Hacker attacks, Crosetto: "Hybrid warfare is an epochal challenge, a strategy is needed to survive"

"The phase we are experiencing is not ordinary, it is not comparable to any other period in the past, because new technologies also accelerate problems. All the powers of the State should put down the hatchet, lock themselves in a room and decide together on a strategy to survive". These are the words of the Minister of Defense, Guido Crosetto, interviewed by Corriere della Sera, who describe the moment of concern for the recent hybrid warfare attacks that have involved all of Europe, including Italy. Meanwhile, at the Interior Ministry, for tomorrow, Minister Piantedosi has called a meeting of the National Committee for Public Order and Security. At the center of the meeting was the examination of the risks to public safety connected to cyber attacks and the cyber threat.

What worries the Minister of Defense most, however, is the fact that in "these new wars and forms of terrorism, to harm a company, a community, a nation, all it takes is a boy who lives thousands of kilometers away. He can block refrigerators that store blood or blow up the electrical system of a hospital. Then there are the States, which have even more sophisticated resources". "In recent years", adds Crosetto, "thousands of data, including health data, have been stolen all over the world, stored waiting to be decrypted one day with quantum computers. Not everyone has understood how much a cyber attack can harm us and how fundamental cognitive warfare is for the future". “I was even made fun of,” he recalls. "But you only fight this type of hybrid war if you know about it. Some organizations have the ability, with the use of social media, to direct people to buy an object or take a trip, but also to hate the society in which they live and the values ​​of democracy and to increase anger, dissatisfaction, violence". While on the fact that Italy and Europe are able to defend themselves, he underlines: "We defend ourselves with cyber agencies, but nowhere in the world are we equipped to fight and win hybrid and cognitive warfare". And still on plans for the future, the minister clarifies that the Defense "has asked to create a cyber weapon. Individual states have neither the money nor the technological tools to stop what happens on social media. But it is no longer acceptable for Meta, TikTok or anyone else who earns billions from social media to wash their hands of it. We need to put filters so that our children are not profiled and do not receive subliminal messages to influence their brains".