Cyber risks targeting energy systems rank among the most serious threats in today's digital world, a senior US expert warned, saying the danger extends across critical infrastructure, from power grids to water and transportation networks.
Cyber threats pose one of the biggest risks to modern economies, with the danger extending far beyond energy infrastructure, Heidi Crebo-Rediker, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Council on Foreign Relations, told Anadolu on the sidelines of the Global Cybersecurity Forum in Riyadh.
The event, held on Oct. 1-2, brought together global leaders and decision-makers who called for greater international collaboration on shared challenges and priorities in cyberspace amid increasingly complex socioeconomic and geopolitical dynamics.
"It's not just energy infrastructure at risk," she explained." I do think that critical infrastructure is an underappreciated, enormous risk, not just for the grid or for pipelines, but also for water infrastructure, sewage, telecommunications, transportation like ports, port security, airport security."
"Cyber threats can actually shut down an economy," she noted. "And when it does, you have cascading effects on industry because you do need to have energy and power to power an economy."
She noted that both semiconductor manufacturing facilities and hospitals rely on water and wastewater systems to maintain energy operations.
"The cyber risk to energy systems amongst a great many critical infrastructure systems is actually one of the bigger threats that we have right now in the cyber world," she said.
- Critical minerals are new front line in energy security
Crebo-Rediker also noted that energy has always been at the heart of economic and national security, but the front lines of that struggle are now shifting from oil pipelines to critical minerals.
"If you think about pipeline wars and leverage, energy has been a geopolitical battle line for a very long time, especially before the US shale revolution," Crebo-Rediker said.
Noting that Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the push to cut off its energy exports for geopolitical reasons were a "shock to the system," Crebo-Rediker said: "It really comes down to how countries can secure reliable resources going forward."
She added that the next phase of energy security now centers on access to critical minerals and rare earth elements, which she described as the new "battle line" in the global energy race.
"That's what you see escalating as a leverage of a trade war that China is using against the US and Europe right now," she added.
"So really the critical minerals, rare earth is the next iteration of where that strategic energy security geopolitical battle line is really being drawn," she said.
By Handan Kazanci
Anadolu Agency
energy@aa.com.tr