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About this talk

In this lecture, Professor Richard J. Aldrich explores the evolving landscape of international relations in the tech age. As a leading expert in cybersecurity and an award-winning spy writer, Professor Aldrich delves into the complexities of covert action in the digital era. With his extensive expertise at the intersection of technology, intelligence and security, he offers unique insights into how emerging technologies are reshaping the way nations conduct covert operations. We associate technology with sophistication and higher civilisation. So why are international relations in the tech age so barbaric? Professor Aldrich suggests that we are entering a new era of covert action that has been expanded and transformed by science, technology and cyber. We are now in a period of performative assassinations, signature drone strikes, AI driven disinformation campaigns and sabotage by privateers recruited online, together with the significant expansion of shadowy units devoted to this work. These burgeoning activities often exist at the liminal boundary of secrecy and in different spaces to the sorts of classic projects once performed by the para-military elements of spy agencies like the CIA. Digital disruption has also subverted many of the intellectual categories and organisational boundaries in this realm, including the divide between state and non-state. Advanced technology does not result in the emergence of new norms of practice but accelerating cycles of performative violence used to create fear and intimidation. We may well be witnessing the emergence of a different and more distasteful style of conducting international affairs.

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