When AI Fights, the War Never Ends — Myriam Dunn Cavelty
· 1 h 03 min · S4 E18
Episode 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 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.
Selected Publications
• The evolution of cyberconflict studies • The politics of cyber security • Cyber security politics: Socio-technological transformations and political fragmentation • Cybersecurity in Switzerland • Cyber-security and threat politics: US efforts to secure the information age
Recommended article:
• Cyber War Will Not Take Place
Chapters
00:00 - Introduction
01:55 - What Actually Counts as Critical Infrastructure in the Age of AI?
07:58 - ENISA: Europe's Cybersecurity Watchdog — Triumphs, Failures, and Missed Opportunities
13:00 - Does the World Need a Global Cybersecurity Regulator?
14:43 - Hacked Nations: Geopolitical Coercion, Hybrid Warfare, and Strategic Signalling
25:48 - 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 Finish
38:27 - Who Did It? The Dangerous Art of Attribution in Cyber Warfare
43:58 - The Speed Problem: When AI Makes Decisions Faster Than Humans Can Think
48:33 - 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 Topics
Follow & Further Resources
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Links in the notes 14
- https://css.ethz.ch/en/center/people/dunn-cavelty-myriam.html
- https://academic.oup.com/ia/article/100/6/2317/7852699
- https://www.routledge.com/The-Politics-of-Cyber-Security/DunnCavelty/p/book/9780367895983
- https://www.routledge.com/Cyber-Security-Politics-Socio-Technological-Transformations-and-Political-Fragmentation/DunnCavelty-Wenger/p/book/9780367626648
- https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-319-10620-5
- https://www.routledge.com/Cyber-Security-and-Threat-Politics-US-Efforts-to-Secure-the-Information-Age/Dunn/p/book/9780415569880
- https://doi.org/10.1080/01402390.2011.608939
- https://theirthinker.substack.com/
- https://www.linkedin.com/company/theirthinker/
- https://x.com/theirthinker
- https://www.instagram.com/theirthinker/
- https://bsky.app/profile/theirthinker.bsky.social
- https://www.facebook.com/theirthinker/
- https://acast.com/privacy
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