‘It’ll be grand’ is not a plan for when the real emergency strikes

Last week ushered in a new era of emergency readiness in Ireland in three strange ways. Irish supermarkets were the latest targets of hackers disrupting shop fridges. Aer Lingus and Ryanair planes were affected by hoax bomb threats. Last Friday, several media organisations were evacuated due to more hoax bomb threats. When viewed as part of a pattern of hybrid warfare – and piggybacking opportunists – across Europe, this is not the start of something. We are already in it.

The point of all of this is to generate a strange unmoored feeling. It is to cause confusion, panic, suspicion and an atmosphere where conspiracy and accusations flourish. The point is to signal: we know your weak spots. It is to destabilise.

Now add this to other aspects of upheaval and disruption we are already experiencing. One of these is more extreme weather due to human-made climate change, for which communities need to be more prepared. Transport infrastructure needs to be better designed to keep running. Flood defences need to become more effective, and the least expensive option for that is nature-based solutions. Wildfires are more likely to spread in hotter weather, and one way of mitigating that may be more broadleaf forests instead of Sitka plantation.

Then there is disruption in the form of all kinds of protests. Ireland experienced this during the fuel blockades, which shut down key transport routes, a large part of Dublin’s city centre, ports and brought the country to the brink with just a bunch of trucks and tractors. The Government’s response seemed to be panic. That’s not good enough. We are also navigating an era of public sector strikes. It is highly likely that, should AI cause more job-losses, strikes and protests will increase.

Broadly, Government preparation for all of this has come in the form of the Department of Defence publishing a national strategy on the resilience of critical entities last March. Households received a Be Emergency Ready booklet with simple steps that should be followed.

There are other vulnerabilities, large and small. A few years ago, I wrote about how the broader conversation about Ireland’s neutrality overlooked our exposure due to the concentration of data centres in Ireland, as well as subsea communications cables. We know that vessels from Russia’s shadow fleet have travelled in Irish waters and an intelligence vessel wandered curiously close to such cables off our coast. We now know too that data centres are wartime targets, including strategic attacks by Ukraine on Russian data centres, and Iran targeting Amazon data centres in the United Arab Emirates. That’s not to say they’ll be attacked here – either physically or digitally – but data centres are an obvious general security concern in an era of hybrid warfare.

There are also common cyber attacks, which have the potential to disrupt everything imaginable. The health service’s IT system was previously taken out with a single email. It will be the case in the very near future that people will increasingly move offline in different ways for privacy and personal security reasons. Personally, I am a fan of having cash to hand.

While the average individual cannot protect against hackers gaining access to control systems (such as what happened with supermarket fridges across Europe last week), they can protect their own devices. The internet of things (IoT) is a digital landscape that is often weaponised for DDoS botnet attacks. Now is the time to ensure devices are protected as much as possible with optimum authentication and verification, including everything from smart TVs to lighting systems. There needs to be better public information to encourage this.

In terms of messaging, the public is not made up of immature, disengaged, uneducated people. It is made up of people who, fair enough, may err on the side of “it’ll be grand”, but also navigated an extremely challenging time during the pandemic. Right now, Irish people appreciate the geopolitical context, while remaining generally opposed to militarism. The Government should therefore treat its citizens as mature, engaged and smart. This means facts rather than fears, preparation over panic, and resilience instead of regret. The Government has dawdled over a cell broadcast public warning system, which would send emergency alerts to people’s mobile phones. Finally, last June, proceeding with procurement was approved. Its implementation is “expected” next year. The Government needs to be held to that deadline.

Living in a state of constant vigilance is exhausting and can increase collective anxiety. It can also be counterproductive with diminishing returns. Meaningless signals cause what is known as reminder blindness. For example, if you have the same to-do list always in front of you, it becomes background noise rather than an immediate prompt. Warnings that don’t connect to something real deplete a government’s authority.

The Government also has a public trust issue related to its goal to scrap the triple lock. Many people are opposed to this, and may connect what they perceive as scaremongering to a partisan political goal. This is why independent voices are important, just as they were during the pandemic. So who are these authoritative and reasonable voices in terms of emergency readiness? That’s something that still needs to be worked out, but like a lot of things right now, is urgent.