Publication bibliography

Recommendations for NATO

Two key recommendations for the alliance emerged from the workshop.

First, participants noted the opportunity for NATO to collaborate with Southern partners on “deterrence through resilience”—drawing lessons from the total defense system approach pioneered by NATO in Scandinavia and the Baltic , to deter hostile state actors by building resilience (and telegraphing national and societal will) across both the cyber and physical domains 14. Traditional deterrence would still remain a key element of national defense and internal security for all concerned, but in the face of proliferating EDT and ambiguous or non-attributable actors, a focus on resilience was likely to play a key supporting role.

Second, and to support the first recommendation, the Alliance may wish to consider a dialogue, and a series of supporting activities to encourage two-way information sharing, on NATO’s resilience agenda, including the seven baseline requirements (7BR) agreed by the allies in 2016 and since developed into action plans for continuity of government and critical government services, resilient energy supplies, ability to deal effectively with uncontrolled movement of people, resilient food and water resources, ability to deal with mass casualties, resilient civil communications systems and resilient transport systems15 .

It was felt that the 7BR categories might form a useful framework for engagement with the South on EDT, with an initial focus on resilient health systems, people movement and civil communications.

References

1 For UAV attacks see Alexander Balas, UAVs in the Middle East: Coming of Age, Royal United Services Institute for Defence Studies (RUSI) Commentary, 10 July 2019, online at https://www.rusi.org/commentary/UAVs-in-the-Middle-East-Coming-of-Age; for the Ragnar locker malware see McAfee, MVISION Insights: Ragnar Locker ransomware, technical insights article, 28 August 2020 at https://kc.mcafee.com/corporate/index?page=content&id=KB92601&locale=en_US

2 Wilfried A. Kouame, Leapfrogging: The Key to Africa’s Development, Tokyo: World Bank, 2019, at http://pubdocs.worldbank.org/en/700131563238536580/071619-ticad-seminar-21-leapfroggingWilfried-Kouame.pdf

3 Maysa Jalbout and Samar Farah (2016), Will the Technology Disruption Widen or Close the Skills Gap in the Middle East and North Africa? Washington DC: Brookings Institution, at https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Technology-Disruptionv5.pdf

4 See Nour Al Atassi, “SIM Boxes and Internet of Things Pose Rising Fraud Threats in Middle East and Africa” in Syniverse, August 17th, 2016, at https://www.syniverse.com/blog/security/sim_box_fraud_internet_of_things_fraud_middle_east/ and “Internet of Things set to double in the Middle East and Africa by 2023” in Payspace, 8 January 2020, at https://payspacemagazine.com/tech/internet-of-things-set-to-double-in-the-middle-eastand-africa-by-2023/

5 See Amrote Abdella, “How investing in digital infrastructure can make the difference to Africa’s economic recovery”, 2 September 2020 at https://news.microsoft.com/en-xm/2020/09/02/howinvesting-in-digital-infrastructure-can-make-the-difference-to-africas-economic-recovery/

6 See Edward Gardner (2003) Creating Employment in the Middle East and North Africa, Washington DC: International Monetary Fund, at https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/med/2003/eng/gardner/index.htm

7 Omer Karasapan, “Middle East food security amid the COVID-19 pandemic”, Brookings Institution, 14 July 2020, at https://www.brookings.edu/blog/future-development/2020/07/14/middle-east-foodsecurity-amid-the-covid-19-pandemic/

8 See Helmi Noman, The Emergence of Open and Organized Pro-Government Cyber Attacks in the Middle East: The Case of the Syrian Electronic Army, n.d. at https://opennet.net/emergence-open-andorganized-pro-government-cyber-attacks-middle-east-case-syrian-electronic-army and AFP, “In divided Iraq, ‘electronic armies’ threaten activists, media”, in Arab News, 6 September 2019, at https://www.arabnews.com/node/1550656/middle-east

9 Adrian Chen, “The Agency” in New York Times, June 2, 2015, at https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/07/magazine/the-agency.html

10 Tim Lister, Sebastian Shukla and Clarissa Ward, “Putin’s Army: Russia is tightening its grip on Africa. But Moscow doesn’t want to admit it”, CNN Special Report, August 2019, at https://edition.cnn.com/interactive/2019/08/africa/putins-private-army-car-intl/

11 Dean Cheng, “How China is Using Coronavirus to Wage Political Warfare” in The National Interest, April 4, 2020, at https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/how-china-using-coronavirus-wage-politicalwarfare-140347

12 See Milenko Nedelkovski, “AI and Ghost Journalists: behind an anti-Qatar propaganda campaign, the shadow of the UAE” in MINA Report, October 13, 2020 at https://www.minareport.com/2020/10/13/aiand-ghost-journalists-behind-an-anti-qatar-propaganda-campaign-the-shadow-of-the-uae/ and Samikshya Siwakoti, Jacob N. Shapiro, Isra Thange and Alaa Ghoneim, “Coronavirus disinformation adds conspiratorial fuel to a volatile Middle East” in Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, September 7, 2020 at https://thebulletin.org/2020/09/coronavirus-disinformation-adds-conspiratorial-fuel-to-a-volatilemiddle-east/

13 Abdi Latif Dahir, “China is exporting its digital surveillance methods to African governments” in Quartz Africa, November 1, 2018, at https://qz.com/africa/1447015/china-is-helping-african-countriescontrol-the-internet/ and Scott N. Romaniuk and Tobias Burgers, “How China’s AI Technology Exports Are Seeding Surveillance Societies Globally: China is exploring technologies that enable high tech state authoritarianism” in The Diplomat, October 18, 2018 at https://thediplomat.com/2018/10/how-chinasai-technology-exports-are-seeding-surveillance-societies-globally/

14 Guillaume Lasconjarias (2017) Deterrence through Resilience: NATO, the Nations and the Challenges of Being Prepared, Rome: NATO Defence College, Eisenhower Paper No. 7, May 2017 at https://www.ndc.nato.int/download/downloads.php?icode=516

15 NATO, Resilience and Article 3, 31 March 2020 at https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/topics_132722.htm