On 24 May 2025 I took the stage at TEDxGCEM, held at Gopalan College of Engineering and Management in Bengaluru under the theme “Echoes of Evolution”. My talk, “Why the digital world needs cyber diplomats”, is built on one idea: the next global crisis won’t come from a battlefield. It will strike through a line of code.
When code becomes the front line
We tend to picture global crises as wars, pandemics or financial crashes. Today, some of the most serious disruptions begin quietly, inside computer networks. In the talk I looked at two examples that show how quickly a cyber incident can become a human one:
- Ransomware attacks on hospitals. When hospital systems are locked, appointments are cancelled, records become unavailable and patient care is put at risk. The WannaCry attack of 2017 disrupted parts of the UK’s National Health Service. In 2022, a ransomware attack crippled systems at AIIMS, New Delhi, one of India’s premier hospitals.
- GPS disruption at sea. Ships depend on satellite navigation. Jamming and spoofing of GPS signals, increasingly reported in contested waters around the world, can send vessels off course and put crews, cargo and global trade at risk.
Neither of these is a problem any single organisation, or even any single country, can solve alone.
Why the answer includes diplomacy
Cyberspace has no borders. An attack can be launched from one country, routed through several others and hit targets on the other side of the world within seconds. The people behind it may be criminal groups, hacktivists or actors linked to states. Firewalls and patches are essential, but on their own they cannot answer the bigger questions:
- What behaviour by states in cyberspace is acceptable, and what crosses the line?
- How do countries share information quickly when an attack is under way?
- Who is responsible, and how should the international community respond?
- How do we protect hospitals, energy grids, shipping and other critical infrastructure that serve everyone?
These are questions of trust, negotiation and cooperation. In other words, they are questions of diplomacy.
The next global crisis won’t come from a battlefield — it will strike through a line of code.
What a cyber diplomat does
A cyber diplomat works where technology and international relations meet. It is the space I have built my career in, and the reason The CyberDiplomat exists. Cyber diplomats help:
- Build norms of responsible behaviour in cyberspace, and encourage countries to follow them.
- Create channels for cooperation so that governments, CERTs and industry can share threat information and coordinate responses.
- Strengthen capacity in countries and organisations that are still building their cyber defences.
- Translate between worlds, helping engineers understand policy and policymakers understand technology.
You do not need to work at an embassy to think like a cyber diplomat. Anyone who understands both the technology and the human, legal and political context around it can help make the digital world safer.
With thanks
My sincere thanks to the TEDxGCEM team and Gopalan College of Engineering and Management for the invitation, and to everyone in the audience. If this conversation matters to you, please watch the talk and share it. The digital world needs more cyber diplomats.
This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organised by a local community.
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