Appeal for resilience and technological sovereignty, the new directions of national defense

Minister Nordio, in his speech, underlined how the use of innovation appears increasingly urgent in the face of climate change affecting our territory and the expected exponential growth in energy demand. “Cyber ​​threats are a growing risk in our communities, which certainly concerns individual citizens and their privacy, but which can dangerously affect public administrations, damage businesses and even the precious energy infrastructures that serve our security. A great common attention to these issues, without underestimations, which starts precisely from the push of the youngest, can be the best answer towards sustainable development also at a social level, which in order to assert itself requires a more connected and safer society of tomorrow“, said the Minister of Justice in his speech via his video message.

“Today cybersecurity can no longer be read as a simple technical protection discipline. It is increasingly clearly becoming an infrastructure of sovereignty and a direct component of national power. For too long cyber has been treated as a matter for specialists, compliance or fulfillment. But the point is now another. The digital domain is the place where the ability of a State, an industrial supply chain and a country system to maintain command under pressure, absorb the impact, preserve operational continuity and not give up freedom of action in moments of crisis is measured. The decisive question, therefore, is no longer just “how protected are we?”, but “how capable are we of remaining operational, lucid and autonomous when friction increases?”. Because the contemporary cyber dimension is no longer just a war of access: it is a war of resistance, synchronization, resilience and strategic stability. Mature systems don’t stand out because they never get hit. They stand out because, even when they are hit, they do not lose coherence, decision-making chain and reaction capacity. This is where a change of mentality is needed: it is no longer enough to build defenses, we need to build depth. Technological, industrial, institutional and cultural depth. Because without depth there is no deterrence, and without deterrence there is no true sovereignty. In this framework, public-private collaboration must also stop being a formula and become a truly permanent operational architecture. Threats do not respect administrative boundaries, do not distinguish between civil networks and critical infrastructure and exploit precisely the areas of friction between skills, supply chains and responsibilities. The real leap in quality today is this: we must not only make systems safer, we must make organizations more resistant and resilient. In other words, we need to make them capable of continuing to function, decide and coordinate even while the attack is underway. This, ultimately, is the difference between cybersecurity and cyber defense: the former protects, the latter guarantees the functional stability of the system under hostility. And this is why cybersecurity is no longer just a cost of protection. It is one of the essential conditions of a country’s freedom of action, its capacity for deterrence and its strategic stability”. Thus Pierguido Iezzi Cyber ​​BU Director Maticmind SpA, Strategic Director Zenita Group.

Adm. Giuseppe Cavo Dragone, President of the NATO Military Committee, commented thus in his video message: “Geopolitics and strategic defense, artificial intelligence, cryptographic future, Cybercrime, critical infrastructures, aerospace, digital transformation are vast topics, but above all they are very, very current topics and today more than ever they are inseparable topics. The central point is very simple: the border between the physical world and the digital world is increasingly thin. Threats move across networks, infrastructure, information, space, industry and even society. And security cannot be built in watertight compartments. To describe this reality I use a new concept: cybrid. Cybrid means fusion between cyber and hybrid. It means that today we act in the digital domain and in the real world together, continuously, at the same time. Not first one, then the other, but both in a coordinated way, in a complementary way, in an increasingly rapid way. In this scenario, I would say the real decisive factor is time. Time to understand, time to decide, time to innovate, time to protect and time to react. In the age of cyber and artificial intelligence, it is not enough to have advanced tools. You need mental speed. Coordination is needed. You need the ability to adapt. Whoever reduces the time between observation, decision and action wins. Whoever knows how to learn first wins of the others. Whoever transforms innovation into concrete capability wins.

This applies to the armed forces, but it applies to institutions, it applies to industry, it applies to research. And it is especially true for young people. To young people, to young innovators, I want to say this: dare. Steve Jobs said it. I’ll tell you again too. Don’t be satisfied with just improving what already exists. Try to imagine what does not yet exist. In phases of rapid change, those who are only the strongest often do not prevail, those who see first, those who connect different disciplines, those who combine competence, creativity and even courage prevail.”.