schools in Italy were evacuated as well. The prime minister says those emails were a hoax and pose no danger to the students. Is this part of the hybrid warfare we were told to expect? Yeah, I prefer the term subthreshold because it makes it clearer that it's below the threshold that would provoke a war. But yeah, clearly it is. We don't know. I know the French have come out and attributed to the Iranians the attack on some of their supermarkets. We're waiting for the European powers to come out with their assessments. Obviously, the hoax to the airlines, we had a Russian-linked group basically claim responsibility for some of them. And again, this is all happening in, as you know, in the context of negotiations going on in Abu Dhabi and the failure of the Russians to make ground in Ukraine. And so really trying to, in my reading, increase the cost to European populations, the psychological fear there to put pressure on European politicians to basically draw a line under the Ukraine conflict and force Ukraine to come to terms towards the Russians rather than something else. So I'd say it's part of a... basically concerted campaign to increase costs to European populations for their support for Ukraine. Because I'm just wondering, Patrick, I mean, I understand that the British government, for instance, is talking about this be ready campaign stock up for three days. Yes, you can have canned goods, pasta, water, what have you. But it seems that if we take the example of the refrigerators overheating, for instance, it seems that authorities. Could not prevent it from happening. I'm just curious. Do European states have what it takes to combat these cyber threats? Cyber attacks? Well, the issue with digitalization, you know, in general, which has been going on for 30 years, it was based on a kind of hope for the best scenario. So if you look at the architecture, I'm not a cyber expert, but speaking to them, they tell me that it's so much of it is just not fit for purpose in the way that it was designed because it wasn't designed with security as the first and foremost principle. It was designed with efficiency and cheapness. So that's the issue. I mean, it's going to cost a lot of money to back end. repair a lot of these systems, unfortunately. So, I mean, are the advanced cyber defense capabilities increasing across Europe? Yeah, they are. But do you have a major infrastructure problem? Yeah, you do. Thank you. So I think, having listened to the Irish Prime Minister speak to the media last week about this ahead of the upcoming EU summit in Dublin, And he said he's most concerned about a cyber attack, really. And I think that's the one. If you think about it as well, like a cyber attack against power, that really brings down and if it lasts for a number of days, that brings down basically a lot of systems, the media, it brings down the payment systems, obviously the power, et cetera. So that would be very, very serious. And it would cascade catastrophically through the system. So you said that this is just below. What would be described as like a war, threatening a conflict, if you will. I'm just curious in terms of being a part of NATO, how does NATO come into all of this to protect countries who are within that security umbrella? I think there's a difference here between attacking fridges, ringing in some bomb threats to different airlines. I would note as well that the main aircraft carriers, the national carriers of the nuclear powers were not targeted. Very good. And. Wasn't Aer Lingus targeted last week? Sorry? Wasn't Aer Lingus targeted last week? There was, I think, the French... Ireland isn't a nuclear power. Ireland isn't a nuclear power. The main national flag carriers of the nuclear powers were not targeted, which is interesting in and of itself. And you can also look at the concentration of the countries that have been targeted. For example, Sofia really heavily, Hungary now an anti-Russian government. So Italy as well being heavily targeted. And their prime minister has been outspoken about Russia recently. But in a wider thing, I think they'd have to draw a distinction between these kind of bomb hoax, not really to a school or to media, as we saw in Ireland's case last week, you know, not really being at the threshold for any kind of NATO response left to the member states or indeed Ireland not even being a member of NATO to deal with themselves. Where you could find a country and potentially bring a Article 4, Article 5 representation if there was a catastrophic cyber attack potentially affecting. Um, power, which could result in, in, in either, either direct or indirect deaths. I mean, that's where I think maybe depending on the level of support and the level of attribution, you could see NATO start to take that seriously. And, um, you know, the French seem to suggest that the, uh, the IRGC was behind the cyber attack on a supermarket here in France, obviously, uh, officials in Tehran denying that, um, You seem to suggest that this... Could also be part of a pressure campaign from Russia to pressure European officials, American officials when it comes to those peace talks that are taking place in Abu Dhabi. I'm just curious if, for argument's sake, that there is a ceasefire deal reached between the Ukrainians and the Russians, do you think that these hybrid attacks would ease off here in Europe? And to the flip side, if there isn't a deal reached, would these only intensify? It comes down to that costing. So we really don't know, for example, the differentiation between maybe the French attribution to the Iranians, other attacks. We just don't know. The bomb hoaxes is a separate thing on the airlines. The bomb hoaxes to Irish media and schools is another thing ahead of the EU summit. Look, we just don't know. And there's also the fact that there could be copycat actors seeing how disruptive this is and following on. Nevertheless, I think the broad context is interesting. For example, with the bomb hoaxes, the Russians have already got either drones or explosives onto cargo planes or very close to, and we know this is documented. And that's a message, you know, look what we can do. So again, with the bomb hoax kind of thing, it's like, look at the disruption we can bring in, in my reading of things. Thanks. So whether it would taper off, I would expect it would in the in the short to medium term if there is a peace deal, because but that does depend on the internal political dynamics going on inside Russia. Is it useful just to maintain that the West is an enemy, you know, for internal political cohesion? We'll see what happens. Thank you very much, Patrick, for joining us on the program today. Patrick Berry there. In other news, a general...