False threats against aeroplanes remind us that politics can no longer afford to be divided on the issue of cyber security

Friday, the fifth day of alerts. A further eighteen flights have been targeted by false threats across nine countries. A Wizz Air flight from Prague to Rome was diverted to Venice, the newsrooms of RTE and the Irish Independent were evacuated, and an email promises that this is only the beginning. It is signed ‘Fighters of the Male State’, an acronym associated with Russian extremism. At the same time, the National Cybersecurity Agency (ACN) is tracking down intruders in cold stores in Sicily, Tuscany and Emilia-Romagna, whilst in France someone tried to heat transfusion plasma to 110 degrees. There is still no direct evidence linking the flight alerts to Moscow. The direction of the wind, however, is clear. And so is the underlying message: on cybersecurity, there can be no division. Yet that is still what is happening, at least in Italy. When people say ‘no money for the military, all for healthcare’. When the extra 14 billion for Defence is branded as the biggest increase in history. When a parliamentary question is tabled asking how the government intends to protect citizens from fridge hackers. The question is legitimate. The answer, however, lies precisely in the budget headings that people are calling for to be cut. A quick recap. In The Hague, in 2025, the allies set a target of 5 per cent: 3.5 per cent for defence in the strict sense and 1.5 per cent for resilience, critical infrastructure and network protection. Cybersecurity falls within that.

It was the perfect way out for a reformist, pro-Western left seeking to shake off the label of ‘convenient pacifism’ – the sort that ultimately plays into the Kremlin’s hands. All it took was to signal a willingness to honour international commitments by starting to spend – here and now, by fostering national and European expertise and technological innovation – to protect hospitals, transport, water supplies and the cold chain, rather than immediately buying more American fighter jets. But nothing came of it. No one seems to have realised that cyber defence is the most progressive and inclusive of all military domains. Star Wars and aircraft carriers are – and appear to be – a world away from the ordinary citizen, whilst the fish counter in a supermarket or a hospital’s refrigerated cabinet affect us all. Cyber defence protects the most vulnerable first and foremost: the patient awaiting a blood transfusion, the pensioner doing their weekly shop round the corner, the neighbourhood shop without a security office. It is welfare in a helmet, or, if you prefer, defence in a white coat. Demanding more funds for healthcare and fewer for defence, at a time when the threat is emerging from within the healthcare system itself, is not pacifism: it is temperature-controlled populism. Blood, to remain usable, must be stored at minus thirty. Political ideas, it seems, must be too. And so the Left (and even a section of the Right) remains in the fridge, hoping that no one, remotely, will turn up the thermostat.